With the fall of the Nationalist government to the Chinese Communists revolution, Li's family found themselves no longer visitors in America, but unwitting emigrés to a new but foreign home. With little accumulated wealth, they turned to the pasttime of so many immigrants before them—the long hours of restaurant work in New York City.

There they found aspersion cast from all sides—from working class Chinese immigrants who grumbled that the Li's, with their close ties to the Nationalist government, must have brought a fortune gained through corruption to compete directly with them for their livelihood—to the Li's friends and former associates, who could not fathom that the Li's would stoop to such menial and demeaning work.

"Tongues wagged about the fact that the former governor and his lady had sunk so low as to open a chop suey house for profit...But the cruelest criticism of all came from my parents' former colleagues who had held high positions in the Nationalist government, some of whom were living in Long Island mansions and mid-Manhattan East Side apartments. They asked in outraged candor why the governor and his lady would cheapen themselves to the level of restaurant service, engaging in work that was so distasteful."