The Ringer | American Dreams in a Chinese Takeout

The host at the Legend KTV, a karaoke lounge in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is not expecting someone like me—a laowai, a foreigner—to walk in the door. That much is clear from her abrupt switch from casual Chinese to halting English when I explain that I am waiting for a friend. “Yes, maybe you have a seat.” I sit down and try to act natural, flipping aimlessly through iPhone apps. But the lobby is anything but natural. I have been unwittingly transported to a version of New York City where I am the outsider. I feel underdressed in my black pants and red flannel shirt and bewildered by my new surroundings: a room lined with fake gold and red velour.

I stare at the flat-screen TV on the opposite wall, killing time and wondering whether I would recognize any of the C-pop hits playing on mute. I’d been in lobbies like this before in Beijing and Shanghai, where it was hard to ignore the many advertisements for European-themed high-rise complexes and the obsession with haute couture brands like Louis Vuitton. The aspirations of the country’s wealthiest 1 percent, a class GQ dubbed “The Bling Dynasty,” were on display everywhere, expressed in gold filigree, marble columns, and Swarovski chandeliers. It became a standard of prestige that trickled down far beyond the country’s social elites. But even these spaces in China had felt less tacky; they hadn’t been yearning so earnestly to convey an aura of opulence that they clearly could not afford.

Finally, O’Neill comes bounding past the two bouncers stationed outside. His black hair is perfectly coiffed, and he wears an Abercrombie-style cable-knit sweater underneath a light-wash denim jacket. He is late because he had gone home to shower after getting off work at No. 1 Chinese Kitchen on Nostrand Avenue. O’Neill is a 37-year-old cook who spends six days a week in the kitchen. He’s from Fujian, China, a province on the country’s southeastern coast. Read more…