Eat a Bowl of Tea

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of sexual assault and intimate partner violence, as well as anti-Chinese racism.

Ben Loy, a Chinese American immigrant, wakes up in his tiny New York apartment next to his new wife, Mei Oi. He begins kissing her passionately but is soon filled with a sense of dread and stops. Mei wonders why he has stopped making love to her like he did in the first weeks of their marriage. Ben realizes the buzzing sound is the doorbell. At the door is a young American sex worker who he has seen many times in the past. He points to his wife’s underwear hanging in the kitchen and tells her to leave.

Several months earlier, Ben Loy’s father, Wah Gay, sits with his friends in the Money Come clubhouse, which he owns. The Money Come clubhouse has become a refuge for Chinatown’s bachelor community, including Wah Gay’s friend Lee Gong, who came to the US with him as a teenager and was his first roommate. In his twenties, Lee Gong went back to China briefly to get married; his daughter Mei Oi was born shortly after he returned to the US.