Sweet Mandarin

Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of Chinese Women and Their Journey from East to West, by Helen Tse.

The story of Tse’s family is a remarkable journey through four generations of Chinese cooking, framed by the decision of Helen and her sisters to leave their successful careers (Helen was a Cambridge-educated finance attorney) to open the Sweet Mandarin restaurant in Manchester, England.

Because her grandmother Lily had five sisters and no brothers, she worked in the family soy sauce business until her father was murdered. With no male heir, the girls and their mother were forced out of their home and Lily became an amah for a British family during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in the 1930s. They eventually gave her enough money to emigrate to England where she founded a restaurant which was lost to the gambling debts of her daughter Mabel’s husband.

The author uses her family’s colorful history to tell the story of many Chinese immigrants who carved out a life in their new country by cooking.

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