Celebrating our 11th year at Sweet Mandarin

“To the ruler, the people are Heaven; to the people, food is Heaven”. (An ancient Chinese proverb)

My grandmother, Lilly Kwok, was born in 1918 small village in Southern China. As an unborn child, she kicked so hard that the midwife thought she would be a boy. That independence, strength and energy stayed with her all her life. Lilly is

88 now and still a fit, intelligent and, I’m afraid to say, stubborn woman. She and I are very alike. Along with my mother, she has been the inspiration for much of what I have done with my life; my success at school and in business; my return to the catering trade; and my journey back to China to rediscover my roots. In short, her story is my story.

Having grown up living and working in a Chinese catering tradition she started, it was a path that I and my two sisters vowed we’d never allow to become my livelihood. We never expected that eventually our lives to follow in the footsteps of my grandmother and my mother, Mabel. Despite my sisters and I pursuing professional careers as a lawyer, financier and engineer, we opened a Chinese restaurant together called Sweet Mandarin in 2004.

At the time, we were asked by everyone we knew – why open a restaurant

Restaurants are difficult to run, hard work and financially precarious. It is a tough, male dominated world and no place for three twenty something professional ladies. Indeed our friends in Manchester’s Chinese community were doing everything they could to escape the restaurant and take-away businesses of their parents. Many had even moved away from their hometowns so with their homes a few hundreds of miles away, it was virtually impossible to rush back to help out in the family catering businesses. Albeit extreme, that was the only way one could really escape without being crushed by guilt and obligation. I could count on one hand the number of my Chinese peers who were willing to embark on such a venture and return to their roots.

These people believed we had taken a step backwards. Even on our opening night party, a huge affair with fireworks and a street party, I saw them shake their heads pitying our choice. However I also remember the older Chinese bosses of the Chinatown restaurants and supermarkets smiling at us with respect and quiet acknowledgement that we were the next generation to carry the flickering, dimming torch. They wished their sons and daughters would take a leaf out of our book and continue the family restaurant business.

Opening my own restaurant gave me more than just a chance to test my entrepreneurial streak. It brought me closer to sisters for a start. Though I shall be the voice for all of us in this book, they share this heritage with me but I shall be their voice for all of us in this book. It also introduced me to my grandmother and mother and opened up a bridge between us that crossed East and West as well as the present and the past.

While my sisters and I have faced many problems in getting our business off the ground, these pale in comparison to those faced by our grandmother and mother, who arrived in England off the boat from Hong Kong with nothing.

My mother, my grandmother and I always shop together on Saturday mornings at a Chinese supermarket called Chi Yip close to home. We buy stock for Sweet

Mandarin and Chinese produce for our home cooking list. It was during these shopping trips that the story of my grandmother’s life, which had been locked away for decades, was first revealed to me. Of course, I knew some things, the funny characters and anecdotes that all families share when they get together but never the full details of the determination and incredible struggle that had brought my grandmother to England. The story slipped out in parts. As we shopped, week after week, my grandmother would reveal more, often prompted by individual items she picked up around the store. It was as if each bottle or package was tied to a chapter in her life that she wanted to share with us. When your entire family works in restaurants, food, it seems, becomes your family heirloom.

There is very little written about the journey of mainland Chinese immigrants to Hong Kong and Britain, many of whom have built their lives in the restaurant and catering trade. As I discovered more about the journey that has been my grandmother’s incredible life, I wanted to describe to the world her experience, for it is one which is shared by so many Chinese in this country.

Immigration is a huge issue in today’s multiracial society and this book is about those who emigrate from the place of their birth to build a new home in another and the struggles they face to survive in both. This immigrant story is about my grandmother, my mother and myself; three generations of independent Chinese women who made a life in the restaurant business. The story ranges from Guangzhou, in south China in the 1920s, to Hong Kong in the 1930s to England from the 1950s to the present day.

Though these lives have been played out in different eras and countries, they are as dramatic as the times we lived through. Like all families, we have faced unpredictable and devastating upheavals but the women in my family have learnt to survive.

There is no other book that can tell this story because no-one has walked in my shoes. Like the Chinese cooking which has saved us, my family fortunes contain layers of meaning and wisdom that cannot be easily explained. This is a book that is written from the heart and which seeks to remember past generations with gratitude and thanks. It is both a witness to the kindness and cruelty of people and a demonstration of how resilient human beings can be. Sometimes, it seems as if the most terrible of times has brought out the best in my family.