Angela Hui

A memoir by journalist Angela Hui about growing up living and working in her family's Chinese takeaway shop in the 1990s. Her parents moved from Hong Kong to Britain in 1985, and opened the Lucky Star takeaway in Beddau, a village in the South Wales valley in 1988. Hui and her brothers grew up over the shop, often doing homework, playing and working hard when needed in the family business from an early age.

This was not an easy life and the demands and concerns of the business took a big toll on family life and relationships. Hours were long and when needed everyone had to pitch in and help on the counter or going out doing deliveries. The family were subjected to a lot of racist abuse, dad had a gambling problem, etc. But there are also some stories of happier moments, of appreciative customers and humour.

Hui includes a few recipes, I think mostly of the food her family cook for themselves - not always the same as what is sold in the takeaway (though the kids do get to tuck in to uncollected food and some edible treats from time to time). Hui also describes the tensions between her own life at school and with friends, and early relationships etc, and the business/family, as she grows up. Though she went away to university, she travelled back from Cardiff to help out in the business most weekend nights.

I enjoy memoirs of migration, of growing up, of family lives, of work and school, of juggling different lives, and thought this was a good read.… (meer)