We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent.
This is such a touching story of coincidence and a good reminder that no matter how bad things get, we all just crave a connection with others. I'm glad that they could form a friendship in such harsh circumstances.
Oral history is a method of conducting historical research through recorded interviews between a narrator with personal experience of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of adding to the historical record.
Tin Chin and Mo Lin were inseparable at the homeless shelter. But one of the men wasn’t who he seemed to be.
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On his first night at the Brooklyn homeless shelter, Tin Chin met his best friend.
Estranged from his family, Mr. Chin was alone, stewing in anger and shame over all he had lost and how low he had fallen. The Chinatown restaurants he frequented with his wife and daughter, the elementary school drop-off routine, the friendly neighbors in Queens — these had been the trappings of a middle-class life that once seemed secure. A college graduate and former civil servant, Mr. Chin had to learn his city anew, and now — he could still hardly believe it — as a homeless person.
On that evening in 2012 in the Barbara Kleiman Residence in East Williamsburg, he saw only one other Chinese person in the room. The man was skinny, his ill-fitting clothes hanging loosely on his frame. Mr. Chin sized him up with an expert eye: an immigrant, most likely from Fujian Province; no family, no English, no documents.
The other man was named Mo Lin. Mr. Chin sensed that if they had met just a few years earlier, they would have had very little in common. “At the beginning, I can’t say I liked him,” he said. “But we are the two Chinese people in the shelter, so we talk.”
Mr. Chin possessed little more than his closely guarded secrets, including a criminal record that haunted him. They ran through his mind on a loop, but he divulged them to no one, certainly not this new acquaintance, and instead shared his story in broad strokes — he was born in Hong Kong and had grown up in New York and was new to being homeless.
Mr. Lin was hesitant and didn’t say much. It would be a while before he described his years scraping by in New York. He was indeed undocumented, and although he had worked in innumerable Chinatown kitchens, his poor health had long ago made steady work impossible, and he looked far older than his 46 years. He spent his days shuffling along the streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk, watching staticky TV in threadbare Fujianese community centers.
But the men soon began spending so much time together — always chatting in the shelter, strolling downtown streets, sharing plates of noodles — that acquaintances assumed they were family.
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“We called them brothers,” said Mireille Massac, a Brooklyn food bank organizer who spent time with them. “He took care of Mo. What Mo needed, it went through Tin.”
Friendships can be hard to memorialize — relatives, partners, children often take pride of place. But a friendship can be the defining bond in a person’s life, offering a kinship that family cannot, a refuge through lonely, hungry days.
And can a friendship offer redemption for your worst mistakes? A decade after their first night in the shelter, Mr. Chin wonders about that.
A Guide to Building and Nurturing Friendships
Friendships are an essential ingredient in a happy life. Here’s how to give them the care and attention they deserve.
- How does one make meaningful friendships and connections as an adult? Here are some suggestions and useful tools.
- The pandemic has made everything harder, including making new friends. But it can also be an opportunity to be more intentional about the ones we keep.
- All relationships require some work. For your friendships to thrive, focus on your listening skills, compassion and communication.
- It’s quite common for people to feel jealousy or envy toward their friends. Luckily, there are ways to turn those emotions into a growing opportunity.
- Being a good friend means offering your support in times of need. Just remember: Sometimes less is better than more.
The “Insignificant” Details That Bring Historical Writing Alive
As a writer, the key is not so much assembling reams and reams of material, but finding the details that make a period or situation vivid for you and, eventually, for the reader – those few facts which make a sprawling and multi-faceted topic specific enough to relate to and empathise with. - The ConversationGenerous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability - a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living