[muawiyah]

Hmm, more top quality Chinese restaurants, and for home cooking there'd be more of the best ingredients easily available in neighborhood grocery stores.

Now, about the Chinese, we were drawing on what amounted to the top end of the Chinese equivalent of their middle class by bringing in Coolies.

No doubt those contracts for indenture wouldn't have lasted long.

[lentulusgracchus]

What, coolies middle class? No way, they were peasants.

"Kuh li" = "bitter strength", i.e., strong men, but bad, bitter lives of grinding poverty. They weren't middle class at all, from what I've read.