Eat a Bowl of Tea

Most of Eat a Bowl of Tea takes place in New York City’s Chinatown, and the community plays an important role in the novel. Novelist Louis Chu was himself active in New York’s Chinatown in the 1960s and 1970s, hosting a radio show aimed at Chinese audiences. He writes that “Chinatown is a closely knit community where everybody knows almost everybody else” (118). The fact that the novel’s protagonist Wah Gay belongs to a number of organizations, such as “The Chinese Masons, the Kuomingtang, the Chinese Elks, Ping On Tong, and the Wang Association” (118), demonstrates the close-knit nature of the community. This abundance of social and political clubs suggests that there are many opportunities for Chinatown residents to engage with their community.

The novel suggests that there are drawbacks and benefits to the closeness of the Chinatown community. Because of the intimacy and familiarity between residents, individuals are rarely granted privacy. As Chu warns in his description of Chinatown, “You may have no idea what a celebrity you are in your own community” (118). Although Ben Loy and his wife are newcomers to the community, their fathers are well-established figures, and as a result, rumors of Mei Oi’s affair with