Memories of a childhood in a Chinese take-away. This is good listening and reminds us of the cultural importance of food and its link to family and identity.
The Chinese take-away is based in a former mining village in Wales.
Angela Hui grew up behind the counter of her parents’ Chinese takeaway, Lucky Star, in the former mining village of Beddau, Wales.
It opened on the luckiest day of the century, 8 August 1988, an auspicious date with the number eight signifying good wealth, fortune and prosperity in Chinese culture – three key factors needed for a young, growing immigrant family.
On one side of the counter Angela interacts with the takeaway’s loyal staff, Cecilia, Dewi and Lowri.
They serve and deliver food lovingly prepped and cooked by Angela’s parents. Regular customers pester Angela at the counter as she tries to do her homework. Running a Chinese takeaway is hard work and there is tension in the overlapping spaces of home and work, playground and business. Angela and her two brothers, Keen and Jacky, also have to act as go-betweens for their parents when there are language barriers.
But there is also beauty in the rhythm and joy from living in the takeaway and being surrounded by the food of Angela’s home culture. On the other side of the counter, Angela enjoys family dinners before service, dishes a world away from the simplified, watered-down Western version ordered by the locals - whole steamed sea bass, Cantonese soup, steamed egg, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce.
To them, food is love and food symbolises family. A blending of her Welsh and Chinese heritage, the takeaway was a place that embodied the dual identities that Angela herself was experiencing.
Speaking of the date when the Lucky Star opened: 8.8.88, I remember it as I went to see Pink Floyd play live at Maine Road in Manchester.
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