>
> Speaking of Hong Kong and American blacks, here's an interesting story
> that I posted before. The circumstances surrounding the robbery are
> really hilarious. One wonders what a Hong Kong family (Hong Kong is
> ranked no. 2 in the world, after Japan, in net worth, by US exchange
> rates) is doing in a black neighborhood.
>
> I guess this case may be considered "biting the hand that feeds".
>
> * * *
> Excerpt:
>
> "She knew practically no other Asians her age, not even the ones from
> other restaurants, but blended into the predominantly black
> neighborhood." (?)
> :
> :
> "But she was stunned to learn of his [i.e.guy charged with attempted
> murder, assault, menacing and harassment] address, 210 Stuyvesant
> Avenue, right around the corner from the restaurant. 'We deliver to
> that address,' she said. 'Every single day.' " (??)
> * * *
>
> Reference:
>
http://tinyurl.com/yp4279
>
> January 20, 2007
> Bedford-Stuyvesant Journal
> An Unthinkable Crime, Until Someone Finally Thought of It
> By MICHAEL WILSON
>
> Three crumpled dollars and two quarters, tugged from the pocket of a
> puffy coat on a cold night, brings four hot chicken wings with French
> fries or fried rice. The most expensive dish on the restaurant's menu
> is No. 71, the lobster meat chow mein, at $8.95 a quart.
>
> The Happy House Chinese takeout restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant does
> not feed the rich, or put on airs, and maybe that is why, in the seven
> years it has fed its busy and occasionally even violent corner of
> Malcolm X Boulevard, it was never robbed. Maybe the thought simply
> never occurred to anyone. It would be like holding up one's own
> kitchen.
>
> That all changed, twice, in recent weeks, in two vicious attacks on
> the
> restaurant's workers, two botched robberies that caused serious
> injury and yielded no cash.
>
> Last month, the son of the owners, Man Seng Wong, 25, was beaten while
> delivering $24 worth of food, and spent the night in the hospital, his
> sister said. The young boys who hit him took the food, and there have
> been no arrests.
>
> Then, last Saturday, during the generally calm lunch hours just after
> 1:30 p.m., a man entered the Happy House and, when the newly hired
> cashier - the first stranger the Wong family had ever taken on -
> turned her back, he leaped over the counter and drew a pistol, the
> police said.
>
> The woman screamed, and the man shot her in the face. Another shot
> struck a relative of the Wongs by marriage, Hoy Wang, 37, piercing the
> palm of his hand. The shooter fled without any money and, in a final
> touch of carelessness, left behind his cellphone.
>
> There are four members - the parents, the son and the daughter - of
> the Wong family of immigrants from Hong Kong. They live where they
> work, in an apartment behind the Happy House. The attacks left them
> feeling rattled and vulnerable in a part of the city where Chinese
> restaurants - their steaming dishes in tin trays long a staple of
> poor and working families - line Malcolm X Boulevard, but where few
> Chinese people live.
>
> "They worry about it, especially my mother," said Gigi Wong, 19, on
> Wednesday night, standing in the same spot behind the counter where
> the
> cashier was shot four days earlier. Closing the store, even for a
> week,
> was never an option. "They still have to do whatever they were doing
> before. They're scared, but they still have to do it."
>
> Her parents moved to Queens from Hong Kong seven years ago. Ms. Wong
> followed in 2001, and started working at Happy House herself a year or
> two later, she said. The family spends most nights in the Brooklyn
> apartment. She knew practically no other Asians her age, not even the
> ones from other restaurants, but blended into the predominantly black
> neighborhood.
>
> "I have a lot of black friends," Ms. Wong said. "From 7th grade
> to 12th grade, I only went to black schools. I just switched to a
> Chinese school to make some Chinese friends."
>
> Ms. Wong is quick to smile, remarkably cheerful several hours into a
> 12-hour workday this week. "I know a lot of people, and a lot of
> people know me, and they've got a lot of love for me," she said.
>
> Customers tell her they are glad she was not at work last Saturday,
> but
> she replies: "I wish I was here. It wouldn't have happened."
>
> A detective called the restaurant on Wednesday to speak to Ms. Wong.
> He
> needed her to translate something for her relative, shot in the hand.
> She is the only member of the Wong family fluent in English.
>
> There are video cameras watching the counter all the time. The
> monitors
> are wrapped in clear plastic to keep them clean. Most of the other
> Chinese restaurants nearby also have thick plexiglass shields between
> the cashier and the customer, like a gas station or a liquor store,
> but
> not Happy House. Longtime customers, presumably the very people who
> would be the most offended by beefed-up security, tell Ms. Wong they
> need more.
>
> "They need, like, a partition here with a window," said a matronly
> woman who gave only her first name, Lorna. "People are stupid. They
> always kill the ones that help them."
>
> To Ms. Wong, she said, "If that was you they shot, I would have
> cried."
>
> So new was the cashier that, after the shooting, no one in the Wong
> family seemed to know her full name, only her last name, Lin. Before
> the shooting, when Gigi Wong had tried to speak to her at work, they
> would be constantly interrupted by customers.
>
> Later, through the police, the Wongs learned the cashier was named
> Aizen Lin, 34, and tracked her first to the nearby Woodhull Medical
> and
> Mental Health Center and then to Bellevue Hospital Center in
> Manhattan,
> where she was in critical condition.
>
> Several nights this week, after closing the restaurant at midnight,
> the
> Wongs piled in their car to visit Ms. Lin. Half of her face is badly
> swollen, and while she appears alert, Ms. Wong said, she cannot speak
> with the tubes in her throat.
>
> "We went at 1 o'clock in the morning. My mother, my father and
> me," she said on Thursday morning. "She still has the straw, the
> plastic thing in her mouth. She saw, and she opened her eye. I said,
> 'I came to see you,' that's all. I can't think of anything to
> say."
>
> Ms. Wong's parents held Ms. Lin's hand. They stayed about 15
> minutes, then drove back to Brooklyn.
>
> The police took the gunman's cellphone and managed to contact him,
> pretending to be men willing to sell the phone back to him. It worked:
> The suspect met officers at an arranged spot, and they arrested him,
> the police said.
>
> The man, Raymond Wiliams, 21, was identified on the security video
> tape
> as the gunman leaping over the counter, according to a criminal
> complaint filed in court. The police are looking for another man who
> may have been involved, the complaint says.
>
> Mr. Williams has been charged with attempted murder, assault, menacing
> and harassment, and remained in jail as of yesterday. He admitted he
> leaped over the counter and fired two shots, according to the
> complaint.
>
> Ms. Wong did not recognize his name.
>
> But she was stunned to learn of his address, 210 Stuyvesant Avenue,
> right around the corner from the restaurant.
>
> "We deliver to that address," she said. "Every single day."
>
>
>>>>>> The kidneys fail first. Then the central nervous system begins to
>>>>>> misfire. Paralysis spreads, making breathing difficult, then often
>>>>>> impossible without assistance. In the end, most victims die.
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government officials
>>>>>> there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of
>>>>>> cold
>>>>>> medicine - with devastating results. Families have reported 365
>>>>>> deaths
>>>>>> from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far. With the
>>>>>> onset of the rainy season, investigators are racing to exhume as
>>>>>> many
>>>>>> potential victims as possible before bodies decompose even more.
>>>>> It's actually called 'flight from diversity'..... ironcially
>>>>> enough......
>>> Here, a pic from the "New Territories" in Hong KOng. These are some of
>>> the places where the lower-middle classes to middle classes live
>>> because Hong Kong island and the various 'hills' and 'mountains' are
>>> too expensive for them.
