There is far less intercourse between Chinese and whites here, also for that reason. Chinese parents try to keep their daughters away from white men, though in San Francisco, because Chinatown is so intimately connected with the life of the city, it is a commonplace to see them out together. Naturally, taboos are breaking down as high school and college girls demand the right to associate with their schoolmates, regardless of race. The tallest and most beautiful girl in Chinatown is Louise Leung, a model and showgirl. Chinese are inveterate gamblers for high stakes. Some of the biggest craps, poker, gin rummy, fan tan and mahjong games in New York are played in Chinatown. But only between Chinese. The cops are tolerant if no whites cut in. Many shops are merely fronts for gambling in the rear. The store shelves are almost completely bare of merchandise and if you should have the temerity to wander in and try to buy one of the few items kept as dressing, you'd annoy the proprietor greatly. That is, if you could get him out front, away from his game. Just to keep the record straight, occasional arrests are made, but after the players pay their dollar fines they go right back to their cards. In so far as the white population of New York is concerned, there is absolutely no Chinese prostitution in Chinatown. Yet many flats in the narrow streets are maintained with girls smuggled from the Orient as picture brides, expressly for entertainment of the local Chinese males. The authorities know all about it, but look the other way so long as none but Chinese patronize the houses. The local male Chinese far outnumber the females, and such places are considered a necessity. A new traffic has come to the region. "Come to" is what's new about it. The cops and courtroom loungers have long called prostitutes "flesh-peddlers." This appellation was never quite true. Inmates of houses, when there were such things, "sat for company"--the men came to them. Women who pounded the flagstones were peddlers only to a degree, as they had to be surreptitious, attract with a smile or glance, then be "solicited" to some extent. But now, in Chinatown, young Puerto Rican girls are sent to bring themselves and offer themselves, to display their merchandise on the spot and to haggle over the price. They go from house to house, floor to floor, door to door. They knock. If a woman answers (there are few instances of that) they say, "Sorry, mistake." If a man opens the door, the caller asks, "Want nice girl here?" Some of these peddlers are in their early 'teens, for Caribbean females blossom young. They are sent forth by their lovers, by their husbands, some by their own parents, to garner the dough. In Little Spain sex is cheap, selling it is precarious and competition is not only voluminous, but perilous, for the girls will fight with knives over a prospect.