When it’s Moon Festival time in Chinatown, the tongs come out to collect.
The traditional Chinese festival, celebrated around the 15th Day of the eighth month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar is a major Chinatown celebration. The festival has been celebrated by the Chinese for as long as anyone can remember. It commemorates, some say, Chang O or (Chang Er depending on the source), who was believed to have taken a pill of immortality and fled to the moon to escape from the pursuit of her husband, a skilled archer-guard of the emperor.
Chang O can be seen on the brightest day of the autumn moon — i.e., the ides of the eighth month — Chicken month.
As America becomes more integrated with Chinese, the festival will likely grow in popularity. Who knows, maybe soon you’ll find a Moon Festival in your home town. If you do, there are some things you should know.
In New York City, the On Leong Tong controls the Chinese pastry business, which makes the moon cakes that are a traditional part of the festival.
The On Leong Tong is a fraternal or business organization along the lines of the Elks or the Rotary to westerners. Chinese businessmen join the tong for the same reasons Americans do — to network and make friends. That part of the tong is not mysterious, malevolent or corrupt.
There is, of course, more to the story. The On Leong Tong is associated with a notorious street gang called the Ghost Shadows, of which there are several factions: the Mott Street Ghost Shadows, the Bayard Street faction and the Ghost Shadows which run Baxter and upper Mott Street past Canal.
For many years the dailo dai, or “Big big brother” of the On Leong Tong was Wing Young Chan, aka Big Head, a Chinese immigrant who had worked his way up through the ranks of the On Leong Tong from a dishwasher to head the On Leong Merchant’s Association. Until he was taken down in a 1994 federal racketeering case, Chan held court at the popular 400-seat Harmony Palace on Mott Street, which was famous in Chinatown for the best dim sum and the most beautiful Chinese pop singers in New York City. He was suspected of ordering or taking part in several homicides of disloyal gang members and Chan had come to the attention of federal authorities for his role in the tong’s drug and immigrant-smuggling schemes.
The On Leong Tong was divided up much the same way the Italian mobs were, with various factions, or families, further subdivided into crews. Street gangs are made up of members who follow their own dailo, the equivalent of an Italian capo. The dailo’s power varies according to the gang he is affiliated with, how many members he controls and where he ranks with respect to the tong, or elder Chinese businessmen with Asian connections, both legal and illegal.
Chan’s street dailos were Gumpie (Jian Lee) who ran the Mott Street Shadows, Robin and Robert Chee who controlled the very powerful and deadly Bayard faction and Crooked Tooth (Ah Cher), who ran the working houses.
The sailos, or little brothers, would use the Moon Festival as a chance to make money, selling a mooncake to a restaurant for $108.
Why $108? Because that was “lucky money,” the Chinese version of extortion. In lucky money the sum of the digits must equal 9.
Only the Ghost Shadows actually sell mooncakes. The other gangs in New York City’s Chinatown — the Flying Dragons of Pell Street, the Tung On (Tsiung Tsing Tong), the Green Dragons of Elmhurst, Queens, the White Tigers of Flushing and the Brooklyn-based Gold Star would sell small orange tree plants for $108.
The payment of lucky money is an accepted and acceptable part of the Chinese culture. Even the businesses who are not being shaken down on a regular basis fully expect to have a sailo come in during Moon Festival to collect lucky money.
So, in honor of Chang O, the On Leong Tong and lucky money, here’s hoping you have a happy and safe Moon Festival. And if a sailo comes in your place carrying a cake filled with sesame seeds, ground lotus seeds and duck eggs, it would be very unlucky indeed if you did not buy it.