One day when I was still in China, I saw someone put hot charcoal onto the laundry iron before ironing clothes. He said, "If you have a chance to go overseas to Gum San (Golden Mountain) and make money, ironing clothes is what you'll do for a living." I really thought that Chinese in America relied on machines...while you talked and smoked, the clothes would be all ironed, folded, and packaged by machine.
After I arrived, I was quite disillusioned. In reality, Chinese laundrymen relied on their hands. On the door of every Chinese laundry were these two big words in red paint, "Hand Laundry," meaning all ironing was done by hand.
Here, perhaps seven out of ten Chinese survived by working in Chinese Hand Laundries. At the end of almost every residential block or alley, there was always a Chinese laundry.
When I first handled the dirty clothes, I could not take the smell. I almost threw up. Father saw my reaction and comforted me, "Take your time. You know, picking up these clothes is even worse than moving corpses back in China. I never mentioned the unhealthy conditions of the laundry in my letters to China. Knowing those things would not do the family any good back home. I always wrote 'I am well and healthy here. No need to worry.' It didn't matter whether I was well or sick. Being here, you had to endure."
Now one has to suffer by the smell of perchlorethylene and plastic bags with those paper collar stays...
There's just something about this shot that draws me into it...the composition and light really work well together. Even without reading your text the image tells so many stories.
Wow... that's some story. I never realized how hard it was to do laundry for people. I don't even notice my clothes smell, but then I don't handle them much or long and I don't iron. My father was an airbrush artist/teacher (taking student apprentices under his wing like a master would in your country). He immigrated with my mother and I when he was 43. Imagine making a move like that to a strange country (canada)with a different language at that age. Here he had to take a job as a cleaner in a hospital to make ends meet and feed his family. That's what I try and remember when I look after him now at age 82. You have reminded me how he got to this age and what he went through. Thank you Lawrence. By the way... very dramatic shot. The colors are perfect tones for the subject you're trying to convey. Good job. 7+
0 
