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The Sunday Read: ‘He Had a Dark Secret. It Changed His Best Friend’s Life.’

“On his first night at the Brooklyn homeless shelter, Tin Chin met his best friend.” So begins an unforgettable story of deceit and friendship, and the loneliness of starting life anew in a foreign country. The journalist Sam Dolnick traces how two men came to find themselves in the homeless shelter, and how their shared backgrounds meant they became fast friends. But the story, as all good stories often do, quickly takes an unexpected turn.
Duration
28m
Broadcast on
18 Dec 2022
Audio Format
other

“On his first night at the Brooklyn homeless shelter, Tin Chin met his best friend.”

So begins an unforgettable story of deceit and friendship, and the loneliness of starting life anew in a foreign country.

The journalist Sam Dolnick traces how two men came to find themselves in the homeless shelter, and how their shared backgrounds meant they became fast friends. But the story, as all good stories often do, quickly takes an unexpected turn.

This story was written and narrated by Sam Dolnick. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


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This podcast is supported by TikTok. Sometimes the most interesting discoveries are the ones you weren't looking for. That happens every day on TikTok. A science experiment can spark a whole new interest. A recipe you stumble upon can become a meal you make for the people you love. And a restaurant you've never heard of might become your new favorite spot. That's the thing about TikTok. Follow your curiosity and see where it leads. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. (gentle music) This week's Sunday read is a story about friendship, but it's about one really unusual friendship. And it's a New York story. It's a New York that I had rarely explored before, but I think it's a story that happens every day, some version of it, across the city. Whenever you see somebody sitting on a park bench, it's really easy to just walk by. It could be just someone sitting there eating a McDonald's fish sandwich. But if you actually knew everything that was behind that park bench, there's actually a whole opera happening right there on every park bench. And for me, that's what really captured my imagination with this story. I'm Sam Dolnik. I'm a deputy managing editor at the New York Times. I was a reporter on the Metro desk for a number of years, and I covered immigrant communities across New York. This story is the kind of story that newspapers don't always make a room for. But for me, it's a kind of story that really helps you explain and understand how New York really works. And maybe even something bigger about friendship itself. So this story began with an unsolicited note that arrived at the New York Times. It was just five sentences long, and it was about a man I had never heard of, a homeless immigrant who lived in Chinatown named Mo Bao Lin. And I remember one of the sentences really jumped out at me. It said Mo's unusual skill was his perseverance. And it just struck me as so poignant that the only way this man was going to be remembered was his perseverance, the fact that he simply endured.

Transcription truncated.

“On his first night at the Brooklyn homeless shelter, Tin Chin met his best friend.” So begins an unforgettable story of deceit and friendship, and the loneliness of starting life anew in a foreign country. The journalist Sam Dolnick traces how two men came to find themselves in the homeless shelter, and how their shared backgrounds meant they became fast friends. But the story, as all good stories often do, quickly takes an unexpected turn.