Description of a gong si fong

The men remember the difficult search for employment, long hours of work, the small, crowded rooms where they lived with their cousins, two or three beds nailed one above another, like shelves, onto the walls.  They remember periods when the room was so crowded that even those beds had to be used in shifts by the men going back and forth to work.  They remember hauling crates from the streets of Chinatown up to the rooms to use as tables and cabinets, and where there was no gas or electricity for heating and cooking, the crates were used as firewood...

At the end of the year, men living in the room would gather together to total their expenses and divide them.  Some of the funds were used to keep a bed open in the room constantly for those who had no work.  Another allotment was spent to keep a sack of rice in the room for the unemployed men...

From "Chinatown," in The Chinese Americans by Milton Meltzer (1980)