Surprising My Parents With a NEW HOME!

[Music] good morning day's finally here the reason the primary reason why i came back to new york is what's about to happen today let's go to the haunted bottom first all right okay so i got new locks put in and apparently they made two different keys for two different locks i thought it was the same key so i gave one of the keys away now i can get into the bar probably best not to wake up the ghost this early [Music] anyway [Music] a little back story i told you guys before that i moved to new york after college and i spent about 15 years working on a non-profit what i didn't tell you was that about uh five years into that five years after i moved to new york city five or six my parents like followed me to new york city it's like typical asian parents like wherever you go we go so they follow me to new york city and they started getting involved with volunteer work and non-profit as well um and this is after they sold their chinese restaurant in quincy illinois and so the nonprofit doesn't pay right so it's all volunteer work and um at the time i was living in a basement in brooklyn for i think like the rent was like 500 a month or something like that there's no ac and i'm pretty sure that basement apartment was illegal because you're not supposed to rent out your basements the neighborhood wasn't safe i think this was chinatown brooklyn like one day i got a call and my landlord was like you better come home right now because the police are here because someone broke into your apartment first of all if you're a thief or a potential thief why are you breaking into a crummy basement apartment in brooklyn you're not going to find anything so they didn't find anything but they trashed my place they left nothing was stolen because i had nothing so after they moved to new york they ended up donating most of their money to various non-profits and their passion same as mine was to bring awareness to the human rights atrocities happening in china right now if you don't know there's basically no freedom of religion freedom of belief in china so any group including christians tibetans falun gong practitioners which me and my parents are political distance anybody that wants democracy and of course right now the insane persecution and basically attempted genocide of uyghurs and muslims in china so all these groups face systematic persecution and nobody really knows about it so my parents do a lot of work to try to bring these issues to life which is still such a crazy situation if you go and google china organ harvesting or china weaker persecution or final goal persecution it's still such a prevalent issue that does not get enough attention our family in general didn't have a lot of money so i ended up moving in with them all right pause in the story i gotta go meet somebody [Music] you guys know sophie so i mentioned in a previous video got a new place for my parents and sophie's been putting together furniture and all the construction how's it looking you'll see so this is what the outside looking in this is sofia [Music] way different than where we were last time oh that's nice that's beautiful couch i guess the tv will go here somehow i got you a couple small gifts this is one of them you got me a gift oh an echo i gotta teach my parents how to use that wow the color looks great with this bedroom and the lamps are fun oh really oh sophia thank you so much wow oh this is really nice but the color is beautiful thanks sophia thanks sophie so sophie's decided to coloring for this it's really nice it is very nice and there's the bathroom very simple yeah very simple nice nice nice nice so here's what happens i knew sophia's husband and we're working on the ramen shop together so sophia is showing us this building that was like hasn't been built yet it was like just skeleton and i came and i'm like this would be great for my parents like i've been looking for a good beautiful home for them for like a year or two years and was able to find one and this one just came up and it's in the heart of flushing so we we locked down on this unit i was just waiting for this whole thing to get built it's still not completely finished the building but the units look beautiful let me show you the balcony view of the white stone bridge and i got them this unit and not the one on the other end which has the skyline of manhattan because there's a building that's going to go up so it's going to block the view but this view should be like this for a while it's a massive balcony for them to do whatever they want and we're going to furnish this we're going to put padded furniture on the balcony they got their washer and dryer oh you got detergent for them oh thank you so if you guys need a place to to to live in new york look for it look for sophia you don't even have an instagram account i do you do now right sparks nyc i want to sit on this couch so this is the final walkthrough i'm gonna go to my parents after this and bring them here can they give it something exciting that is my big gift all right well thank you guys so much oh i got stuff for you you guys can pick out a mess [Applause] so i have feed me masks sriracha extra spicy dumplings and they're all cute shoes masks thank you mike well thank you guys thank you okay let's go let's go meet the parents so actually there's some time before i go see my parents um so we're getting a little lunch at this new sichuan place that i heard was good but then so sad it's fine are you guys like best friends now yeah it's made in korea we've been talking a lot yeah you know beyond joe back yeah i am the friend [Music] matchmaker like what like how you are in your videos am i yeah and i'm like yeah he is that's why i can't watch it because i'm like it's so weird why is it so weird i think he's so natural no because it's like when i hang out with him it's natural but then when i see him like on a screen it's weird for me you know but i'm the same guy yeah i'd rather hang out with you than watch you so there you go that's why sophia doesn't watch my videos that's not authentic compound chicken real compound chicken you're supposed to taste the vinegar sour spicy sweet that's the three characteristic good compound chicken that looks amazing shrimp and ribs yeah so these ribs are like shrimp flavored ribs or something this is so good this is sugar try it there's sugar yeah right that's good that is really good it's perfectly done this is spicy and a little bit salty but it really complements the palette this is why people need me in their lives so the food guys look out for me when i go somewhere you are the food thank you there's a really good dish i come back for that fish i think the the fatty beef's not bad either we got lucky today [Music] oh these ribs are so tender 100 should get that week if you guys ever come here this is really good the citron dishes are fantastic lunch number one don't tell my parents i'm eating off before i go eat with them the shrimp is on the bottom that's why it's called shrimp and ribs so the shrimp was awesome yeah the shelf fried really well and then you can eat just whole bites and full flavor comes out you don't want to shrimp i have like they're so good oh big news me and sophie are getting a dog together snowfall stop naming dogs after food no that's what i do that's my day all asians named their dogs after food can we name a dumpling with dumpling one name and dumpling telstra i've always said i wanted to like call adopt a dog with somebody because i'm never here i'm sure you're willing to do it when i'm not here even when you're here i'll take care no no when i'm here i want the dog with me welcome to my neighborhood this is where me and my parents left we picked a very affordable apartment and obviously like it wasn't ideal going back and living with your parents but we all wanted to do human rights work non-profit work and unfortunately it just doesn't pay so at the time i was filming weddings i was filming weddings for about two hundred dollars a day and i was doing that maybe six times six to ten times a month so i was bringing about a thousand maybe two thousand a month maximum and that work wasn't even really consistent and for the non-profit job requires actually a lot of travel out of my own pocket so that's where majority of the money went so when i started doing youtube like of course you know didn't make money right away when some money did start coming in when i got my first actual like livable paycheck i got my first apartment right here so that building right there top right that's where my first apartment was it was crazy because i remember going in there and there was a studio available for like a thousand dollars a month and it was a one bedroom available for 1500 a month and i was gonna opt for the studio because i wasn't sure i could afford fifteen hundred dollars a month consistently of course at that point like my my apartment in brooklyn they did i think they tore down because it was illegal and i really want to finally get out on my own so that's where i live for about a year but this is the place this is the place let me show you i mean we've been inside i've showed you guys the inside many times when i go home and eat this is where me and my parents lived for a long time after that um was uh my move to california and then from california i moved up to uh i got a house upstate and then i moved to seattle and now i'm here but ever since i started to do okay for myself i wanted to find my parents a new place because the apartment it's okay it's not a bad apartment it's not great it's a livable apartment but i really wouldn't call it home also we have filipino neighbors upstairs and guys you know how much i love the philippines i love the people but you guys karaoke a lot i mean that's like night and day and that apartment is definitely not sound proof so every single weekend every single day after work i hear celine dion coming from upstairs i mean look at singers but yo what up how you doing buddy thank you but you definitely don't get peace and quiet here so ever since i was able to do okay for myself i've been looking for a place for them to move to that could actually be be a home you know and they're very particular so i knew it has to be placed at least in queens um it definitely needs to be around flushing because they go to flushing every single day and actually traveling to flushing from from elmer's is not not easy without a car my mom doesn't drive so i wanted to find a place i'm flushing but they were all completely out of my price range i mean the houses were going for a multi-million dollars and i couldn't afford that so this apartment that sofia showed me over a year ago they just started building it it was within the price range i got a good deal it just kind of snuck into the tax abatement so there's no property tax for 15 years a really really good deal so i snatched it up for them i wanted to give it to him right away but obviously it wasn't built when i first went in it was just like a skeleton so now it's finally sort of done i mean they're still going to construct it there's going to be a gym and a pool and everything's going to be done by the end of the year but it's move-in ready so um haven't seen them in like 7-8 months that's the place i'm gonna go upstairs and uh i'm gonna give it to him let's do it yo i swear i talked about this car before this flight attendant like this asian flight attendant she owns this car but she's just kind of disappearing this car is still here it's been like 10 years unsolved mysteries i think you got a case here the mystery of the missing flight attendant in this abandoned car she probably just you know moved to connecticut or something all right they're coming down remember i didn't just eat [Music] hello i miss you [Music] good fish make some mean salmon shrimp definitely give me getting my fill of uh vegetables [Music] a few moments later making mochi balls so chinese for you for dessert orange slices and mochi balls [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] bye dinner i could ring today before i came back that was really cool today i've been looking forward to doing that for a year and a half and great to see that my parents love the new place i mean they really deserve something nice they've been working so hard their whole lives and what i wanted to do last time was take him on a european vacation because my dad always wanted to travel so i wanted to take him to the uk you know spain france italy but there was an issue with my mom's passport so before we could get that fixed covet hit so that wasn't really possible so it's really nice being able to give them something they can enjoy they really i mean your typical immigrant parents like we came to the u.s we lived in this little studio together us three of us in this tiny studio the house was cold called a kitchen i was called china house really racist name for it but because all only chinese people lived there it was in knoxville tennessee i remember that room was like 100 bucks a month the car we drove was a volkswagen 300 a month my dad was a waiter my mom worked in a textile factory like we scraped by and but they always try to provide the best for me uh when i'm growing up and that really has always been the case and even when um i was getting out of college i was partnering with some really unsavory individuals and even when i borrowed money from my dad and then eventually that money got scanned by this unsavory individual he wasn't mad he didn't yell at me that's partially due to the fact that he practiced following going i kid you not like he used to have a pretty bad temper but ever since he started practicing this meditation the nicest guy ever but didn't get mad at me i mean i don't know how they either would have felt if i chose not to go to college and started going to youtube right away of course youtube didn't really exist back then but pretty much all my decisions in life they were always really supportive so it felt really good to you know do something really nice for them and like i said they 100 000 times deserve it and getting this place also means that i'll probably give up um my place in seattle so i don't know i still have several months there before my lease expires so next step who knows just like the rest of this year just like next year just have to get used to a lot of unknowns in life you know as always thank you guys so much for watching

Channel: Mikey Chen

Views: 1,258,974

Rating: 4.9601855 out of 5

Keywords: new home, new house, mike chen surprise, mike chen parents, surprise, mikey chen parents, mike chen mom, mike chen dad, prank, pranks, surprise with new home, new home surprise, new york, nyc, queens, ny, new york city, travel, buy house, buy home, real estate, market, tourism, sale, finance, bank, money, mortgage

Id: 1ITw-BzqN-Y

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020