A tuberculosis epidemic, a church, and one lucky break sent Chinese Manhattanites to Bradley Beach.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/08/28
By: Eveline Chao

One day in 1941, Lee Ng Shee went for a stroll in Bradley Beach, New Jersey. She

Photo Credit: Reuters/達志影像

was the wife of a prominent merchant in New York City Chinatown named Lee B. Lok, who in 1891 had established Quong Yuen Shing & Company, a general store on Mott Street. The family liked to spend their summers on the Jersey Shore, though it was a challenge to find landlords who would rent to nonwhites. Lee Ng Shee was passing a house on Newark Avenue, stepping carefully on her bound feet, when a woman came out on the porch. “Are you looking for a house?” the woman called out. “Would you like to buy this one?”

Lee knew a deal when she heard one. “Two thousand dollars later, Lee B. Lok and family were ensconced in a summer bungalow of their very own in the village where twenty years before they would have been lucky to be able to rent some rooms over a store,” wrote Bruce Edward Hall in his Chinatown memoir Tea That Burns.
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