At 11 o'clock on a recent morning, Yuhua Li was cooking in a crowded, two-bedroom apartment he shares with 10 other Chinese immigrants. In the faint light coming through the window, five beds could be seen tightly arranged in the living room. The aroma of hot noodles mixed with the apartment's moldy smell. On the ceiling was an unpainted patch where a smoke detector used to be. Li said the apartment's other smoke detectors didn't work because the batteries long ago died and were never replaced.

Welcome to America's modern−day tenements − the overcrowded, unsanitary, and downright dangerous flophouses that are clustered in the San Gabriel Valley, home to high concentrations of Chinese immigrants. Tenants endure rats, leaks and mold, as well as theft, fighting, and other consequences of cheek−by−jowl living, as landlords rake in rent while flouting housing and safety codes.

Click to take a look inside 122 North Lincoln Ave.

Photo by Yingjie Wang

Local authorities are well aware of the issue. In 2015, the city of Monterey Park even produced a report warning of "unsafe conditions" in the city's "non−permitted boarding houses." Beyond health and crime, the main hazard is fire. Missing or inoperative smoke detectors would fail to warn residents, and overcrowding could prevent them from getting out of the building ahead of the flames. Yet the city has not taken adequate action, being heavily limited by the inspection policies and levying fines that rarely exceeds a few hundred dollars.

Li's residential motel is in 122 N. Lincoln Ave, a 26−unit apartment building. This building, one of hundreds of boarding houses in Monterey Park, with 14 more units being used as residential motels as Li’s, opens a window on the problem − and also on the unseen and complex world of Chinese immigrants in America. More than 30 interviews and hundreds of pages of government records shows how the boarding house industry profits not only from lax government oversight but also from the tightly knit Chinese community, where those who manage to climb a rung or two up the economic ladder often extract money from those who have just arrived. Li, for example, is no mere tenant. He is also a "second−hand landlord" who earns extra cash by subletting his small two-bedroom apartment to his 10 roommates. He also offers to cook for the tenants − $5 per day for what is usually two meals.

Monterey Park Mayor Peter Chan said that such long−standing problems are tough for the city to solve. "If no one reports them, we let it go," he said. "We won't actively hunt those people."

Li meets Boss Wang

Li, who is 59, arrived in America in 2016 on a tourist visa, the same way thousands of Chinese immigrants do. He was living in a rural area in Xi’an Shanxi, in northern China. Li used to be a tourist bus driver but said he got fired after he turned to 50 years old. A friend introduced him to an international "travel agency," which helped him prepare documents and get his U.S. tourist visa. His friend told him that in America he could earn more money washing dishes than he could being a government official in China. Back then, he and his wife could barely make ends meet. He was desperate to find a way to make money.

The driver hired by the "travel agency" took him to the same building he lives in now. Since then, Li has barely left Monterey Park. His first job, washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant a block from his new home, started at 10:30 in the morning and ended at 9:30 at night, with a single one−hour break. When he got his first paycheck, he realized the travel agent had not been lying. It was $1,800, more than four times what he was earning back in China.

In that first month, he said, he didn't mind the work. But starting in the second month, "I felt like it was a dungeon. All I could think about was American dollars." He worked there for five months, "My hands were soaked in the soap water for too long and felt like emery cloth," Li said. "They are not recovered even now."

After he left the restaurant, he invested all the money he had saved up into securing a formal lease from the building's landlord, Curt Wang.

Wang, now a United States citizen, emigrated from Taiwan decades ago. Coming from a prominent family, he invested in real estate and now presides over his empire of real estate companies, including one of the largest non−franchise real estate companies in Southern California, according to their website. Most of his investments are apartment buildings in San Gabriel Valley. Since 1978, Wang has owned at least 18 real-estate investment companies, according to public records, and eight of them are still in operation. One of his companies, Kotai Realty, based in San Gabriel, employs up to 400 agents, according to the manager, Kris Tseng, and the top residential agent, Jennie Lee. Hengbin Wu, who is also a middleman, as Li, in 122 N. Lincoln Ave., said those "second−hand landlords" who rent Wang's apartments call him "Boss Wang."

Wu has been running two boarding house units in the building for eight years. He said in mandarin that because he did not change the structure of the units, the city officials and Wang have never asked him to stop the business.

Between 2012 to 2016, city inspectors have cited 85 violations and issued fines ranging from $250 to $1,000. Records show Wang paid $250 to the city. A recent visit showed little has changed: 15 units were jam−packed with up to 15 beds, walls were moldy, and electrical wire was dangerously exposed − in violation of the city's residential zoning code, the California Health & Safety Code, and the State Building Code.

Wang, in a brief phone interview at his San Gabriel office, says that if anything is amiss in his buildings, it is because his tenants are violating their lease. Wang refused to answer more questions and hung up the phone. He did not respond to an email seeking a follow−up interview.

Who can you call?

Along Monterey Park's main thoroughfares, especially Garvey, Garfield and Atlantic avenues, street poles or store windows are covered with advertisements in Chinese for rooms to rent in residential motels.

From the outside, many of the stucco buildings appear to be in acceptable condition. City inspectors say they rarely see inside the units and only inspect them if they receive complaints. Many newly arrived Chinese immigrants speak little English and fear that inspectors might throw them out of their housing or jeopardize their immigration. So complaints mostly come from neighbors of those boarding houses. Even after city officials get complaints, if the owner refuses to let them enter the building and they have no proof of a violation, the inspection never takes place.

In some cases, city inspectors said they ask tenants to leave building, but they return several days later.

"From the police department's perspective, we know it's prevalent," said Monterey Park police Sgt. Bob Hung, who works in the Community Services Bureau. He said officers report problems to the city's code enforcement division if they observe some obvious ones during calls for service.

Records show police visited 122 N. Lincoln Ave. 85 times and filed 17 criminal cases over the past five years. Most of the calls were related to theft and disturbance complaints.

Monterey Park Fire Chief Scott Haberle said the law does not allow him to inspect residential buildings. For apartment buildings, he said he can only inspect the exterior to ensure a fire extinguisher is in working order. "If they turn those rooms into boarding houses, then they're not filling the report out correctly," he said.

Source: Monterey Park Code Enforcement Division

Last year, the City Council passed an ordinance charging property owners the cost associated with responses by law enforcement, fire, and other public services. According to Chan, the fee is up to $5,000 per day.

Chan said owners often are aware of the problems in their building, but do not address them because it would cost money.

Li and Wu said police officers often visit their building and fire department officials go there at least once a year. Mayor Chan said that the city could shut down all boarding houses, but that would leave tenants without a home.

Chan said a recent case involved eight people living in an apartment, far fewer than a complaint he heard about years ago of 20 to 30 people living in a single−family home. Even though it's still illegal, Chan said, "it's reasonable and acceptable."

Landlords and their middle men

Wang rents his apartments to middlemen, often Chinese immigrants themselves. Then these "second-hand landlords" sublet the apartment to many less fortunate immigrants. According to Wu, Wang charges these middlemen rents that are higher than market prices. For example, Wang rents the two units for $1,650 per month each, and Li rents the apartment he lives in for $1,800 per month. The same floor plan goes for $1,300 a month.

To turn a profit, Li sublets his apartment to Chinese immigrants for $12−$15 a night.

While Wang's tenants are living in those flophouses, he lives in a five−bedroom, three-bathroom house with mountain views on a rambling 17,000−square−foot lot in South Pasadena. According to property records, Curt Wang, and his wife Ana Chen Wang own two houses worth about $1.6 million and $1.8 million in South Pasadena. His commercial properties are worth more than tens of millions of dollars, according to Kris Tseng, a property manager who has worked with Wang since 1983.

A Visit to 122 N. Lincoln Ave.

Li said he is offering his fellow immigrants a bargain. "Even $20 per night" − $600 per month − "is not affordable," he said, speaking in Mandarin.

Indeed, with limited money, many Chinese immigrant workers choose to live in such flophouses. No contract is signed with the middlemen, and rent is paid on a daily basis with no deposit required. Such flexibility is favored by immigrants whose lives are relatively unstable.

It starts in China, where impoverished, often rural people seeking financial opportunity promise to pay up to $60,000 to "travel agencies," which ferry them to the United States. Once here, the immigrants − few of whom speak English or have the legal right to work − are essentially trapped in a world dominated by more established and powerful immigrants who provide them everything from housing to work to legal representation as they seek permanent residency in the United States. Often, this world is bounded by just a few blocks. Immigrants work in restaurants or massage parlors a short walk from the flophouses where they sleep, and then seek immigration aid from lawyers whose offices are in the same neighborhood.

Twenty−three−year−old Xuetang Sun is a tenant in Li's apartment. Sun is from the countryside in Jimo, Shandong. In 2015, Sun paid a travel agency 50,000 yuan (around $7,500) for taking him to America. He desperately wanted to make money and prepare for getting married. In the rural area in China, young adults are expected to get married in their early 20s. But marriage is extremely expensive, especially for men. Women would normally require their husbands−to−be to buy a car and prepare a house in town, which is the basic standard for what is called the "bride price." In second−tier cities in China, the average price for an 860−square−foot apartment is around $300,000. How can a young adult without a college degree or any high−level skills get that much money? That's why, besides elders, many young adults also chose to come to America.

All of the 16 immigrants interviewed for this story said many people put their names on waiting lists for "travel agencies." They dream about grabbing the next chance to go to the U.S. and improve their families' life.

A female masseuse who refused to give her name said that she waited for half a year until the travel agency finally called her. She is from the countryside in Tianjin. She got divorced several years ago. After her 23−year−was admitted to a prestigious college in Tianjin three years ago and her ex−husband refused to provide alimony, she chose to come to America. She has been here four years, and hasn’t gone back to China once. When she misses her daughter, they would video chat on Wechat, a widely used social media application in China.

"At least I can still see a little light in my life here," she said, speaking in Chinese. All her dreams − surviving, supporting her daughter and saving some money for her senior life − can only be achieved here in America.

Lei Ma, who is a driver for an attorney’s office, picks up people from border patrol detention centers and takes them to the boarding houses in Monterey Park. He said most Chinese immigrant workers apply for political asylum, which lets them work legally. But doing so requires a lawyer, which usually costs around $5,000. According to Wu and Ma, who have been in America for years, the money usually comes from usurious loan lenders or close relatives.

It normally takes six months for a political asylum application to be approved and more time to get a Social Security number. While they wait, immigrants are not allowed to work. However, most of them cannot afford to live in America without an income. Many have gone into debt for the 'transportation fee' and their family members in China expect them to send money back.

Without the legal right to work, it is hard to find a job in Los Angeles. Through job agencies, Sun got a job in Oklahoma, which he recently quit. He was now back at 122 N. Lincoln Ave. The lack of money became unbearable, so Sun said he might get another restaurant job even though it is tiring. He doesn’t speak English and is limited to jobs in the Chinese community.

Many Chinese immigrant workers face similar situations. Even if they know their rights are being violated, they do not tell the authorities for fear of losing job opportunities in the Chinese community, the only one that will hire them. Without jobs, immigrants cannot apply for legal status being in America.

Michael Huntley, the former supervisor of the city's code enforcement division, said inspecting boarding houses was a challenge during his five years with the city. "Usually when we go out to a facility where is an illegal residential motel, a lot of the people who are residing there, their English skills are very poor," Huntley said. Because of the lack of communication, issues can remain hidden.

For Sun, the chance to pursue a new life makes up for any problems.

"We don't understand America's laws and policies," Sun said. "Instead of wasting time reporting to the government, I'd rather earn more money."

Yingjie wants to be an investigative journalist and has always been practicing doing investigative reporting. She wants to explore this world and initiate some changes.