Toisan Boy

First, an acknowledgement to the late actor/writer/producer Dave Landsberg, who was a regular at a place where I (used to as of the pandemic) DJ, and once asked me for a dance lesson. We ended up talking about me for most of that lesson, and after hearing some of my story, told me I should write about it. It took a while for that encouragement to take root. I'm sorry Dave won't be around to read this and critique it.  Secondly, an explanation of the title: Toisan, also known as Taishan, is a peasant Chinese dialect. It's the dialect my family speaks. It's spoken only in a small region of southern China just west of Macao. This region was a (if not *the*) primary source of the first Chinese emigrants to America, resulting in Toisan being the lingua franca of US Chinatowns for decades, even though today, Toisan speakers (~3 millon) make up less than .2% of the entire mainland Chinese population (~1.4 billion). In relation to other Chinese dialects, Toisan might be best de...