
Introducing The Chinatown Sting: Lucky Bird
From The China History Podcast by Laszlo Montgomery
September 23, 2025 · 40 min
About this episode
This episode previews a new podcast about a massive undercover drug bust in Manhattan's Chinatown during the late 1980s.
Here's a preview of a new podcast, The Chinatown Sting, from our friends at Pushkin Industries. In the late 1980s, a group of women connected through the mahjong parlors in Manhattan's Chinatown were caught in a massive undercover drug bust. But this bust was just the beginning of an even bigger case. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who've never spoken on record before, including witnesses, defendants, and federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a case that still has repercussions today and impacted the history of American Chinatowns themselves, which developed to protect immigrants from a hostile society. Listen to The Chinatown Sting wherever you get podcasts and binge the entire season, ad-free, with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on The Chinatown Sting Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus .
People in this episode
Host: Lidia Jean Kott
Guest: Shuyu Wang
Topics covered
- undercover drug bust
- Chinatown history
- immigrant protection
- mahjong parlors
- interviews
- reconstruction of a case
Keywords
- Chinatown Sting
- drug bust
- mahjong
- interviews
- Pushkin Industries
- Lidia Jean Kott
- Shuyu Wang
- American Chinatowns
- history
- society
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Pushkin Industries
Places: Manhattan's Chinatown, American Chinatowns
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