storiesofhomeatarestuarant

[storiesofhomeatarestuarant]

Steaming Comfort: Dumplings and Joy at Home (Story 1)

#2008 #celebratingmomsbday #restaurant #home

If home was where you spent the most time in, my family’s Chinese restaurant would be home. With its flashy LED signs advertising the lunch specials out front, home was a small enclosure of about six hundred square feet. The dining area’s six tables and twelve chairs were rickety plastic, draped in pink – all serendipitous yard sale finds by my dad. Matching the tablecloths, the carnation pink walls were the backdrop to the paraphernalia of Chinese pieces around the restaurant. The small altar echoing soft Buddhist chants was lit with incense every morning to start the business day off with wishes of prosperity. The Feng Shui porcelain cat was perched on a red countertop like a trophy that my siblings and I were forbidden to touch. Home is the symbolism of my parents’ immigrant dream – it was a place where they rebuilt their lives from the hardships during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and provided stability for their three children.

#2008 #home #celebratingmy6thbday

#mymomsfavbuddhistchantwouldplayattherestuarant

My earliest memory of home was associated with fuzzy feelings of comfort and childish naiveness. Perched on cases of stacked canned sodas when I was four, I preoccupied myself with teddies and board games in the back storage room. School was out for summer and the restaurant doubled as my daycare to save money. The clatter and sizzle from the kitchen woks, along with the jarring shouts in Cantonese, were indicative of the weekday lunchtime rush. At two o’clock, the lunchtime rush would dwindle, and my puggy legs would dart to the kitchen, scouring for my usual midday snack. That day was particularly lucky, as I remember my mother’s back was hunched over the wooden cutting board, crimping and pan-frying my favourite pork dumplings. Hot and crispy from the frying pan, I rested on a wobbly bar stool and devoured those small morsels of meat. The fragrant green onion in the dumplings was delicious and the kitchen’s smell of grease was more of a comfort to me than I could ever imagine. I adored being around my parents, and I would follow them around the kitchen in deep admiration, mimicking them adding spices in a bowl and holding wok spatulas. The restaurant was a place of fun – a much cooler playground where I could eat to my heart’s desire. In the recess of my young and naïve mind, I couldn’t imagine a better place. It had not yet become a place where I would dread my eventual responsibilities and duties in the restaurant.

#kitchen #lunchrush

[storiesofhomeatarestuarant]

Lost in Translation with Resentment (Story 2)

Home in elementary school began to change. The sentiments of naiveness and simplicity with the restaurant wavered. I went to a predominately white, wealthy elementary school, and it was during school that I was first aware of my differences from my peers. It was Career Day in third grade. My teacher invited the class’s parents to speak about their occupations. The career day forms handed out a week before felt like a mockery to me. I already knew my parents couldn’t come in to see my class. Unlike my classmate’s parents, they couldn’t take a day off from work. The restaurant operated three hundred sixty-five days a year from 11 am to midnight by my parents. I remember walking around the classroom to ask my classmates whether their parents were coming to Career Day. Their answers were identical. “Of course, my mom is going to come. It’s going to be so exciting”, my best friend Pius exclaimed.

My bitterness deepened further with a realization. Even if they could come to Career Day, no one would understand their broken English. My face began to grow pink, and embarrassment and resentment coursed through me. Why couldn’t they take just one day off? Why couldn’t they be professionals in a fancy office like the movies and my friends’ parents? I began to loathe the restaurant because it was the barrier separating me from my parents, and me from my classmates. It separated me from normalcy and fitting in.

When I entered high school, I shouldered more formal responsibilities and duties at the restaurant. With these added expectations, the restaurant become suffocating to me, barring me from normal teenage activities. After school ended at three, I had to bus straight to the restaurant to help my parents, and from 3:30 pm, I was working – servicing customers, prepping vegetables, answering the phone, or cleaning the tables. Around midnight, I usually had a couple of hours of solitude, typically for homework. It was unfair that I had to miss out on extracurriculars while all my friends lived their teenage lives at sports tryouts and parties. I grew more hostile towards my parents, blaming them for the situation I was in.

I remember on a quiet night during my sophomore year, I mustered enough courage to finally confront my mom about how I couldn’t be a normal teenager because of the restaurant. There was a Halloween party coming up that weekend, and I wanted to go. I had already missed the prior ones and couldn’t stomach being left out again. When my mother delivered her "no", all the emotions inside me boiled over. “Why can’t you be a normal parent for once? Why do I have to carry your burden?” I shouted.

My mother’s nostrils widened; her eyes were equally as angry as mine. “I sacrifice everything for you. You work here so I can pay your university tuition. I am trying my best”, she exclaimed.

My father was a silent observer – a non-confrontational man – and even he let his emotions show, shaking his head back and forth in disappointment at me.

I didn’t care. My mother’s words rang deaf to my ears, as I locked myself in the bathroom, hot rage still pumping through my body. Why couldn’t they understand me? Why couldn’t I just be normal?

[storiesofhomeatarestuarant]

A Taste of Home, A Taste of Guilt (Story 3)

The COVID-19 pandemic had upended my senior year and home life like many others. The constant lockdowns from the pandemic had decimated my parents’ business. To stay afloat, my parents laid off the already minimal help they were getting, and my siblings and I had to work full-time there. Increased hours at the restaurant exacerbated my already heightened resentment towards the place and my parents. However, for the first time in a long time, it was undergirded by an unfamiliar feeling – relief that I would move to university in the fall. The fact that I would be moving away from university gave me a sense of hope and liberation from this place that long revenged against my desire for normalcy. I would be liberated from the place that provided so much inner turmoil for me.

Sitting in the same corner of the restaurant, I remember my body taut with exhaustion from being on my feet and packaging takeout orders for hours. It was one in the morning when the restaurant would finally close, and I would sit at the far side table, completing my homework. I stared at my grueling chemistry homework, just counting down the days to university. “University will be normal”, I repeated multiple times while doing my stoichiometry assignments. I sang that mantra like a religious hymn.

Fall arrived and I was settled in my dorm. The time away from the restaurant and my parents was eerie – most definitely not as liberating and joyous as I envisioned before. After the first few weeks of orientation, constantly surrounded by new people, I returned to my dorm, alone in my own company for the first time since moving in. The thrill and buzz of everything felt now expired, and it was disconcerting how I didn’t feel immediate belonging and comfort as I so believed I would. Laying down on my bed, the quietness in my dorm felt cold and empty, compared to the perpetual noise of the restaurant. It was nearly eleven pm, which meant if I were at the restaurant, the phone would still be ringing for late-night orders, and the hum of the dishwasher would be going. As I laid in bed, I thought about what my parents would be doing at this exact moment. I envisioned my father’s tired eyes, looking towards the vegetable he would be chopping for tomorrow’s prep. I envisioned my mother sweeping the dining area.

Saltiness began to rim my eyes, and I felt deep guilt reside in my stomach. I felt guilty because I could and did escape that reality that I had for so long resented, but my parents could not. They didn’t have a choice, but I did. This chance to move forward in university felt so undeserving because my parents, the people I knew who sacrificed the most, wouldn’t be able to experience the same thing. Shame enveloped me because the entitlement and resentment I long felt were misdirected. It was only at that moment that I realized it.

The holidays soon arrived, and I visited for Christmas.

As I walked toward the restaurant, the familiar sights of the LED signs and myriad photos of Chinese dishes evoked a sense of comfort I missed. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t resent the restaurant. I wasn’t ashamed of it.

I welcomed it.

I was home.

[storiesofhomeatarestuarant]

Noodles and Nostalgia: Reckoning with Home by Sammi Chan

Noodles and Nostalgia: Reckoning with Home has 3 stories, which deal with the experience of being a first-generation child of Chinese immigrant parents. Each story follows the evolution of my relationship with home. My relationship with home was complicated yet symbiotic to my relationship with my immigrant parents. It begins with rose-tinted glasses and a strong sentiment of belonging, and then marred with resentment, and lastly guilt. The issues explored are classism, the strong desire to fit in, and first-generation guilt and resentment.