I interviewed my Mother about growing up in a Chinese restaurant after she moved from London to Antwerp (Belgium) at the age of four with her family in 1976.
The restaurant was called Chopstick, which was displayed vividly with a neon light-up sign alternating from English to Chinese.
When I asked her about how she would have fun in and around the restaurant when she was young, she said, “we would play hide and seek in the storage room.” and that her and her sisters would hide behind large 50kg bags of rice, climbing on them and even pretending that they were mountains.
She had three other sisters to play with and hide and seek was not their only game.
Mum spoke thoughtfully about how she would pretend that the food trolleys were ambulance stretchers, and that they would use empty food tins and string to make imaginary telephones.
But sometimes, the restaurant got in the way of social life.
“We would open every day except on a Wednesday, because the children in primary school would have a half day of school.” Meaning that her parents took just one day a week off.
Mum and her sisters ate dinner every day at four o’clock when the restaurant was closed to avoid getting in the way of the customers, and when they got older, they started to help around.
“It was quite tough.” she commented “When we were little, we had staff but the older we got we were told to contribute in the weekends.”
By the time she was twelve years old, Mum was helping in the kitchen, serving and taking orders from customers, as well as answering the phone for takeaways (speaking both Flemish and Cantonese, and sometimes she was even challenged to speak French!)
Working meant that they had to work in the holidays too, meaning that she missed out on days like Christmas and Easter, but the celebration of Chinese New Year was never missed.
Every year, there was a big party to celebrate the Lunar New Year organised by the local Chinese community. “It was my favourite time of the year.” She told me.
Upon reflecting on her time in the restaurant, she remarked “I learned a lot in terms of how to handle money, people and how to be resilient.”
To this day, my grandparents still live in the very same restaurant, although they are retired, and the business is closed.
