In my first year in the UK, I lost my sense of taste. I was shocked by this discovery. Just like the chef in Ang Lee's movie "Eating Men and Women", my taste buds are inexplicably degraded, my response to food is slow, and I can't tell the difference between smelly and salty. I was originally a boring person, but now I can't eat enough, and life is missing a great pleasure.
Stills from "Eating Men and Women".
In fact, when I first arrived in the UK, I immediately noticed signs of taste loss: the same cooking techniques as in China, but the Chinese food made at home in London tasted like chewing wax, and it didn't taste the same way. Two of my favorite home-cooked dishes, scrambled eggs with tomatoes and braised pork ribs, used to be a trick at the bottom of the box, but now they have a bland taste and the pork ribs have a lingering fishy smell. So I began to desperately put more seasonings, oil, salt, sugar, chicken essence, all in order to make the taste rich, but the result backfired, the family pouted, pushed the dishes and chopsticks away, and glared at me with complaining eyes to express their protest. The division of a family begins at the dinner table. When I was in China, I controlled the voice at the dinner table, like a king on the stove, frying, frying, stir-frying, free-flowing, majestic, thinking I was in control of everything, but now I found that in England, everything in the past is zero.
- "Taste of Chinatown"
Yang Meng has been a journalist in China for 20 years, and has published non-fiction works such as "Strange Chinese" and "Unquiet Rivers". In 2016, the family of three moved to London, England, and he hoped to record and reflect the lives of overseas Chinese through writing, and published "25 Letters from London" (Shanghai Translation Publishing House).
Taste of Chinatown
Yang Meng
Shanghai Translation Publishing House
25 Letters from London
Yang Meng
Shanghai Translation Publishing House
When he first arrived, he himself experienced severe discomfort with water and soil, and even unpleasant food, and was completely unacceptable to the so-called desert British food. Especially at the beginning of the epidemic, many Western media pointed the finger at Chinese and Chinese food, and British media reported on many extreme incidents of Chinese restaurants being harassed, graffiti, and Chinese being discriminated against, and even abused and beaten on the street. This made him pay attention to and think about the experience of British (overseas) Chinese: how did generations of Chinese cross the ocean? And how do you survive in a foreign country? He decided to explore the footprints and hearts of the Chinese people and write a legacy for the Chinese community in the UK.
Now I'm heading to Chinatown, which is a refuge for the taste buds. When I first came to London, Chinatown was a must-visit for me every week, my canteen, a relief house that warmed the souls of strangers. From my house, take bus 176 past Dawich High Street, Danish Hill, King's Hospital, West Street Market, Elephant Castle, across the River Thames, into the heart of London, Big Ben, Parliament, Whitehall, through the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and you will arrive in Chinatown.
The site of the UK's first Chinese restaurant, now a casino. Photo: Yang Meng
I go to Chinatown more often than the English go to church. The pilgrimage, which took only 45 minutes in the first year, has now increased to around 70 minutes – and London has become increasingly crowded and noisy. First Jamaicans, Indians, then Vietnamese, Hong Kongers, and now Chinese mainland, have poured into this fantasy city, bringing with them delicious food. There are at least more than 20,000 Chinese restaurants and takeaways in the UK, and Chinese food is so popular, but I never thought about what kind of immigrants made the food. What kind of stories do they have? Is it like I have a soul that has nowhere to put it?
- "Taste of Chinatown"
Yang Meng noticed that many Chinese in the UK are engaged in the Chinese restaurant business, the earliest Chinese restaurants are mostly opened by Chinese seafarers, they shuttle between Shanghai, Guangdong, Liverpool, London, after landing in the UK, because there is nothing else, in order to support their families, began to operate Chinese restaurants, this is the prototype of the British (overseas) Chinese food industry.
Later, due to different backgrounds of the times, a large number of Chinese people poured in, such as the old overseas Chinese who came to Britain to escape the war in the forties and fifties, the British accepted a large number of foreign workers in the sixties and seventies, and a large number of Chinese from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Southeast Asia poured in. Many of them choose to run Chinese restaurants in the UK to promote Chinese food culture, raise Westerners' understanding of Chinese food, and improve their lives.
Since the first Chinese restaurant opened in London, this journey has been going on for more than 100 years.
A roast meat shop in Chinatown. Photo: Yang Meng
When I visited London for the first time in 2009, I was a predominantly Hong Konger-owned restaurant in Chinatown, and I spoke Mandarin to the Cantonese-speaking waiters like a chicken and a duck. I love the gaudy faces, the smell of cracked fat in the air, and the Hong Kong cooks sitting in the wet kitchen doorway with a cigarette in their mouth. Everything is very similar to the old Hong Kong, as if paying homage to the atmosphere of the city around Apliu Street and Yau Ma Tei. London's Chinatown was initially shaped by Hong Kong people. This is different from the Chinese composition in Chinatowns elsewhere. San Francisco's Chinatown was founded by Taishanites in Guangdong Province as descendants of coolies; The Chinatowns of Los Angeles and Sydney were quite a few Vietnamese Chinese (later refugees).
- "Taste of Chinatown"
Yang Meng decided to use Chinese restaurant operators from different eras and backgrounds as the subjects to look at the 100-year overseas struggle of British Chinese.
London's Chinatown is located in Soho and is structured around two main streets, with a total of 11 streets, including the periphery. There are about 60 Chinese restaurants, one Korean restaurant, four hair and beauty salons, two Chinese medicine halls, six gaming halls, a gay bar, several supermarkets and at least six erotic massage parlors. Chinese elements such as red lanterns, stone lions, and antique archways are dotted throughout, mixing and matching gloomy and old British architecture. The lampposts in London are all black, but here they are painted bright red, which is easy to recognise, and in my opinion, it is more like a sign of non-me. Western tourists come here to take pictures of the slick roast duck and brightly colored roast meat in the shop windows, and watch the chef expertly chop chickens and ducks with knives on the cutting board. Chinatown is as flashy as a Hollywood movie set, imbued with an old-fashioned Chinese mindset that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the China I'm familiar with growing up.
- "Taste of Chinatown"
Through extensive interviews and research, he found for the first time the information on the first Chinese restaurant to open in England: a Chinese restaurant opened in 1898 by a Cantonese owner.
Following this clue, Yang Meng found many key figures in the British Chinese restaurant industry.
The late Luo Xiaojian, a Chinese foodie and diplomat, once introduced Chinese food to the BBC, and almost all older British aunts knew and remembered this lean Chinese gentleman. Yang Meng interviewed his daughter and restored many real scenes of the British Chinese restaurant industry at that time; Yang Meng also interviewed Zhou Yinghua, who is already in his eighties, Zhou Yinghua is the son of Peking Opera master Zhou Xinfang, who opened the first high-end Chinese restaurant in London, he was moved by Zhou Yinghua's deep Chinese complex, Zhou Yinghua's restaurant is called "Mr. Zhou", the purpose of this name is to let every British person who enters the store to consume call him "sir"; Yang Meng also interviewed restaurant owners in Hong Kong, China, who had hosted Chinese leaders who had immigrated to Britain in large numbers during the development of Hong Kong's land in the fifties and sixties, and who had greatly expanded the territory of Chinese takeaways. Finally, Yang Meng interviewed many Chinese compatriots who worked in Britain after the reform and opening up, and they presented more wonderful and authentic Chinese food to Westerners, whose influence far exceeded that of other stages in history.
Interior view of the first high-end Chinese restaurant "Mr. Zhou". Photo: Yang Meng
Now it is a gathering of Chinese from all over the world, with different accents. You can find food from almost every province in China. In Chinatown, the supermarkets of Sihe Hong and Longfeng Hong are full of people, but there are more salespeople who speak Beijing, and Lao Gan Ma hot sauce and spicy strips appear on the shelves. With the influx of new immigrants from China, authentic Chinese food is pouring in. Mainland restaurants such as Liangshan Haohan, Emei Yipai, and Beijing Courtyard have appeared in Chinatown, and the name looks like a martial arts competition. One day I was eating at a restaurant that claimed to be "authentic Sichuan cuisine", and halfway through the meal, I became suspicious of the "dandan noodles" with the smell of seafood noodles, and I couldn't help but hand my guy to me and ask, "Is this made by the Sichuan chef?" The guy immediately admitted: "The chef is from Fuqing." That's right. Hong Kong people, Fuqing people, Shandong people, are shaping a new Chinese immigrant group, creating a new Tang flavor. I used to go to Sihe Hong Supermarket to buy fresh bean sprouts and long-leaf vegetables, and Longfeng Hang to buy pork knuckles without fishy smell, and after eating the pork and green onion buns from the People's Commune, my body was completely filled with an earthy Chinese taste. After that, pick up a few free Chinese newspapers in the style of the overseas edition of the People's Daily and take the No. 176 bus home.
- "Taste of Chinatown"
In the interview, Yang Meng got acquainted with Wei Guirong from Shaanxi, she came out of the remote countryside, in order to improve her life, apprenticed in a restaurant in Xi'an, learned a skill, with superb cooking skills, and killed in the United Kingdom, with Xi'an noodles and meat buns, conquered the stomach of the British, won many food awards, in the kitchen with a male tradition, broke out of the world, and became a representative of a new generation of Chinese Chinese food practitioners.
An alley behind Chinatown. Photo: Yang Meng
The aroma of food fills the air, and the feeling of homesickness grows stronger. I've walked through Chinatown countless times, and I haven't noticed what kind of stories from other places are behind these fragrant Chinese restaurants. How did the Chinese start their Chinese food adventure in a foreign country?
I came up with the idea of following their stories: Were the Chinese who cooked these delicacies, like me, embarking on a journey of obscurity for a vague goal, and then lost in the new reinforced concrete?
- "Taste of Chinatown"
In the past three years, he interviewed nearly 100 British Chinese food practitioners, from the world's top chefs to ordinary workers, as well as food writers including Fu Xia, to explore the development of the British Chinese food industry, and to fully display the magnificent journey of Chinese (Chinese) overseas in the past hundred years through the stories of three generations of British Chinese restaurateurs, and finally form this "Taste of Chinatown".
Yang Meng said: "Chinese food is a kaleidoscope, through which you can see the hard-working Chinese (Chinese), the ingenuity of the Chinese, the flexibility and enterprising of the Chinese, and the roots of all Chinese." ”
*The quotation in the article is excerpted from the preface of "A Taste of Chinatown" "A Taste of London"
- END -
Taste of Chinatown
Yang Meng
Shanghai Translation Publishing House
Three Chinese "chefs" from different eras, the evolution of British Chinese cuisine, and the century-old immigration history of overseas Chinese.
Zhou Yinghua, a Shanghai immigrant in the 1950s, Helen a Hong Kong immigrant in the 1970s, and Wei Guirong, an immigrant from Xi'an in the 2000s. In the UK, these three generations of Chinese eventually chose Chinese restaurants as their place to live, and they also subtly revolutionized the perception of Chinese food and cuisine in Western society.
Through interviews with three generations of "chefs", "Taste of Chinatown" combines historical materials on the development of British Chinatown and Chinese cuisine, outlining the immigration history of overseas Chinese in the past 100 years. In the ups and downs of foreign land stories and culinary adventures, a new flavor of the Tang people is revealed.
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