“Chinatown Family” Is A Simple Tale Of Simple People

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 26, 26 April 1950, Page 4

“Chinatown Family” Is A Simple Tale Of Simple People

Dr Lin Yutang’s “Chinatown Family” are the Fongs, father, mother, three sons and one daughter. The book has been added to the Whakatane Public Library. When the story opens Tom and Eva, the youngest children have just arrived in New York from Canton to rejoin their father, who can now support them as his laundry is beginning to pay its way. Tom, the hero of this simple tale is a model boy. Indeed, the entire family suggest figures from a Confucian magazine; even Yiko, the black sheep, who is not quite straight, and falls in love with a most undesirable cabaret girl, is not really so black, and mends his ways before the end. In spite of all this virtue, they Rave a good deal of charm, and though Dr Lin Yutang is plainly anxious to show that Cantonese make most desirable American citizens, he has not allowed their original Chinese character to be overlaid by accretions of Western civic merit. Nothing very eventful happens to them. Tom shows signs of becoming an intelectual, and falls in love with an equally high-minded young lady named Elsie Tsai whom he meets at some local patriotic activities in connection with the SinoJapenese war. Yiko s marriage proves disastrous. The father is run over and killed but the insurance money enables his widow to start the restaurant, which they had always dreamed of having.