Within two months of his arrival in America, Tung Pok Chin began working in hand laundries in Rhode Island and in Massachusetts. Racial discrimination in America limited work opportunities for persons of Chinese ancestry. Most worked long hours in either laundries or restaurants. At one laundry in Boston, Chin worked from 7 a.m. until 2 a.m. the next day.
After several months, Chin saved enough money to place a down payment on his own hand laundry business in New York City. In 1935, a Lai family member named Kiu King sold Chin a laundry in Harlem. King told Chin that the laundry had about $70 of business per week and the monthly rent was only $30. Based on this representation, Chin bought the laundry for $750.
Once he began operating the laundry, Chin discovered that the laundry did less than half the amount of business King had indicated. Revenues amounted to about $30 per week. After deducting his operating costs and rent, Chin made less than $10 per week in profits from the laundry.
Despite his misfortune, Chin retained a positive attitude and put his unforeseen free time to good use. Beginning in 1937, he devoted five hours each night to studying English. That same year, he began corresponding with Ralph E. Pickett, Associate Dean at that time at the New York University's School of Education. Ralph E. Pickett provided Chin with grammar textbooks and periodical literature to aid in his self-education. From that correspondence, a lifelong friendship bloomed.
"I had been cheated in the buying of the laundry, but it provided me with
plenty of time to learn and study English. . . . Setting down both Chinese
and English versions of the Confucian classics side by side, I analyzed each
phrase, word for word. When I knew every word thoroughly, I repeated the
same procedure with Chinese and English versions of the Bible. By 1939, I
was the Sunday sermon interpreter at the True Light Lutheran Church in New
York's Chinatown!"
