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Xiang Chen didn’t wish to work on Sunday. She was frightened.
Her household’s Chinese language restaurant, Spicy Duck Wang La Ya, is positioned on West Garvey Avenue only a few doorways down from Star Ballroom Dance Studio, the location of the mass capturing that left 10 lifeless and 10 others injured in Monterey Park on Saturday evening.
“I really feel so scared,” stated Chen, who defined that dance instructors on the studio would commonly decide up meals from the restaurant, the place the spicy duck necks, a specialty, glisten behind glass in a show case.
However Chen, a restaurant server, felt obligated to be there, partially due to a Lunar New 12 months custom. In Chinese language and different Asian cultures, the vacation, whose festivities started on Saturday, is marked with the bestowing of purple envelopes stuffed with money. And the custom extends to eating places, with house owners sometimes doing the giving to staff.
So Chen made her approach to Spicy Duck Wang La Ya, within the Taipei Heart strip mall, and delivered a purple envelope to the restaurant’s chef.
“We do it yearly,” she stated.
Chen wasn’t alone. Proprietors and workers at eateries on and round West Garvey Avenue, which was host to a big Lunar New 12 months’s Eve celebration on Saturday, stated that the purple envelope custom had been upheld over the weekend regardless of the pall forged by the mass capturing.
It made for an odd mixture of sentiment. Magnanimity and sorrow. Gratitude and worry.
“All people was very glad” on Saturday, stated Annie Li, a server at Longten Cafe, additionally within the Taipei Heart. However by the tip of her shift on Sunday afternoon, she was anxious to go house. “Individuals are actually scared.”
The Taipei Heart on West Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park is house to Spicy Duck Wang La Ya, left, and Longten Cafe, proper.
(Daniel Miller / Los Angeles Occasions)
Roger Yeh, proprietor of MoMo Bakery, additionally on Garvey, had deliberate to distribute purple envelopes to his staff on Saturday, however was discouraged by the crowds that crammed his institution, which is understood for its savory pork pastries.
“It was so packed,” stated Yeh. “I didn’t need folks to see there was cash.”
After he realized of the capturing, Yeh, who lives in Palos Verdes, weighed whether or not to return to his Taiwanese bakery on Sunday handy out the envelopes. “I may have given it to them” on Monday, he stated. “However I believed perhaps [Sunday] is healthier.”
Yeh was glad he carried on the custom Sunday.
“It’s unusual,” stated Yeh, who immigrated to the Southland from Taiwan in 1981. “It’s a combined feeling — my sentiment goes up and down.”
A view of the doorway to the Star Dance Studio Ballroom in Monterey Park.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)
Along with the odd tenor of the reward giving, staff and operators on the eateries close to the location of the capturing contended with a sluggish enterprise day. Usually, servers and others stated, Lunar New 12 months makes for a day of brisk gross sales. However after the capturing, patrons stayed away from institutions that had counted on being thronged.
“My mates advised me they’re scared to return to Monterey Park,” stated Chen.
She famous that pig’s ft would usually be a giant vendor on Lunar New 12 months — the animal is taken into account fortunate in Chinese language tradition — however “not in the present day.”
It was quiet at close by A.B.C. Cafe, a restaurant on North Garfield Avenue. Round dinnertime, a employee snipped the guidelines of inexperienced beans with red-handled kitchen shears in an in any other case unoccupied part of the eatery. Diners crammed solely two tables.
Sunday had been “very, very sluggish,” in response to a server at A.B.C. who declined to present her title. “My boss is just not right here,” she apologized.
Some folks nonetheless ventured out for his or her scheduled Lunar New 12 months celebrations. Owen Wang stated he and his spouse went ahead with a deliberate dinner at Longten Cafe as a result of he wished to assist the restaurant. Wang stated he had come for the dried beef noodles, whereas his spouse, Trang Lai, defined that she had wished the Korean-style beef steak.
Usually, he stated, the restaurant, a Hong Kong-style cafe, can be “packed” on Lunar New 12 months.
“It must be very busy and loud,” he stated outdoors the restaurant, below a darkening sky that moments earlier had been a putting shade of cantaloupe. As a substitute, their meal on Sunday had been subdued, with solely a handful of different patrons eating there. Nonetheless, Wang stated, “We liked it.”
Yeh stated that MoMo Bakery had introduced in simply one-third of the enterprise it could have in any other case executed. It was somewhat after 6 p.m. as he sat at a desk towards the rear of the institution making an attempt to make sense of the capturing.
“It’s a quiet group,” stated Yeh, who additionally owns a MoMo Bakery in Alhambra. “Individuals listed here are peaceable.”
All of the sudden, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his aides swept into the bakery through the rear entrance. Alerted to the presence of the politician, Yeh’s jaw dropped. “I’m a Republican,” he stated, giving a wry smile.
He hurried to introduce himself to Newsom, who ordered a inexperienced tea, Yeh stated. Whereas they chatted amiably and posed for a photograph, a member of Newsom’s small entourage stated he wouldn't be obtainable for an interview with The Occasions.
Earlier than lengthy, Newsom departed by way of the bakery’s entrance entrance, and Yeh returned to the desk the place he’d been sitting. He tried as soon as extra to course of his feelings. He was feeling buoyed, however shocked by the encounter.
It was, Yeh stated, a surreal ending to an odd and unhappy day.
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