Workers try to carry on with Lunar New Year after shooting

Xiang Chen didn’t need to work on Sunday. She was frightened.

Her household’s Chinese language restaurant, Spicy Duck Wang La Ya, is positioned on West Garvey Avenue only a few doorways down from Star Ballroom Dance Studio, the positioning of the mass taking pictures that left 10 useless and 10 others injured in Monterey Park on Saturday evening.

“I really feel so scared,” stated Chen, who defined that dance instructors on the studio would repeatedly choose up meals from the restaurant, the place the spicy duck necks, a specialty, glisten behind glass in a show case.

However Chen, a restaurant server, felt obligated to be there, partially due to a Lunar New Yr custom. In Chinese language and different Asian cultures, the vacation, whose festivities started on Saturday, is marked with the bestowing of crimson envelopes full of money. And the custom extends to eating places, with homeowners usually doing the giving to employees.

So Chen made her method to Spicy Duck Wang La Ya, within the Taipei Middle strip mall, and delivered a crimson envelope to the restaurant’s chef.

“We do it yearly,” she stated.

Chen wasn’t alone. Proprietors and employees at eateries on and round West Garvey Avenue, which was host to a big Lunar New Yr’s Eve celebration on Saturday, stated that the crimson envelope custom had been upheld over the weekend regardless of the pall forged by the mass taking pictures.

It made for an odd mixture of sentiment. Magnanimity and sorrow. Gratitude and worry.

“Everyone was very joyful” on Saturday, stated Annie Li, a server at Longten Cafe, additionally within the Taipei Middle. However by the top of her shift on Sunday afternoon, she was anxious to go residence. “Persons are actually scared.”

The Taipei Middle on West Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park is residence to Spicy Duck Wang La Ya, left, and Longten Cafe, proper.

(Daniel Miller / Los Angeles Instances)

Roger Yeh, proprietor of MoMo Bakery, additionally on Garvey, had deliberate to distribute crimson envelopes to his employees on Saturday, however was discouraged by the crowds that stuffed his institution, which is understood for its savory pork pastries.

“It was so packed,” stated Yeh. “I didn’t need folks to see there was cash.”

After he discovered of the taking pictures, Yeh, who lives in Palos Verdes, weighed whether or not to come back to his Taiwanese bakery on Sunday handy out the envelopes. “I may have given it to them” on Monday, he stated. “However I believed perhaps [Sunday] is best.”

Yeh was glad he carried on the custom Sunday.

“It’s unusual,” stated Yeh, who immigrated to the Southland from Taiwan in 1981. “It’s a combined feeling — my sentiment goes up and down.”

A view of the doorway to the Star Dance Studio Ballroom in Monterey Park.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)

Along with the odd tenor of the reward giving, employees and operators on the eateries close to the positioning of the taking pictures contended with a sluggish enterprise day. Usually, servers and others stated, Lunar New Yr makes for a day of brisk gross sales. However after the taking pictures, patrons stayed away from institutions that had counted on being thronged.

“My buddies instructed me they’re scared to come back to Monterey Park,” stated Chen.

She famous that pig’s ft would usually be an enormous vendor on Lunar New Yr — the animal is taken into account fortunate in Chinese language tradition — however “not at this time.”

It was quiet at close by A.B.C. Cafe, a restaurant on North Garfield Avenue. Round dinnertime, a employee snipped the ideas of inexperienced beans with red-handled kitchen shears in an in any other case unoccupied part of the eatery. Diners stuffed solely two tables.

Sunday had been “very, very sluggish,” based on a server at A.B.C. who declined to offer her title. “My boss just isn’t right here,” she apologized.

Some folks nonetheless ventured out for his or her scheduled Lunar New Yr celebrations. Owen Wang stated he and his spouse went ahead with a deliberate dinner at Longten Cafe as a result of he wished to assist the restaurant. Wang stated he had come for the dried beef noodles, whereas his spouse, Trang Lai, defined that she had wished the Korean-style beef steak.

Usually, he stated, the restaurant, a Hong Kong-style cafe, could be “packed” on Lunar New Yr.

“It needs to be very busy and loud,” he stated outdoors the restaurant, beneath a darkening sky that moments earlier had been a placing shade of cantaloupe. As an alternative, their meal on Sunday had been subdued, with solely a handful of different patrons eating there. Nonetheless, Wang stated, “We beloved it.”

Yeh stated that MoMo Bakery had introduced in simply one-third of the enterprise it could have in any other case carried out. It was just a little after 6 p.m. as he sat at a desk towards the rear of the institution attempting to make sense of the taking pictures.

“It’s a quiet neighborhood,” stated Yeh, who additionally owns a MoMo Bakery in Alhambra. “Individuals listed here are peaceable.”

Immediately, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his aides swept into the bakery through the rear entrance. Alerted to the presence of the politician, Yeh’s jaw dropped. “I’m a Republican,” he stated, giving a wry smile.

He hurried to introduce himself to Newsom, who ordered a inexperienced tea, Yeh stated. Whereas they chatted amiably and posed for {a photograph}, a member of Newsom’s small entourage stated he wouldn’t be out there for an interview with The Instances.

Earlier than lengthy, Newsom departed via the bakery’s entrance entrance, and Yeh returned to the desk the place he’d been sitting. He tried as soon as extra to course of his feelings. He was feeling buoyed, however shocked by the encounter.

It was, Yeh stated, a surreal ending to an odd and unhappy day.