The Gold Mountain Coat

In her short story, "The Gold Mountain Coat", Judy Fong-Bates describes the tensions of immigrate life in Canada in the 1950's. There were two Chinese families and a restaurant in a small town in Ontario, and the author was the only Chinese child there. Her father was managing a hand laundry and the other Chinese father, Sam Sing, and his sons, Ken and John, were running a Chinese restaurant. Sam was grim, traciturn, and stingy; therefore, he had never closed the restaurant for five years, and these two sons were sharing one coat. John wanted to bring his wife, son, and daughter, who were still in Cina, over to Canada, and he made it after several years. Sam, then, permitted his sons to close the restaurant for a half-day because they had to go to the airport to pick the family up. At the same time, the sons noticed that they needed another coat in such a  cold weather, so they decided to convince Sam to buy a new coat on Friday, which business was usually good. When they talked to Sam about the coat with a glass of whisky, his face turned harden; yet, Ken blurted out it was necessary for John's son. Because of this smoothing over, Sam permitted the request.