At short distances are the other huts crouching at the foot of big
trees, with queer gourds hanging out in front to dry, and large unusual
crocks lying about, and huge baskets, and mattings--all clearly
from China; they are as different from what could be bought on the
neighboring avenue as the farm and farmers themselves are different
from most Long Island farms and farmers. Out in the fields, which are
tilled in the Oriental way, utilizing every inch of ground clean up to
the fence, and laid out with even divisions at regular intervals, like
rice-fields, the farmers themselves may be seen, working with Chinese
implements, their pigtails tucked up under their straw hats, while the
western world wags on in its own way all around them. This is less than
five miles from the glass-covered parade-ground of the Waldorf-Astoria.
They have only three houses among them, that is, there are only three
of these groups of rooms, made of old boards and boxes and covered with
tar paper; but no one in the neighborhood seems to know just how many
Chinamen live there. The same sleeping space would hold a score or more
over in Pell Street.
Being Chinamen, they grow only Chinese produce, a peculiar kind of bean
and some sort of salad, and those large, artistic shaped melons, seen
only in China or Chinatown, which they call something that sounds like
"moncha," and which, one of them told me, bring two cents a pound from
the Chinese merchants and restaurateurs of Manhattan. For my part, I
was very glad to learn of these farms, for I had always been perplexed
to account for the fresh salads and green vegetables, of unmistakably
Chinese origin, that can be found in season in New York's Chinatown.
Under an old shed near by they have their market-wagon, in which,
looking inscrutable, they drive their stuff to market through Long
Island City, and by way of James Slip Ferry over to Chinatown; then back
to the farm again, looking inscrutable. And on Sundays, for all we know,
they leave the wagon behind and go to gamble their earnings away in Mott
Street, or perhaps away over in some of the well-known places of Jersey
City. Then back across the two ferries to farming on dreary Monday
mornings.
IV
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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