Milwaukee’s Chinese Laundry Era, Remembered And Ready For Pickup

For over a century, Milwaukee trusted us with its dirty laundry.

By the 1940s, Milwaukee was home to 78 Chinese hand laundries. Each was owned and operated by a family – fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, hired help. The hours, marathon. The work, intense. Each family found a place in the industrialized engine of Milwaukee, firing on all cylinders.

My mother was born in 1945 in Los Angeles, one of nine. Our family business was the Mandarin Laundry, serving clients like restaurants and hotels. As children, my mother, aunts and uncles were woven into the labor force, with resulting opportunity yielding harvest throughout our family tree.

Like my grandfather, the Mandarin Laundry was just a memory by the time I was born in 1984. Times had changed. Washers and dryers had be