"Which is good!"
"Not for a renter, though. It's already too expensive to live here. I mean, look at all the homeless in the Tenderloin."
"You will always have bums. In every society, there are winners and losers. Those bums should be put in work camps and made to be productive."
We were standing in a two-story extension Hung was adding to his home. In the main house, Hung's aging parents sat mostly in silence on matching recliners. The Mexican construction crew was out to lunch.
It is estimated that nearly 20% of the homes being sold in the Bay Area are being snatched up by foreign buyers, paying cash, with about half of them Chinese. In Palo Alto, one of the toniest Bay Area cities, Chinese alone are responsible for more than a quarter of real estate sales. In adjacent Los Altos, the most expensive housing market in the entire country, Chinese buyers don't shy away from mansions that cost several million dollars, and instead of haggling down, they often pay more than the list price, sometimes six-figure more, just to get what they want. Sometimes a Chinese buyer would buy without having seen the property in person, and he might leave his new home empty for months after purchase. In China, the land under each house cannot be owned outright but only leased from the government for 70 years, with terms for renewal uncertain, and it wasn't so long ago that private property was seen as the ultimate evil. To protect their wealth, then, the richest Chinese are buying in California. Ken DeLeon advertises in China, then guides visiting Chinese on a tour to inspect palatial homes. To move them around, he has bought not just a Mercedes van but a plane, on which two number 8's in Chinese have been affixed for luck. To appeal to Chinese buyers, realtors have also asked municipalities to remove the number four from certain addresses. In Chinese, four sounds like death.
When the Chinese first came to California in the mid 19th century, they weren't so feted. Though welcomed by white bosses for their cheap labor, they were despised by the white working class for taking away jobs. Groups such as the Anti-Coolie Association and the Supreme Order of the Caucasians sprung up to oppose the Chinese presence. Organized labor was their sworn enemy. In 1887, Denis Kearney of the California's Workingmen's Party gave this address:
"Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty. Failing in that, they have rallied under the banner of the millionaire, the banker and the land monopolist, the railroad king and the false politician, to effect their purpose.
["] They have seized upon the government by bribery and corruption. They have made speculation and public robbery a science. The have loaded the nation, the state, the county, and the city with debt. They have stolen the public lands. They have grasped all to themselves, and by their unprincipled greed brought a crisis of unparalleled distress ["]
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