“A tradition? Sure, I can have your address’ 34 Heol-yr-esgob. OKAY. What would you like to order? A special chow mein. But no shrimp? OKAY. Black bean beef. AHA. Two bags of potato chips. Yes. A serving of chicken balls. Sure. Is there anything else with your order? No? This is? That will be £17.20, plus the extra pound for delivery. So that’s £18.20 in total. Your order will arrive in about…” I turn my head to check the rustic wood-framed clock on the wall… “half an hour to an hour? OK thanks. Goodbye.” As soon as I put the phone down: RINGING. RING RING RING. “Hello, Lucky Star. How can I -“ “Ni hao!” I listen, followed by thinly veiled sniggers. “Hello?” I ask hesitantly. “Ching chong ching chong! Hahaha!” There is now a thump. I’m starting to understand what’s going on. “Lice that laid eggs, honey! Me so hornee. I’ve loved you for a long time!” I slam the bulky handset down and throw it on the counter in anger. Not again. If I ever find out who he is, I swear I’ll put him on my dad. This happens every other night and my blood boils. I don’t even want to do this stupid job, deal with these idiots. I just want to hang out with the girls and play like the other 12 year olds. I wish I was somewhere far, far away from here. Like many Chinese immigrants who came to the UK believing that British roads were paved with gold, my parents left Hong Kong in 1985 in search of a better quality of life. With little money, no English and only low-paid manual labour, they went where there was work, moving from Bournemouth to Reading, then London and finally settling in the former Welsh mining village of Beddau. Most of the collieries in Wales had closed in the late 1980s when my family arrived and their ends were being hastened by Thatcherite decree. Beddau was dark, rainy and insular. With a population of just over 4,000, everyone knew each other – and each other’s work. In the end, my parents saved up and opened their own Chinese takeaway, Lucky Star, on the luckiest day of the century: August 8, 1988 – the number eight is lucky in Chinese culture. The takeaway is named after a song by mum’s favorite Cantopop singer Alan Tam. Moreover, all the good names, such as Lucky Dragon, The Gold Lion, Happy Gathering and Happy Garden, had already been picked up by my aunts and uncles who had settled in neighboring Welsh villages in the valleys. (Huis strategically opened Chinese takeaways in south Wales surrounded by a close network of family and friends: close enough to provide an emergency lifeline should something happen, but not close enough to fight over the same customers.) My parents wanted me and my brothers to take over the business when they retired. I couldn’t think of anything worse My parents, two older brothers, Keen and Jacky, and I lived above the takeaway and we just moved out of the building. The bench was sacred to me and my brothers. The walls contained awards from school, colorful drawings and artistic decorations, all surrounded by quiet reminders of Hong Kong: shelves filled with imperial lion guard ornaments and golden lucky cats. Sometimes I sat on the bench alone, sometimes next to Keen and sometimes next to Cecilia, a Welsh lady in her late 60s who was our long-term assistant on the bench. He had short curly gray hair, wore the thickest brown square glasses and smoked like a blast furnace. There was also Dewi, the delivery driver. He was a stout, ragged blond Welshman who laughed at his father’s jokes and spoke highly of his sons. Long after the phone call, I can’t stop thinking about it. What did I do to deserve this? I hate my life, I hate this stupid job, and most of all, I hate being Chinese. Why couldn’t I have been born into a normal family? Life would be so much easier. As I walk down the narrow white hallway to the kitchen, I feel a blast of warm air hit me in the face. The air is filled with enticing smells of aromatic curries, fiery satay, funky black beans and fragrant sweet and sour all rolled into one. It’s a tight space, made even tighter with five bodies frantically running around trying to get things done without hitting each other. We have two stainless steel silver tops, a center island for take-out orders, an array of heavy-duty wok burners, a deep-fat fryer station, a domestic gas range that always has pots of sauces on the burners, and a huge refrigerator clearly too big for room. Our setup isn’t much, but somehow it works, and so do we. I take the paper ticket and shout, “A special without shrimp, one lemon chicken, one black bean, two bags of chips, chicken balls with sweet and sour sauce” to my parents, and then I clip the ticket on the makeshift receipt spike, the which dad made from a small piece of wood and four nails. Hui today: “The customers seemed endless, the phones rang suddenly. It was relentless.’ Photo: Alex Ingram/The Guardian “Okay, ah, ah mui!” Dad calls back (ah mui is Cantonese for “young girl”) as he effortlessly rocks the steel wok back and forth with his left hand while stirring the lemon chicken with a wok spoon in his right. She grabs a bottle of lemon juice from the white shelf Mom made out of old tiles and pours it straight into the wok. Once the liquid touches the wok, flames creep up the sides, licking up the ingredients and bringing an addition of charred smoke to the dish. I can’t hear him, or much else, over the jet engine-like roar of the industrial wok burner range. the clash of the metal spatula; the hissing and squealing of mom dipping chicken balls into sizzling hot oil. It’s a war zone in there, but thankfully it works with military precision. Takeaway has always been a part of my life. According to Mom, when I was a baby I slept in a cardboard box of chips in the storage area under the stairs by the kitchen while she worked and occasionally checked in on me. I started helping when I was eight. I stood on a stool, reaching over the counter to serve customers. My parents taught me and my brothers the ropes as soon as we could walk and talk so we could help lighten the load and one day take over the business when they retired. I couldn’t think of anything worse, neither could Keen and Jacky. Although my parents made cooking, especially wok cooking, look like a piece of cake, it was actually tedious and repetitive. Their hopes of me taking over were quickly dashed when they saw me struggling pitifully to pick up a wok. This thing weighed a ton. Not surprisingly, I was quickly relegated to less labor-intensive roles such as answering calls, dealing with customers, and capping. (What’s a lid, you ask? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like: pointlessly putting lids on foil trays, pressing down on the four corners to secure the hot contents inside over and over again.) But to tell the truth, apart from the cap and answering the phone, my parents didn’t really want us to get too involved with the family business. They knew it was jerky and unsocial work. My parents did not run in a pack out of passion and love. they did it to fund higher education for me and my siblings so we could study hard and get good jobs. My parents came over to cook so I didn’t have to. The customer comes in to pick up their order. He doesn’t laugh or look at me funny, so I don’t think he’s a prank caller. While Cecilia sits next to me puffing up her bar stool, I lean my plastic yellow stool back against the wall and continue catching Pokémon on my Game Boy to decompress before the next onslaught of orders. A few minutes later, the same man appears at the door again. Approaching the counter, he motions to the bag. “This is not my order. I ordered fried rice, chips, sweet and sour duck and curry sauce.” Ouch. Dad will kill me. I go back to the kitchen and break the bad news to my parents. As I suspect, Dad breaks out and starts yelling at me. His angry voice is so loud that customers waiting in the front room don’t know whether to run for their lives or cower in the corner. “I’m sorry- “ Hui’s mother cleaning at Lucky Star. Photo: courtesy of Angela Hui “Oh my, you are so useless and stupid! Be more careful next time and always read the order to customers to avoid mistakes.” Despite all my efforts, I can’t stop the tears from flowing. I never understand why getting an order wrong is such a big deal to him, but I don’t have time to dwell – the next round of customers is coming thick and fast. “A little help, please!” Cecilia shouts from the counter amid the symphony of ringing telephones. I wipe my tears on my sleeve and compose myself. I run outside to find that the waiting room has suddenly filled up, with customers packed in like sardines. I grab a notebook and pen and put on my biggest smile. “Sorry for the confusion, sir. We’re re-ordering you now, which won’t be long, and we’ll throw in a bag of shrimp crackers as well,” I tell the customer, then turn my attention to the next in line. “Hi, sorry for the wait. What would you like to order, ma’am?’ I run back to the kitchen, trying to get the order out over the hum, and stick the paper ticket to a nail with the rest of the tickets piling up. Subscribe to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights. “This order is ready. Of…
