"Anchor Restaurants" – Chinese American Restaurants Closed Before the 1980s
"Anchor restaurants" run by one of these prominent families usually found their start when these families, while still in China, pooled their resources internally and decided to give money and resources to the son of the family they deemed most capable of succeeding in America. In the case of Mee Hong restaurant, for example, Danny Chin was chosen to travel to America and start a business, eventually allowing more relatives to make the journey and join Danny in running the restaurant. Oftentimes, laundries—another key business for Chinese immigrants during this period—were also opened by relatives who joined later on.
The majority of Chinese people who immigrated to Rhode Island during this period were from the southern Chinese town of Taishan or the surrounding region, and people came to be identified more with the "Taishanese" label than "Chinese" within the Chinese immigrant community. Chinese people from other regions of China were called by their region of origin; a person from Shanghai would be known as a "Shanghai guy", and so forth. This greatly influenced how restaurants worked, as Taishanese-owned restaurants often only hired other Taishanese, or at the very least those who could speak Taishanese fluently. Restaurants often then became mostly staffed by numerous relatives, who lived in the same house and didn't speak much English nor have any means of transport other than walking. Life revolved around the restaurant business, as restaurant workers had to work 12-13 hours, six days a week (with the day off being staggered across all the employees).
These restaurants became popular with Euro-American clientele (often just called "American" by restaurant owners), serving mostly "American Chinese food" such as chop suey and chow mein that pleased Western palates. All the menus of the Chinese restaurants were similar, save for a few rotating specials. Many customers became regulars, bringing their whole families to one of the Chinese restaurants each Sunday (when nothing else but the restaurants and movie theaters were open for business). Some regulars came at consistent times each week, so consistently that Charlie Chin, one of the members of the Chin family, recalls that he would know the day of the week based on which customers came to the restaurant that day.
For those who were children at the time, in the present day they recall the community and the camaraderie created by the anchor restaurants. Charlie Chin remembers that, after choir practice at the nearby Beneficent Church (known for being a hub of Chinese American life then), he would join other Chinese children and run downtown to the restaurants looking for quick day work or to see relatives and friends. At the end of the day, whatever food was still left over on the steam table would be packed into #10 cans and brought home for hungry children and neighbors to enjoy. Every Chinese New Year, based on a tradition that Charlie Chin says was launched by Mee Hong, the five or six main restaurants would invite each other's families to their restaurants for Chinese New Year parties, despite their business competition. Though life was tough and work was hard, people who still remember this era maintain that the mutual help of the community and the strong ties between Chinese folks in Providence made the restaurant community strong and relationships happy.
