Source: Mercantile Library Collection

Laundry work was dangerous work involving long laborious days. Usually, a typical day at the laundry started as early as four o'clock in the morning and did not end until the latest hours of the night. Hand laundries required many hours of manual labor. The laundry was washed in large wooden kettles of boiling water, and was then strung over strong wires to dry by a coal stove. Ironing was also done by hand sometimes using cast irons that required heating on the stove.

Often times, entire families lived cramped together in the back of their laundries, using nothing more than mats for beds. Such was the case for Lillie Hong, who came to St. Louis in 1924 at age five to work in her family's laundry and continued to work in the laundry business when she married in 1935. All capable family members, including young children, shared the work in the laundry.

Although hand laundries required hours of continuous work, those like Lillie Hong or the Gee brothers did find time to visit Hop Alley. By the 1950s, most of the 250 to 300 Chinese who lived in St. Louis' Chinatown were relocated to other parts of the city. Yet, many of St. Louis' Chinese residents returned to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year celebration, to play a game of fan tan or Mahjong, and to buy goods at Asia Restaurant.

	Learn about a Chinese holiday at a Chinese New Year Celebration.
	Visit another Chinese business at the Asia Restaurant.