Too much caffiene from endless cups of joe and way too many packs of Marlboros over the years ate away at his scrawny musculature, shrivelling an already skinny man even skinnier. The effect is positively skeletal. His legendary vanity a mere shell of what once was, when as family jokes go decades ago, a younger Miu Wa caught him in front of the mirror meticulously blow-drying and primping his Vitalised side part, caterwauling, "You are so beautiful...to me, can't you see..." even ornerier than Joe Cocker.
Looking at the scarecrow in front of me now, it is painful to conjure up those images of the Chinese Tony Manero who used strut about Argyle Street sans paintcans as Hip Sing, betting the ponies and clacking the mah jong tiles. Of him playing the swank Playboy Club Keyholder trying to emulate the lothario alongside the notorious black sheep of the family, Uncle Chuck. Or to watch the man scootering about in his Chevy Vega, barely negotiating the old ninety-degree-angled S-turn on Lake Shore Drive en route to Chinatown proper with family crammed in the combustible back.
Sure, every Christmas after waiting tables at Tin Lung every night six days a week, he deemed to herd the brood of his nieces and nephews, all five of us, downtown on the El into Woolworths or Montgomery Ward for our annual pick of model battleships or the latest Barbie (Only one gift per kid, though so as not to spoil our pampered Americanized asses). But that was then.
He is sixty years old, fifteen years younger than his older brother who looks prosperous.