In 1996, following a complaint from the 318 Union, the National Labor Relations Board also awarded Silver Palace workers $1.1 million in back pay. “There was a breakthrough-it created a big change in Chinatown.” The furor caught the attention of the New York attorney general’s office, which after an investigation announced that it would prosecute Jing Fong for breaking multiple labor laws unless its workers were paid back wages totaling $1.1 million. Students joined in, launching a week-long hunger strike on the sixth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The CSWA helped Deng sue the restaurant, while the union began a protest that dragged into the summer. When a coworker, Sheng Gang Deng, complained about the policy, he was fired. Workers earned less than a dollar an hour before gratuities, yet managers would take a hefty cut of the tips. Supporting them was John Chen, then a Jing Fong busboy, who told me the workplace was akin to a “slave system.” Eleven-hour workdays were common on holidays like Thanksgiving, he pulled shifts as long as 14 hours. Weeks later, workers began to protest Jing Fong, which had recently opened next door to the now-shuttered Silver Palace.

Backed by the two organizations, Silver Palace workers would continue clashing with management, defeating a seven-month lockout in 1994, until the restaurant filed for bankruptcy in January 1995-which activists saw as a move orchestrated by Chinatown’s commercial establishment to bust the stubborn union. At the same time, workers founded the Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA), a group to provide Chinese-speaking members with support and resources for militant labor activism. The workers responded by forming the 318 Restaurant Workers Union, named after the date they were fired, and picketing the restaurant for months, carrying coffins outside to scare diners, until they were hired back. One might trace the current arc of activism to 1980, when Silver Palace, a dim sum parlor in a cavernous Bowery building owned by Alex Chu’s father, Joseph Chu, fired workers for refusing to hand over their tips to management. Like its garment industry, the history of Chinatown’s restaurant business is one of bosses disregarding labor laws and workers organizing to resist. Jing Fong’s demise deals a blow to Chinatown’s organized labor, which is desperate to defend the neighborhood against a gentry that’s aching to gild it and hollow it out. But the restaurant stands out as a symbol of collective survival in an immigrant community struggling to stay put. Jing Fong joins as many as 4,500 other eateries that have permanently closed in New York City since the pandemic began-dozens in Chinatown alone. “It’s not that we don’t want to try to keep fighting and try to keep surviving, but the hole is too big. He blamed the government, telling me that he got a single loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, much of which he gave to the Chus to cover the building’s $350,000 property tax bill, which keeps rising even though the building is sitting virtually unused. Per agreement, in addition to rent, the Chus were entitled to a share of Jing Fong’s profits, but the restaurant’s disastrous year meant his landlords were “hurting too,” Lam said. He said sales were down nearly 85 percent since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic-a multimillion-dollar shortfall. Truman Lam, Jing Fong’s third-generation owner, confirmed this. In an e-mailed statement, Jonathan Chu said the restaurant “hasn’t paid a dime” of its base rent in 12 months, which has remained fixed since 1993. The rally was but the first step in this fight to save Jing Fong and save the Chinatown economy.” He called for government intervention, and said, “For workers, this is not a done deal.”

Nelson Mar, the president of the 318 Restaurant Workers Union, which represents Jing Fong’s dining room staff, told me, “We are going to fight the closure with the demands that we have put forward.

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