Description
Book SynopsisSpanning almost a hundred years, this rich and evocative true story recounts the lives of three generations of remarkable Chinese women. Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the UK. Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through.
A love of food and a talent for cooking pulled each generation through the most devastating of upheavals. Helen Tse's grandmother, Lily Kwok, was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father. Crossing the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s, Lily honed her famous chicken curry recipe. Eventually she opened one of Manchester's earliest Chinese restaurants where her daughter, Mabel, worked from the tender age of nine. But gambling and the Triads were pervasive in the Chinese immigrant community, and they tragically lost the restaurant. It was up to Helen and her sisters, the third generation of these exceptional women, to re-establish their grandmother's dream.
Sweet Mandarin shows how the most important inheritance is wisdom, and how recipes - passed down the female line - can be the most valuable heirloom.
Trade ReviewRead this book. It is the story of an amazing family - three generations of Chinese women and their sweet and sour, hot and bitter lives * Xinran, author of THE GOOD WOMEN OF CHINA *
Sweet Mandarin is a banquet of family stories that take us from a small Chinese village to cosmopolitan Hong Kong and urban Manchester.Along the way, the ingredients of special dishes and a rich life are added:a homemade stock of hard life,a pound of tragedy, a spoonful of daring, a dash of curses, and dollop after dollop of sheer will.This is a family memoir of survival and victories, luck and determination, and perpetual mounds of dirty dishes waiting to be washed. -- Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
Fascinating stuff * Metro *
An amazing and charming read * Woman *
Tse captures the drama, colour and particularly the flavours of Lily's life * Scotland on Sunday *
