So Jade pursued a realty license, Vincent ran somebody else's restaurant, and they called it an American Dream. Vincent aspired to small business ownership and daughters who wouldn't have to work with their hands Jade set out to win the lottery. Sesame beef and chow mein, MSG and egg drop soup, dripping grease and satisfaction. ![]() Relief seamstress here, overnight janitor there, you get the picture, until they stepped into their current roles as the operators of Lulu's, a takeout joint specializing in cheap lunches for the time-starved office worker. ![]() Their parents survived as many in the neighborhood did-hand- to- mouth and on odd jobs, by the skin of their teeth. There were five of them and what bad luck, all of them girls-Jane, the loveliest, the sweetest, the Goat (the Ram, the Sheep) then Elizabeth, sharpminded and sharper tongued (the Monkey) Mary (the Ox) Kitty (the Rabbit) and Lydia (the Dragon)-who became, collectively and in short, the Chen girls. They came with similar teasing, small eyes, raffish black hair, and pert mouths they came with red faces and squalling voices they came easily, laboriously, frantically, lazily, and in the middle of the night, and landed in New York Presbyterian. They came by way of two parents, Jade and Vincent-not their natural names, but the useful ones-in the usual fashion and the standard cadence. ![]() Call it around the turn of the millennium, give or take a few years. Presenting the Chens of Essex Street-of Chinatown, of Manhattan, of the city so nice they named it twice, of gold mountain, of the italicized, of the hyphenated, of mei gwok, of zung gwok, of the center of the world to the center of the world.
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