A Glimpse of Life in a Chinese Restaurant

The following is an excerpt from a larger essay.
Lin's Asian Fusion features an incredible menu with high quality Chinese-American, Thai, and some Japanese cuisine (up next for business consideration is to have a sushi bar). The business is owned by Hiu and Annie Lam (pronounced “Lahm”), both originally from the southeastern Fujian province of China. Noting my confusion at the name discrepancy, Hiu leaned against the wall with his hands folded behind the backwards yellow Steelers baseball cap on his head and began to explain, looking faraway through his glasses.

His last name (林) is commonly read as “Lin” (three other Chinese workers at the time could also be recognized as “Mr. Lin”). But Hiu was born as a third child after the Chinese Communist revolution. Hiu couldn’t be officially recognized as “Lin” because he wasn’t officially allowed to be born. After his family moved to Hong Kong the name was read in Cantonese as “Lam.” And so by establishing his own restaurant, he concluded, “I won back my name.” Hiu had moved to the United States when he was 11 years old and has worked in Chinese restaurants his entire life. He met his wife through an arranged marriage that has since resulted in a happy family with two daughters – and they share boarding with the cooks.

Hiu’s wife is known to the waitresses as Annie. Sai Hua is her Chinese name, but Hiu most often calls her “Annie-ah”, just as her two daughters call her “Mommy-ah”). She is tall and rail thin, similarly bespectacled, with a long ponytail and bangs, and looks half her age. She laughs about her own broken English, but sometimes wishes that it were better even after all her years of study. But whichever language, Annie rarely shuts up, and is almost constantly attached to her iPhone, laughing, rambling, or muttering quietly in Chinese. And for the waitresses she is full of enthusiasm and encouraging advice. “You look tired,” she remarked to a waitress, then cried, “You need energy. I will fill you with the Kung Fu Power!” completing it with arms outstretched and hands cupped in an action pose. When she learns a new English word in conversation, she looks it up on her iPhone, having double-checked the spelling with an American waitress. “P-S-Y-C-H-I-C” I spelled once, because I had teased her about her prediction of a delivery order. “I like that word!” she exclaimed, and dashed off to the cooks to teach them. “Psychic! Psychic!” they chorused. Hiu walked out a few minutes later, shaking his head, commenting dryly, “It sounds like they’re saying ‘Suck it'.

Annie first came to Canada with her family when she was in high school, with just the human resources tutor and no Chinese classmates to help her learn English. But at her graduation she gave a speech that inspired her audience to tears, and she still keeps in touch with that tutor, who even attended her wedding. Annie married Hiu after high school and continued in restaurant business because she felt that English would be too difficult for her at a college level. Remembering her first English classes in the United States she mused, “Annie always try to be per-fect.” I asked her if it was because she liked languages. “No,” she laughed. “I knew that I wanted a better life here than my mother. She didn’t know any English.” In Canada Annie had lived with her aunt and uncle, apart from her parents who were working days and nights in a restaurant. It’s a job many Chinese immigrants make take up not because it was their first ambition, but because it was the only opportunity.

Men at a ticket booth for the Chinatown bus line 

  
According to the work of American born Chinese (ABC) journalist Jennifer 8. Lee, in 2007 there were 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States, and this was more than the combined total of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs (Lee, 9).  It almost goes without saying that American Chinese takeout is almost completely unrecognizable to native Chinese. General Tso is a famous war hero who never conceived the fried chicken dish, and the concept of fortune cookies actually originated from Japan (“Jennifer 8. Lee Hunts for General Tso”). But many of the workers still come straight from China, and most of them, including those from Lin’s Asian Fusion, find their jobs through the Chinatown in New York City. These workers may continue to travel and commute through Chinatown bus services, which run in major cities in both the eastern and western United States (the men at Lin’s have recently switched to using Megabus for the sake of cost). Cooks, dishwashers, and delivery drivers may work in several restaurants throughout their life, perhaps over 12 hours each day, 6-7 days a week (Lin’s Asian Fusion only closes on Thanksgiving Day). They are isolated from most of society except for co-workers and family, which might be scattered between China and different cities in the United States. Finally, some might hope for a better future for their children who will grow up speaking a language they never had time to learn ("Chinese Restaurant Workers in U.S. Face Hurdles"). “I tell [my daughter] Michelle, I don’t work for me. I work for you.” said Annie. 

Sources:


"Chinatown Bus" Chinatown-Bus.org. Chinatown-Bus.org, 2012. Web. 19 Apr 2012. <http://www.chinatown-bus.org/>.

Inskeep, Steve, host. "Chinese Restaurant Workers in U.S. Face Hurdles." Writ. Margot Alder, and Ken Guest. Morning Edition. National Public Radio: 08/05/2007. Radio.
<http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=10069448>.

Lee, Jennifer, writ. Jennifer 8. Lee Hunts for General Tso. TED Conferences, LLC, 2008. Web. 19 Apr 2012. < http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_8_lee_looks_for_general_tso.html >.