Speaker 1: Push Kim.
Speaker 2: Hey there, it's Michael Lewis here with a special episode.
Speaker 2: While she's been working on this show, my producer, Lydia
Speaker 2: jen Kott has also been working on a new show
Speaker 2: of her own. It's called The Chinatown Sting and it's
Speaker 2: an international crime saga that takes place in the late.
Speaker 3: Eighties and early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Earlier this week, I talked with LJ about The Chinatown
Speaker 2: Sting at an event at a coffee shop in Brooklyn
Speaker 2: called Land to Sea. That's a place that hosts monthly
Speaker 2: Majong Nights, a game that's a little bit like Domino's
Speaker 2: and relevant to her show. Here's our conversation and then
Speaker 2: we'll hear part of the first episode. I hope you'll
Speaker 2: go subscribe to The Chinatown Sting. All six episodes are
Speaker 2: out now and it's a great listenin.
Speaker 3: So why don't we start? But I want you to
Speaker 3: just explain. You have to tell the whole story because
Speaker 3: you don't want to ruin that way.
Speaker 2: But how you stumbled into the story like this, how
Speaker 2: you got this material because the material.
Speaker 1: Is great, Okay, So the story is kind of I
Speaker 1: would say, a family legend of sorts. My partner's mom,
Speaker 1: who I've known ever since I was little. She's a
Speaker 1: federal judge.
Speaker 3: In Washington, DC, Beryl Howell. Beryl Howell, who I have
Speaker 3: met separately.
Speaker 2: I spoke to this court, the district court, all the judges,
Speaker 2: and she's an impressive character, a little scary actually.
Speaker 1: A little scary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is the story of her first case. So
Speaker 1: it's a case that she talked about a lot because
Speaker 1: the people in it really made an impression on her.
Speaker 1: And I always kind of wanted to know more about
Speaker 1: this case and do a story about it, but I
Speaker 1: didn't think that would be an option because federal judges
Speaker 1: don't usually give interviews or talked to the media. But
Speaker 1: after knowing her for years and years and years, I
Speaker 1: finally just asked, and she said, sure, and tell us.
Speaker 3: Such a little bit about the story, because we have
Speaker 3: to explain why we're playing my gens.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So there's a young federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell, just a
Speaker 1: few weeks on the job. She has a group of
Speaker 1: all these women who are in custody. They've all been
Speaker 1: caught accepting boxes in the mail boxes that have stuffed
Speaker 1: animals in them, and tea and also millions of dollars
Speaker 1: worth of heroin. A lot of them have young kids,
Speaker 1: and she needs to find out why they why they
Speaker 1: did this, and who they're working for. And they're not talking.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that is connecting them all is
Speaker 1: that they were playing Majong together in Manhattan's Chinatown, because
Speaker 1: this is happened in the nineteen eighties, and at the
Speaker 1: time in Chinatown there were all these like Majong parlors,
Speaker 1: which are kind of like speakeasies where you could play
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 3: Your boyfriend's mom. Yes, So, I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: A prosecutor has this huge effect on people's lives, mainly
Speaker 2: ends badly for the people who are being prosecuted if
Speaker 2: it's a federal prosecution, right, the numbers are just shocking.
Speaker 2: Everybody everybody goes to jail or pleads a guilty kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And I've always wondered, partly because I watched
Speaker 2: this now recently with Sam Bagman Freed, how interest did
Speaker 2: the prosecutors stay in these in the lives of the
Speaker 2: people who you know are in their review mirror. Did
Speaker 2: you have the impression that Barrel was especially interested in
Speaker 2: like the people here or was it just the case
Speaker 2: was so weird?
Speaker 1: It was the people. I don't think it was that
Speaker 1: the case was so weird. I think it was the people.
Speaker 2: Did you have the impression that she had she knew
Speaker 2: something about what had happened to them?
Speaker 3: Did you find yourself telling her things that she didn't know?
Speaker 1: She had no idea what happened to them? I think
Speaker 1: it was insane that she thought that I would be
Speaker 1: able to find them.
Speaker 3: Oh all right, Like at.
Speaker 1: Times I was mad at her for being like, oh,
Speaker 1: you should do this, because I was like, do you
Speaker 1: realize the chances of me being able to find these people?
Speaker 1: And then why would they agree to talk to me?
Speaker 1: Like she had no idea at all.
Speaker 2: So, just there are a bunch of There are a
Speaker 2: bunch of characters, and there are these very kind of
Speaker 2: awkward conversations on people's doorsteps.
Speaker 3: In your podcast, just tell us the story of.
Speaker 2: Finding one of the characters and what that was like
Speaker 2: and how that person responded when you just knocked on
Speaker 2: their door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, we basically were just looking them
Speaker 1: up on the white pages. Me and my co reporter
Speaker 1: show you who's not here in all the different China towns,
Speaker 1: The three China towns in Manhattan and Queen's and Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Each time we brought cookies because we were coming out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, so we felt like we should not go
Speaker 1: empty handed. We knocked on the door. We left the
Speaker 1: cookies in a note, and no one ever responded to
Speaker 1: our notes. But one time we knocked on the door
Speaker 1: and the woman inside answered and I said right away,
Speaker 1: I'm here because I know Daryl Howell very closely. Could
Speaker 1: I talk to you for this story? And she invited
Speaker 1: us in.
Speaker 3: You're so disarming. I love to One of her.
Speaker 2: The roles she plays for me is when I'm scared
Speaker 2: about chasing someone down, and I don't think I think
Speaker 2: they're going to be mean to me if I get
Speaker 2: them on the phone, or they're not going to want
Speaker 2: to talk to me because they'll suspect evil intent. I
Speaker 2: send her instead, and she completely diffuses the situation. She
Speaker 2: shows up with their head on a spiked and and
Speaker 2: so I'd have thought I'm gonna.
Speaker 3: Get shot if I ring this doorbell.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, it's incredibly brave of you to
Speaker 2: kind of just hunt these people down.
Speaker 3: I mean, they all been in jail. And the story
Speaker 3: was in the past.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell from the the podcast just how reluctant
Speaker 2: they were to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of crazy, right to show up.
Speaker 1: You've had the worst thing, you were prosecuted for this crime.
Speaker 1: Then the basically like daughter in law of the person
Speaker 1: who prosecuted you shows up and says, oh, can you
Speaker 1: tell me your side of the story?
Speaker 3: I really want to hear it.
Speaker 4: It'll do and it'll do.
Speaker 3: A lot of good.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when I you know, because it could go
Speaker 1: I could say, oh, I'm you know, Beryl is my
Speaker 1: almost mother in law, and she could be like, get
Speaker 1: out of here. But instead she was like, how's Beryl.
Speaker 1: I've been watching on TV that she's a judge and
Speaker 1: she retired. How is she doing? So that kind of
Speaker 1: made it easier.
Speaker 2: When I was listening to it, I thought you actually
Speaker 2: might have a runner here in that you could go
Speaker 2: to any older prosecutor and say, what's the case That
Speaker 2: kind of got in your head and you never got
Speaker 2: out of your head and you wonder what happened.
Speaker 4: To the people.
Speaker 2: Yes, because the relationship of the prosecutors to the people
Speaker 2: they're prosecuting is often so it's so warped and distant,
Speaker 2: and they've had such an effect on that person's life.
Speaker 4: You call me.
Speaker 2: When I called you, I was trying to pass you
Speaker 2: to help me with something else while you were doing
Speaker 2: your own show, and you said you blurted out. I said,
Speaker 2: how's it going, and you blurted out, it's so hard.
Speaker 2: And I was a little surprised. Doesn't sound listening to
Speaker 2: it, it doesn't sound like it was hard. It sounds like
Speaker 2: it came pretty naturally to you. What did you find
Speaker 2: difficult about actually being responsible for telling the story?
Speaker 1: I think I just really wanted to do justice to
Speaker 1: everyone in the story. I really wanted everyone you know,
Speaker 1: they went through the justice system, but I also wanted
Speaker 1: them to feel like they were treated fairly in the story.
Speaker 2: Are you not?
Speaker 1: But Michael, how do you feel? I mean not if
Speaker 1: someone asked you in the middle of writing The Big Short,
Speaker 1: you were you would never be like, oh, it's so hard.
Speaker 3: It was excellent promotional work for pushing.
Speaker 4: We have just dropped.
Speaker 2: We just dropped a re release of The Big Short
Speaker 2: audio book this week.
Speaker 3: Very well done. So what were you asking me?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was saying, did you never feel like this
Speaker 1: is so hard.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm always a little worried that it's slow.
Speaker 2: But no, Actually the truth is that by the time
Speaker 2: I get excited enough to write something, I assume it's interesting.
Speaker 2: I'm excited because I'm interested, so I assume everybody else
Speaker 2: could be interested.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that part so fun. The reporting part is
Speaker 1: so fun. But then like finding the like you can
Speaker 1: say what the big short is about in one sentence,
Speaker 1: I can, yeah, and it's really easy for you.
Speaker 4: It takes a while to get there though.
Speaker 1: That part from me is really hard.
Speaker 3: So that I've just been doing this with the new book.
Speaker 2: I'm about to start writing it and and I just
Speaker 2: figured out last week what it was, and it was.
Speaker 4: Just like, Ah, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's the it's And you might never say it to
Speaker 2: the reader or the listener, but it's they got to
Speaker 2: be that structure has got to be the point of
Speaker 2: it's got to be there. So what's the one sentence
Speaker 2: about the podcast you came up with us? I'm curious,
Speaker 2: what's the sentence? It's not about majong.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of ma there's a lot
Speaker 3: of majong.
Speaker 2: In it, But do you do you remember what your
Speaker 2: one sentence was you told yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a story about three women
Speaker 1: who you know, who are opposed to each other and
Speaker 1: according to the system, only one of them can win,
Speaker 1: and how do they navigate that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Very well done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your mother was about to collapse and then realize
Speaker 2: she's your mother and that she shouldn't lead a standing ovation.
Speaker 3: It's very good.
Speaker 2: Thank you, And I just gotta say I'm proud of you.
Speaker 2: I'm so proud of you. You did great and it's good.
Speaker 2: You're going to be doing this forever, and.
Speaker 1: I so appreciate you coming to Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: It's a mysterious land I've never been. The people are different.
Speaker 3: You seem to be able to communicate. I'm almost sure.
Speaker 2: They understand me, but I think I understand them. But
Speaker 2: I've got back to Manhattan as fast as possible, and
Speaker 2: now don't go anywhere. Coming up, we have an excerpt
Speaker 2: from the first episode of LJ show, The Chinatown Sting.
Speaker 1: On February ninth, nineteen eighty eight, David Shean was working
Speaker 1: his usual shift. He was a US customs agent at
Speaker 1: JFK report his phone rang.
Speaker 6: I was talked then through a customs agent in California.
Speaker 6: Who says, hey, well just got three shipments of heroin
Speaker 6: and three different bailed parcels. Do you guys want the case?
Speaker 6: So I said, absolutely, we'll take it.
Speaker 1: The parcels were on their way from Hong Kong to
Speaker 1: New York. Customs agents were looking inside packages more often
Speaker 1: ever since President Reagan in Congress had ramped up the
Speaker 1: war on drugs. David Shechan was part of this special
Speaker 1: task force to combat narcotic smuggling, so they got calls
Speaker 1: about drugs coming into New York City all the time.
Speaker 1: This call was special, though, because inside each of these
Speaker 1: packages was about seven million dollars worth of heroin. In
Speaker 1: today's money, that's something like eighteen million dollars per package.
Speaker 1: Peter Mattesser was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaker 1: He really wanted to know who was waiting for those boxes.
Speaker 4: I knew it was going to be a big case
Speaker 4: because there was a lot of heroin and the focus
Speaker 4: was on China white heroin at the time, because a
Speaker 4: lot was coming into New York. A lot of heroin
Speaker 4: was coming in from China to Hong Kong then into
Speaker 4: New York, and it sounded like a good opportunity to
Speaker 4: work a big case.
Speaker 1: On February seventeenth, the boxes arrived at the airport. Peter
Speaker 1: and David knew they were at the beginning of something big,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know how big. My name is Lyddy
Speaker 1: jin Kot. As a journalist, I often report on law
Speaker 1: and power. I've written an audiobook about the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: covered the federal trial of a crypto billionaire, and investigated
Speaker 1: the fallout of the legalization of sport's betting. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how throughout American history we've used the law as
Speaker 1: a tool to make our country both more and less.
Speaker 1: Just a few years ago I came into possession of
Speaker 1: a suitcase. It was full of thousands of pages of
Speaker 1: court documents. They were all about a case a prosecutor
Speaker 1: spent years trying to build against a criminal who refused
Speaker 1: to be caught. There was mention of a criminal syndicate
Speaker 1: powerful enough to take on the Italian mafia, an attempted assassination,
Speaker 1: a global manhunt, congressional hearings, international press coverage, a standing
Speaker 1: room only trial. And none of it would have happened
Speaker 1: without a group of ordinary people, people who in time
Speaker 1: would have to make a decision about who to protect
Speaker 1: and who to betray. But that afternoon in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: one of these people was just waiting for a box.
Speaker 1: This is the Chinatown Staying Episode one. Lucky Bird. Court
Speaker 1: documents would later describe the exact contents of each box
Speaker 1: that landed in New York. Twenty small bricks made up
Speaker 1: of white compressed powder, wrapped up in either brown tape
Speaker 1: or duct tape. In one of the packages, the heroin
Speaker 1: was hidden inside these red and white tea boxes that
Speaker 1: had Chinese characters on them, and the other two the
Speaker 1: heroin was hidden among stuffed animals. Now Peter Mtesser and
Speaker 1: the DA could get to work. Step one, take out
Speaker 1: the heroin and replace it with decoy heroin. It was
Speaker 1: made out of wooden blocks, cut and.
Speaker 4: Tape together, except you leave a sample of the heroin
Speaker 4: in there. We'd put the stuffed animals back in. Our
Speaker 4: goal was to get someone opening up that box and
Speaker 4: going through it. That was our goal.
Speaker 1: So when someone on the receiving end looked inside the boxes,
Speaker 1: they should notice nothing weird. Step two, the Feds hit
Speaker 1: thin wires in a transmitter inside each box. Whoever was
Speaker 1: looking through the box would break the wires and that
Speaker 1: would trigger a silent electric signal that would be picked
Speaker 1: up by these special machines in the hands of law enforcement.
Speaker 1: And this receiver had only two signals.
Speaker 4: It was a slow beep you're listening in to like
Speaker 4: a computer almost and you hear the beat beat beeping in.
Speaker 4: When a rapid beep goes beppp beat, that means it's
Speaker 4: been open.
Speaker 1: The dagents set up their trap as fast as they could.
Speaker 1: They didn't want the people who were waiting for the
Speaker 1: packages to get suspicious.
Speaker 4: They know how long it takes from point A to
Speaker 4: point B, so as soon as you get a day
Speaker 4: or two late, you're investiation could be compromised.
Speaker 1: Step three. Each of these boxes had to be dropped
Speaker 1: off at exactly the same time they were to be
Speaker 1: delivered by postal inspectors who were working undercover. Vans full
Speaker 1: of agents were waiting nearby, listening in on their little
Speaker 1: computers and ready to spring into action.
Speaker 4: You have to cover all the different parts of the
Speaker 4: locations because if someone takes the box and runs out
Speaker 4: the door, then we have Heroin on the street.
Speaker 1: On February twenty third, the mail packages, the vans full
Speaker 1: of agents and the undercover postal workers. They were all
Speaker 1: ready to go. Two of the packages were addressed to
Speaker 1: Manhattan's Chinatown and one was going to Brooklyn. Peter and
Speaker 1: the customs agent David Shan followed the two packages that
Speaker 1: were going to Chinatown.
Speaker 4: The thrill of the chase really becomes just it sort
Speaker 4: of takes you over.
Speaker 1: That day, like on any other day, Chinatown was bustling.
Speaker 1: The sidewalks were crowded with vendors selling cucumbers, plants, buck joy,
Speaker 1: dried mushrooms. People were walking shoulder to shoulder on the
Speaker 1: main streets. There were neon signs everywhere saying go this
Speaker 1: way or go that way. And there was always a
Speaker 1: truck somewhere squeezing its way down these narrow streets full
Speaker 1: of fresh wares. That's all to say, Chinatown wasn't an
Speaker 1: easy place to find parking, especially not for a van
Speaker 1: full of non Asian undercover federal agents.
Speaker 6: We were underneath the highway in the hand these from
Speaker 6: the drive war, and that's where we had thirty agents
Speaker 6: all lined up ready to go with shotguns and rifles
Speaker 6: and un davy.
Speaker 1: There were two wired up packages addressed to two apartment
Speaker 1: buildings right next door to each other. So the undercover
Speaker 1: postal inspector buzzed at one address, and then he buzzed
Speaker 1: at the other. No answer. He left behind mail slips.
Speaker 1: Peter and David waited to see what would happen next,
Speaker 1: and waited some more.
Speaker 6: One of the guys from da he took a leak
Speaker 6: in the East River, and believe it or not, two
Speaker 6: sanitation police guys came up to him and said, hey,
Speaker 6: you can't pee in the river.
Speaker 1: David Shean could feel his hopes of catching anyone in
Speaker 1: Chinatown pissing away to Nobody was coming to collect the packages,
Speaker 1: even though their street value was supposed to be huge.
Speaker 1: Maybe someone had tipped them off. The whole operation now
Speaker 1: hinged on the third box, the one that was going
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn.
Speaker 4: We heard the beep go off.
Speaker 1: Peter Mattessa rushed over to the Brooklyn address to meet
Speaker 1: the agents.
Speaker 4: There. We knocked on the door or broke down the door.
Speaker 4: There's a package open. The stuffed animals were out.
Speaker 1: Peter found himself face to face with a thirty eight
Speaker 1: year old woman, a mother of two, an accountant at
Speaker 1: a bank. Peter explained she was under arrest.
Speaker 4: Read her rights you know in Cantonese, Amandarin. I forgot
Speaker 4: exactly which one it was. She was very upset, crying,
Speaker 4: and your goal is to try to calm the situation
Speaker 4: down as soon as you can and then hopefully move
Speaker 4: up the ladder.
Speaker 1: By move up the ladder, Peter means this woman might
Speaker 1: have information that would help the FEDS figure out who's
Speaker 1: in charge of importing the heroine. The first rung of
Speaker 1: the ladder was right here in this house. Peter needed
Speaker 1: to know the box's next destination, and to find that out,
Speaker 1: she needed this woman to act totally normal. She needed
Speaker 1: to call whoever she was going to call after the
Speaker 1: box's arrival. They needed her to go from being an
Speaker 1: accomplice to being a cooperating witness quickly.
Speaker 4: I tell her the a maund of Heroin here, you're
Speaker 4: facing ten years to life because it's so much Harowin.
Speaker 4: This is your time to help out yourself. We can't
Speaker 4: guarantee you how much jail time you do, but it'll
Speaker 4: be brought to the attention of the judges. Will know
Speaker 4: how much you've helped out in this case. And it's
Speaker 4: a courageous decision to make. We try to tell them
Speaker 4: we think it's the right one to make to help us,
Speaker 4: and we help you.
Speaker 1: But the person this woman was going to call was
Speaker 1: her friend. If she cooperated, that would mean betraying her friend.
Speaker 1: But if she didn't cooperate, she might not see her
Speaker 1: two children grow up. She had to make an impossible decision.
Speaker 1: As the agents hovered over her, the clock was ticking.
Speaker 1: This woman agreed to cooperate. Her name is in the
Speaker 1: court documents, but she never responded to her real quest
Speaker 1: for an interview. Anyway, her name's not that important to
Speaker 1: the story. What's important is the chain of events she
Speaker 1: set off by giving the federal agents the name of
Speaker 1: her contact. Over the next few days, agents were arresting
Speaker 1: moms like her all over in New York City.
Speaker 4: It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
Speaker 4: like that. Really, Basically, you're stay at home moms. We're
Speaker 4: picking up these lodge amounts at heroin, and I'm sure
Speaker 4: they knew it was drugs.
Speaker 1: It turned out that all of these women, women who
Speaker 1: received packages of heroin sent to their homes, onto each
Speaker 1: other from playing Mahjong Majong is a game of luck
Speaker 1: and skill. You play with domino like tiles instead of
Speaker 1: with cards. They have different designs on them, stones, bamboos, dragons,
Speaker 1: and the goal is to end up with four pairs
Speaker 1: of three tiles and one pair of two tiles. That's
Speaker 1: called the eyes. Different hands are with different amounts of points.
Speaker 1: There were Majong parlors all over Chinatown. These are places
Speaker 1: where people could play for a bit of money or
Speaker 1: a lot of money. The parlors were a place to
Speaker 1: catch up with old friends and make new ones. But
Speaker 1: now many of these friends were under arrest and they
Speaker 1: were being forced to turn on one another. Customs agent
Speaker 1: David Shean was doing a lot of that forcing.
Speaker 6: We're going to seize all your assets, we're gonna take
Speaker 6: all your kids away from you, and you're going to
Speaker 6: go to jail, and they're going to go to force
Speaker 6: the care and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: You know you're doing that because you really need their
Speaker 1: help to get to the person at the top.
Speaker 6: I guess absolutely, Yeah, you need somebody, and you know
Speaker 6: you need more than one person to cooperate.
Speaker 1: Because you need it to be cooperated. Yes, after I
Speaker 1: got that suitcase full of court documents on the Chinatown
Speaker 1: drug trials, I realized I need help from someone who
Speaker 1: spoke Cantonese. That's the language that's spoken by many of
Speaker 1: the people in the documents.
Speaker 5: My name is Shu yu Wang. I'm a practicing attorney
Speaker 5: in the city in New York.
Speaker 1: I met she You through a friend of a friend.
Speaker 1: We met up at a bar and I told her
Speaker 1: all about the Chinatown case.
Speaker 5: It was a very interesting story to me personally. I
Speaker 5: came from the Cantonese area in China, which is like
Speaker 5: super close to Hong Kong, where a lot of those
Speaker 5: people in the story were originally from. My major in
Speaker 5: college was actually journalism, so I sort of like opened
Speaker 5: up a part of my brain.
Speaker 1: So she joined me in reporting out this story. We
Speaker 1: went over court documents together, and we visited Chinatown together
Speaker 1: for months and months.
Speaker 7: Loved.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: For most of the time that I've lived in New York,
Speaker 1: Chinatown's been a place where I'd get dinner or drinks
Speaker 1: with friends. For sure, you was a neighborhood where she
Speaker 1: got groceries.
Speaker 5: You are certain ingredients that's a rare fine in a
Speaker 5: non Chinese grocery stores, like chicken feet. There are like
Speaker 5: certain things that I can only get here at a
Speaker 5: good price.
Speaker 1: But we've been learning that Chinatown's a place with one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years of history.
Speaker 7: So Chinatowns today we think of as these conturist destinations,
Speaker 7: and you know, they're fun places to go to get
Speaker 7: you know, trash keys or jim sum and have kind
Speaker 7: of a colorful urban experience or you know, a fun
Speaker 7: meal or something. But the reason Chinatowns exist in the
Speaker 7: first place is really about a history of racial segregation.
Speaker 1: That's Ellen Wu. She teaches history at Indiana University, Bloomington,
Speaker 1: and she talked to us about how Chinatowns arose in
Speaker 1: American cities in the face of anti Asian laws and violence.
Speaker 1: US immigration laws also helped create Chinatowns, especially a law
Speaker 1: called the Chinese Exclusion Act, which passed in eighteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Another historian we spoke to is Michael Luo. She's an
Speaker 1: editor at The New Yorker and he wrote a book
Speaker 1: on Chinese immigration called Strangers in the Land.
Speaker 8: It was the Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Field,
Speaker 8: who wrote the opinion, referred to the Chinese as strangers
Speaker 8: in the land, talking about how they could never assimilate
Speaker 8: with our people. And I feel like the stranger label
Speaker 8: remains imprinted on Asian Americans today.
Speaker 1: She says she's felt what Michael Lewo was describing, especially
Speaker 1: when she first moved to the US for law school.
Speaker 5: So it was kind of like surprised at how friendly
Speaker 5: people were surrounding me. But also today I'm sensing like
Speaker 5: your people out there just kind of like, oh, you're different,
Speaker 5: and you can tell by their gestures, by their facial expressions,
Speaker 5: things like that.
Speaker 1: As a white person, I've never experienced that, but I
Speaker 1: do know how bad it feels to be viewed as
Speaker 1: a stranger. My family moved to the US from Poland
Speaker 1: when I was eight. My English was kind of weird,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to fit in so badly. When I
Speaker 1: look at pictures of myself, it's embarrassing. I was like
Speaker 1: a parody of what I thought an American kid was
Speaker 1: supposed to look like. And the more she you and
Speaker 1: I looked into this Chinatown case, the more we came
Speaker 1: to see that it's also about someone who was trying,
Speaker 1: in their own way, to feel like they belonged.
Speaker 2: You can listen to the rest of this episode of
Speaker 2: The Chinatown Sting and the full series wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts.