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What's in a name?
*San Francisco's Chinatown, a tourist from the Midwest
was fascinated with all the Chinese restaurants, shops, signs and
banners.
He turned a corner and saw a building with the sign "Moishe Plotnik's
Laundry." "Moishe Plotnik?" he wondered. "How does that fit in
Chinatown?"
So he walked into the shop and saw a fairly standard looking Chinese
laundry.
He could see that the proprietors were clearly aware of the uniqueness
of the name as there were baseball hats, T-shirts and coffee mugs
emblazoned with the logo "Moishe Plotnik's Chinese Laundry".
There were also selections of Chinese souvenirs indicating the name
alone had brought many tourists into the shop.
The tourist selected a coffee cup as a conversatin piece to take back to
his office.
Behind the counter was a smiling old Chinese gentleman who thanked him
for his purchase.
The tourist asked, "Can you explain how this place got a name like
"Moishe Plotnik's Laundry?"
The old man answered: "Ahh . . Everybody asks me that. It's the name of
the owner."
Looking around, the tourist asked, "Is he here?"
"It is me," replies the old man.
"Really? You're Chinese. Ho! w did you ever get a name like Moishe
Plotnik?"
"Is simple", said the old man.
"Many, many years ago when I came to this country, I was standing in
line at the "Documentation Center of Immigration". The man in front of
me was a Jewish gentleman from Poland. The lady at the counter looked at him and said, "What is your name?" He said, "Moishe Plotnk." Then she
looked at me and said, "What is your name?"
I said, "Sam Ting."*
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