When I worked in Hong Kong it struck me how hard working and determined the Hong Kong citizens were. I was expected to work long hours including weekends and did so ungrudgingly. On my family were flying back to the UK, I was unable to bid them farewell at the airport as I was stuck in the office. I learnt quickly that to the Chinese business always comes first. Despite the fertile conditions and booming restaurant market, my great grandfather’s Leung’s business was slow to start and was always hard graft. Leung however was hard working and determined. He left before dawn and returned home only after the last restaurant was shut. Several times a month, he was forced to return to the village in China to oversee production of the soy sauce and prevent light-fingered insiders from pilfering the goods.
Eventually, he did manage to secure his first contracts with restaurants but setting up the distribution process from scratch was not cheap and on top of the running costs, local authorities had to be bribed to ensure the safe passage of goods to the island. In those early days, the burgeoning business made barely enough money to sustain the family. The highlights of Leung and Tai Po’s life together were few and far between and the hours they spent hauling the little cart through the streets were long.
Slowly his business began to prosper as restaurants, street stalls and suppliers began to purchase greater quantities of soy sauce from Leung. As more money came in, as last the family began to improve their living conditions.
They left their relatives’ shack and moved into a modest flat of their own. It was still in Wan Chai but overlooking the harbour. Life was at last taking a turn for the better and the family faced the world with renewed optimism. Space of their own was luxury beyond their wildest dreams.
With the flat came new clothes and, for the first time since they had arrived in Hong Kong, regular meals. I’m prepared to bet money that they were big ones too as everyone in my family loves to eat. After these feasts, Leung would make great show of teaching his girls how to sample soy sauce like a professional. First, he would pour a small amount into a glass and swizzle it around before smelling its bouquet with great ceremony. He would then talk with the authority of a university professor about the perceived sweetness of the aroma as he let the sauce settle into an inky puddle in the bottom of the glass. Leung would declare that the true test of soy sauce was in the taste, dip a bamboo chopstick into the soy sauce to sample the product. Then he placed a drop on the tongue of each of girls. Finally he tasted one drop himself, smacking his lips loudly before declaring that the sauce was, of course, perfect and delicious.
This nightly ritual of testing soy sauce became a family joke as well as a celebration of everything that the aromatic liquid had brought them. As her family tucked into delicious dinners of soy sauce and fragrant jasmine rice, they laughed and joked about the day’s events and their adventures in the street, while my grandmother regaled the family with tales of the luxurious life on Robinson Road.
For everyone in the family, life was good. As the months passed, Hong Kong no longer seemed so alien and the island revealed its mysteries to them. As they walked the streets, especially near the quayside, they would often pass new families who had just arrived from the mainland. They were easy to spot, wide eyed, startled by the noise and bustle, with dirty faces and tatty rural clothes and their bundled possessions pressed tightly to their chests. My grandmother confessed that she would point them out and laugh her sophisticated city dwellers laugh.
“Now now, Lilly”, her father would say. “Don’t you remember your tears in the market? Not so long ago, that was us.” The days of the factory and the fields and their simple life seemed so long ago. But back home in Guangzhou, greed and jealousy were growing in the village as news of Leung’s success seeped back to his former neighbours.
This excerpt is taken from Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse. Published by Random House in 33 countries. Now available on Kindle.
