For many Chinese, it's good to be 'home'

New York - Andy Wu stepped off the Long Lucky Transportation bus on Forsyth Street in Manhattan and instantly was at home in the city where he never lived.

Wu, 58, of Montville, a table-gambling supervisor at Mohegan Sun, stopped at the first open-air vegetable market he came to on Christie Street to point out the produce: yard-long beans, bitter melons, edible gourds and root vegetables, along with the more recognizable heads of lettuce and cabbage, and mounds of grapes, apples and pears.

This wasn't a grocery shopping trip for Wu, so he passed by the bargains as others crowded around the cardboard and wooden bins. Rounding the corner at a quick, city pace, Wu pointed out a narrow multistory office building placarded with colorful signs in Chinese. Here were doctors' offices, a dentist, lawyers, travel agencies, an insurance office and a child care service.

"My lawyer is in this building," he said.

At another corner, a street vendor handed Wu a flier printed in black and white Chinese characters - except for the large-print dollar signs - advertising deals for turning in old cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices for new ones and a buy-one, get-one-free video game offer.

While Wu usually goes to New York for day trips, thousands of eastern Connecticut Chinese residents make a weekly pattern of working five days at one of the region's two casinos and riding various buses to New York on their days off to stay with family and friends, to shop and to socialize.

Can Ren Li opened the bus company in 2007 with help from Montville businessman John Wong. The bus offers no-frills, low-cost transportation - $20 to $22 round-trip for a ticket good for three days. Onboard TV screens show zany Chinese comedies and game shows - pies in the face, balancing games over water, balloons popping in clothing.

The bus runs seven days a week, picking up passengers first in Norwich and then at the Trading Cove parking lot at Mohegan Sun and delivering them to Chinatown Manhattan and Chinatown Brooklyn.

On Elizabeth Street, Wu turned into the Po Wing Hong Market, whose exterior façade could be lost in a disharmonious streetscape of stores, businesses and salons. Inside, the grocery store is a busy hub. Wu was bringing a message of greeting from Wong for owner Patrick Po Shun Ng, a friend and business consultant. Ng was a partner in the opening of a Chinese supermarket on Hamilton Avenue in Norwich several years ago, but left after a dispute with a partner.

Ng's son, Frank Ng, offered a tour of the Po Wing Hong Market's narrow aisles, its shelves packed with Chinese specialty foods and general items. At the front, the seafood section seemed to be from a different world. Huge glass jars contained solid dried sea scallops and bay scallops. At a cost of $48 per pound for the large ones and $34 for the smaller, scallops are scooped from a jar by a grocery store employee who then bags and weighs them.

Wu didn't buy anything this October day, but said he sometimes buys the dried shrimp, oysters and mushrooms.

"You soak it in water for a while and it becomes soft, and you use it in soups and stir-fry. It's sweet," he said.

A resident of the United States for the past 37 years, Wu still eats almost exclusively Chinese food. One of his favorite spots in Manhattan Chinatown is Xo Kitchen on Hester Street, where the seven-page menu offers jellyfish with preserved duck egg and ginger and noodle soup with duck feet.

Wu and his party ordered the more mundane selection of lo mein with pork, beef chow fun with wide egg noodles, pan fried pork dumplings and sticky rice with pork wrapped in lotus leaf, and bottomless cups of fresh, hot tea.

Wu had a few errands to run but stopped at his bank on Canal Street and bought a Chinese newspaper and a phone card. It's cheaper to call China using a phone card, he said.

From Hong Kong to New London

Wu was born in mainland China in 1950, just after the Communist takeover. There were no doctors, he said. He brushed his teeth with a finger dipped in salt. Everyone was hungry.

When he was 12 his mother took him and his sister to hide beneath the cargo in a small boat headed for Hong Kong. There, the family worked as restaurant servers.

Wu came to New London in 1972, sponsored by an uncle. He worked at his cousin's restaurant, Jade Garden in Waterford, for two years and hired a youth to help him learn enough English to take his driver's test.

In 1978 he traveled back to Hong Kong to get married, and his son, David, was born. When the family returned to Connecticut, Wu became an American citizen, changed his first name to Andy and used his given name, Sik Kit, as his middle name.

Now divorced with two sons, Wu has owned three local restaurants, but said he was stretched too thin and "lost everything" in the early 1990s. He worked menial jobs day and night until the Mohegan Sun Casino opened in 1996. He started as a dealer and became a supervisor in 2001. He tries to visit Hong Kong every year.

Wu's oldest son, David, earned a degree in pharmacy at the University of Connecticut and is the pharmacist at the Jewett City Rite Aid. His younger son, Michael, is in his fifth year of medical school at the University of Rochester in New York.

"I always tell my kids to go to school and don't stop until you finish," he said. "I'm proud of them. I don't want them to have a hard life."

After lunch on the warm, early October afternoon in Chinatown, Wu negotiated past more street vendors on his way to Columbus Park. There, small groups of middle-aged and elderly people sat at tables, playing Chinese chess or card games. Spectators surrounded the players.

Wu tucked his Chinese newspaper into his backpack and took a final break at the Lucky King Bakery on Grand Street to buy pastries for the three-hour bus ride back to Montville.

The bus was there about a half hour before the scheduled 6 p.m. departure. Li, the owner of the bus company, helped riders stow their overnight bags in the luggage compartment while many passengers stored groceries and fresh vegetables and fruit on the overhead shelves above the seats for the ride back to Connecticut.

c.bessette@theday.com