On March 16, 2021, eight people died following shootings at three massage parlors in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Six of the victims were Asian women. The shootings became a catalyst for the Stop AAPI Hate movement. Demonstrations against anti-Asian discrimination erupted around the country.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, there have been at least 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents in the United States. Nearly 70 percent of the victims have been women.

There are countless Chinese massage parlors in Chinese enclaves across America, and countless Chinese women working in those parlors. Unlike exchange students with their TOEFL scores, these massage workers typically have only a junior high or high school education. Some may not have come to the US through legal avenues.

In this episode, we interview one of these women, named Coco. Coco left Changle, Fuzhou province, in 2015, when she was 21 years old. She illegally entered the US and came to Flushing, a neighborhood in New York City that is the largest Chinese neighborhood in the US. Life there is hardly distinguishable from life in China. Coco worked in Flushing’s massage parlors for four years.

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Growing up in Changle, Fuzhou

My parents had three girls in a row. They didn’t stop having kids until my brother was born.

I didn’t get into senior high school, so I started working whatever jobs I could—I was a receptionist, then a cashier. I never enjoyed studying, and could never remember what my teachers taught me.

Of the 40 students in my grade, more than 20 of us didn’t go on to senior high. Around 10 or so ended up coming to the United States, including seven or eight boys and two or three girls.

I left China when I was 21, because if I had kept working odd jobs in Fujian, the most I could have made was 3,000 yuan a month. So my parents asked if I wanted to leave the country, and I said okay.

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Age 21 - 23: Illegal entry, service work, paying off debt

We found a rather well-known “snakehead” to smuggle me across the border.

The first leg of the journey was by ship. There were 30 or 40 people smuggled in each batch. The boats were bound for countries bordering the US, and we had hard biscuits and instant noodles for almost every meal on board.

We slept in the ship’s hold. We’d put down some grass mats or a rug and sleep directly on the boards.

After a month on the ship, we arrived in a small country and started trekking over the mountains. The routine was just like going to work: We’d wake up at 8 or 9 in the morning and walk until around 8 at night. If nobody said they were tired, then we just kept going.

Finally, near a Mexican border town, we stopped at a tall wall with thin slits. A person ran ahead of us, and we followed. My group did alright sneaking over, but another group saw people on the wall raking the area with gunfire as they were running over.

Once we were over, the smuggler found a Chinese-operated vehicle to take us to a residential building. Once your relatives came and paid the balance on the fee, they’d let you go.

Read more first-person China stories:

• My Mother Was a Sex Worker
• The Myanmar Brides Trafficked to China
• The Influencers Helping Trafficked Women Return Home

My dad’s friend dropped me off in Brooklyn, then I was free. At first, I went and worked as a restaurant hostess in Connecticut, making around 3,300 dollars a month. I usually sent 3,000 dollars back home and spent the other 300. I had to send a lot of money back to pay the interest on my debt to the smugglers: the fee was 600,000 RMB, with 10 percent interest each month—6,000 dollars a month in interest alone.

The most expensive thing I bought myself was an iPad, for 400 dollars. I’m still using it to this day. I didn’t have any other source of entertainment. When I got off work I’d play games my iPad for a bit, and on my days off I'd play the whole day.

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Age 23 - 26: Chinese massage parlors, police entrapment

I came back from Connecticut to New York and started looking for a new job. A friend told me I could try massage work, since I was so young. It wouldn’t be as hard as restaurant work and I could make more money.

In this line of work, the younger you are, the more people want you to give them massages. Men will think, if we’re going to be there chatting, and it costs the same no matter what, why would I pick an older woman?

I worked about two years at the first massage parlor, and a year and a half at the second one. The first parlor was raided three times because competing massage parlors would report us, so I found another little parlor to work in. The owner there was a decent woman, so I stayed.

The police here have many tricks: They would ask the customers how much it was for a handjob. In reality, we never did that kind of thing. But the police would set these types of traps. The customers would answer in all honesty that an hour of massage was 35 dollars, tip was 20, and nobody ever asked me how much it was for a handjob.