Food in the shadows

Ron, a friend/former co-worker of Joe, and another co-worker also named Ron (here I describe him as Ron 2) were in St. Louis for 2 days on business. Joe (working at the same company with Steve, and has traveled several places) wanted to meet for dinner.
The five of us met at an Indian restaurant and we started to chat after we sat down. Ron 2 is a very good story teller. He told several funny stories and made us laugh. One of them was a story about Chinese-Malaysians (I guessed maybe he got to know I am Chinese-Malaysian from Joe). He said when he was in a college in Illinois, they had quite a population of Chinese-Malaysians. During lunch time, they would go to buy their 1 buck chicken rice lunch from people in the shadows. That’s illegal as the seller was not licensed to sell food. So when they are dealing it in shady places, it's kind of like dealing drugs. Once, he was with a Chinese friend and it was lunch time, so he wanted to follow this friend for lunch. The Chinese guy led him to a place to buy chicken rice, but the seller said no when saw he was American. The Chinese guy persuaded the seller, as they were together. That’s dealing like for drugs. Haha….
US$1 exchanges to about RM3.50, and chicken rice is about RM3.50 in Malaysia. However, it is not possible to get chicken rice with US$1 (I am not sure how many years ago this story happened) in the USA, that’s why these Chinese students go get food in the shadows…

That also reminds me about our New York trip, when we were in a store at China Town. The boss saw Steve is American, he ignored our inquiry about a CD. After we went out, we guessed the store might have some illegal CDs and were afraid a Westerner would report them….