Hundreds of homeless New Yorkers left a Central Park restaurant Wednesday with bellies filled with fine food — but without the $300 an eccentric Chinese philanthropist promised them.
Recycling magnate Chen Guangbiao brought four charter busloads of invited, down-and-out vagrants to The Loeb Boathouse in Central Park for lunch.
But his guests were more interested in $300 that they believed Chen was going to give them. When it became clear there’d be no green coming their way, guests groused about the cash-less meal.
“I’m very unhappy,” said New York City Rescue Mission resident Harry Brooks. “They said we’d get $300 apiece and now they’re donating it to the mission? We were dropped here. They used us like puppets so they could get their check.”
Chen had taken out a full-page ad in last week’s New York Times touting a free lunch and $300 cash for 1,000 down-on-their-luck New Yorkers.
He took about 200 people — picked by the rescue mission — to lunch Wednesday in the first of four separate feeds, organizers said.
Chen also backed down on his $300 promise at the urging of rescue mission officials, who didn’t want their clients — many fighting drug and booze addictions — to have so much cash.
He told The Post on Tuesday that he’d instead give a donation to the rescue mission.
But then Chen appeared to zig-zag again Wednesday, telling guests that $300 would be waiting for them at the rescue mission.
“I will give a relief fund of $300 to each of the participants today,” Chen said through a translator.
“I am giving you a fishing pole and hopefully you will fish on your own. We need to be diligent and work hard because we need to be self-reliant.”
Guests said they would have preferred cold, hard cash to a flowery metaphor.
“Why lie to the people?” said homeless guest Ernest St. Pierre, 54. “This is how the rich treat you. They tell you one thing and then they do another.”
St. Pierre assumed — correctly — that there would be no cash handed out back at the shelter.
“I don’t believe the money will be at the mission,” he said. “He’s gonna get in his limo and high-tail it out of here.”
Even if guests didn’t get $300, they at least got a nice meal out of it.
Dozens of volunteers — dressed in People’s Liberation Army uniforms with the words “Serve the People” on them — ushered the homeless guests inside.
They dined on sesame crusted seared tuna, vegetable slaw, beef filet, mashed potatoes and green beans.
Dessert was berries in a pastry shell.
They listened to Chen’s self-congratulatory speech and a Chinese patriotic song before the publicity-loving philanthropist gave a tone-deaf performance of “We Are The World,” the 1985 anthem against world hunger.
Chen, 46, also performed magic tricks. He appeared to pluck small red balls of light from the air and drop them into a paper bag, where they fell into the image of a heart.
Then things got really weird.
Chen presented on stage two badly burned and deformed women he has befriended.
The mother and daughter were self-immolation victims and former members of the controversial Falun Gong sect, he said.
The daughter, whom Chen called “The Lady of Kindness,” said through a translator: “You are witnessing a profound moment of kindness.”
Even before Chen showed up at the Boathouse, it was a crazy scene.
About 100 other homeless people tried to crash Wednesday’s lunch but were turned back.
Those homeless people believed anyone could show up for Chen’s bash and were infuriated when told that wasn’t the case.
So when Chen strolled into the Boathouse, the hungry horde booed and cursed him. They yelled “Liar,” “Con man” and dropped the F-bomb.