Following his discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1945, Tung Pok Chin worked as a laundry helper at several laundries in New York City. In his spare time, he wrote about his life experiences in prose and poetry. Soon thereafter, Chin contacted the China Daily News, one of two Chinese language newspapers in New York City at the time, to publish his writings.

Chin favored the China Daily News because it provided more accurate coverage of the Chinese Civil War than the other Chinese language newspaper. The editor of the China Daily News, T'ang Ming Chao, readily agreed to publish Chin's writings. With the Communist victory in 1949, T'ang returned to the mainland. It was soon after T'ang's returned to China that all those connected with the China Daily News were labelled "pro-Communist," through guilt by association.

"I became more involved with writing, prolifically churning out poems on Gold Mountain, my home village in China, war, peace, life, and death, and they were all published -- hundreds of them over the course of the next few years! I was excited by my newfound talent and minor success. I no longer dreamed of going to college. In my heart, I had always felt it was a bit unrealistic anyway. Now, I wanted to make a name for myself as a poet. And I knew that if I could succeed anywhere in the world, it would be in Gold Mountain -- the land of opportunity!"