To me, this book seems to have been written from a great distance. When are caucasian writers going to stop calling themselves "bold" and "daring" when they "lift the curtain" on Chinatown? Stop all the self-congratulation. This is a book written from the point of view of an OUTSIDER, which is okay, but let's call it what it is. Read "The New Chinatown" by Peter Kwong or "Born to Kill" by T.J. English, both books about the Asian community written with compassion and understanding.

I live near New York's Chinatown and walk through it almost daily. I'm intrigued by the subject of a society that IS very much closed from the rest of America.

This book answers a lot of my questions and is very entertaining and informative; however, it obviously went through several re-writes. Some paragraphs seem stuffed in without any rhyme or reason to them. Confusing. Sentences don't connect with each other.

I hope this book is reprinted with more-recent facts.