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 Dolnick.

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 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.

...