Chinatown family- Lin Yutang

 A dear friend asked me few days back about my favourite books based on India.  As I mused, my mind went into a tangent.  My favourite books of all time.   Today as I was talking to my brother, he reminded me of Chinatown family by Lin Yutang.

Of course!  That has to be  one of my favourite books.

My father had purchased a copy of this book possibly for Rs 1/- in the old days.  My mother, whose job was to pack and move, kept all the books in a Aluminum box ready to be moved as and when required.  On hot summer days, I would poke and pull out books out of the box.  Invariably I would pull out Chinatown family at least once every summer.

The book was hardbound in red colour.  It was simply a fascinating book not because of the story but because the beginning, the middle and the end was missing.  Later, the pages began to crumble so one had to be careful while reading.  

In a way, it was my introduction to immigrant America.  A very different America that was described in Little Women, another favourite of mine.

This was the America of an immigrated Chinese family.

Poring over the pages, I would re-construct the missing bits. 

The book possibly starts with the matriarch of the family recently arrived in New York with her two younger children-a son and a daughter.  The eldest son runs a laundromat with his father.  Later, he marries an Italian girl, Flora.  The middle son was no-good, the black sheep of the family.   The younger son, Tom, and his sister, Eva, start school.  Somewhere in the middle, the father dies.  The elder son and the mother take over the running of the laundromat.  The book ends with celebration of Chinese New Year and acknowledgement that Tom is going out with Elsa.  Or at least that is what I think the end was because the pages after the Chinese New year celebration were missing.

Chinatown Family remained with us for a long time.  Finally, just few years back, I regretfully had to throw it out.  All the pages had crumbled and one could no longer even read one page completely.   My brother reminded me that  it is available once more on Amazon.  But the charm of the red hard bound book with missing and crumbling pages is something that cannot be ever replaced.