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Angela Hui, Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter, Orion Books, 2023. 352 pgs.

Evocative and painstakingly honest, Angela Hui’s memoir Takeaway centres on the everyday lives of Chinese migrants in the UK. Drawing from her experience as the daughter of Hong Kong migrants who run a Chinese takeaway in rural Wales, the coming-of-age narrative is filled with colourful memories and one’s ambivalent, jagged sense of belonging, while the recipes of authentic Chinese dishes ranging from claypot rice to scrambled eggs with tomato reflects how food culture and food memories are so anchored in the rituals of the Chinese family. 

What strikes me as the most moving aspect of the memoir is the use of the distinct and honest coming-of-age perspective, and how the first-person speaker sees equally the value of labour of her parents, building their lives around the takeaway such that they can offer a better life to their children:

My parents didn’t open and run a takeaway out of passion and love, they did it in order to fund a higher education for me and my brothers, to be able to study hard and get good jobs. […] My parents cook so that we don’t have to.

Meanwhile, the daughter is resentful of the fact that much of her childhood and teenage years involves helping with the business from time to time, and the adjustments one makes to one’s social life as a teenager: “Scratch that, I hate having no life. TGIF?? Thank God It’s Friday? More like ‘Takeaway Graft Is Forever’.”

The book is interspersed with dialogue, often revolving around the preparation of food orders at the takeaway where the family work together, as well as conversations between the first-person speaker (i.e., the daughter) and her peers at school, which shed light on the troubled identity. There are snippets of conversation and interior monologue around her parents, which hints at the difficulty for these migrants whose work conditions are often hostile, to maintain loving relationships and to foster self-belief.

The daughter struggles to understand cultural differences, especially the Asian culture against disobedience, as she hides the bullying she experiences at school: “But what would my parents make of me being bullied in school, if they knew what was happening? Would they step in to help? Would they kick up a fuss? They’d most likely tell me to stop being so over dramatic, fight back and get over it.”

Meanwhile, in documenting her exchanges with the customers while working in the takeaway, we catch a glimpse of the complex and candid portraits of the migrants and the social issues—inevitably including racist attitudes and class divides. For instance, from time to time the business will be vandalised: “Our lovely big shopfront window has fallen victim to an errant stone. […] who would do such a thing? And why us? What have we done to deserve this?” Inevitably, encounters like this trigger guilt or shame in the daughter and her family as well as the feeling of indignation—they have to navigate on a daily basis.

Hui has painted a very vivid and colourful world where food is the medium through which the daughter processes her culture and her own identity. In fact, Takeaway also prompts us to revisit or question about the danger of exoticising food or one’s origins and history, channelled through the production and consumption of Chinese or Asian food. In the memoir, for example, the first-person speaker reflects on the naming of food in the everyday rituals of that community. The phrase “Have you eaten yet?” generates a sense of affection and connection with people as it reveals the feeling behind such asking:

Food has a basic meaning, but there’s also an underlying message: eating well and eating properly are two very important things in Chinese culture. It’s a symbiotic and easily parsed relationship that expresses concern for whether somebody else has eaten, and it’s equivalent to expressing care, concern and protection for their well-being.

Throughout the book, the reader is urged to question the way we see or value “the other” in the society, especially on the ways we consider a person or culture “authentic”, both to their own community and to the white customers. On several occasions, the complaints from customers stem from a lack of appreciation or knowledge about Chinese dishes. Hui examines this “truth” about such everyday racism and identity in an accessible way.

In particular, the daughter’s fond and vivid recollections of the family’s regular trips to visit relatives in Hong Kong suggest the nature of belonging for the diasporic families: their lives can never return to what it used to be. At the same time, the lived experiences and values before their relocation will continue to shape and define their present and future moments. It is through these regular visits that she understands the “locals” there, and how people can tell “from a mile off that I was not a HKer because I was too polite”.

Tender and confident, this book charts the challenges and pride of working-class migrants in Britain, making a point of the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of class and race barriers for many of these people.

How to cite: Wong, Jennifer. “Acknowledging the Everyday Spaces of Working-class Chinese Migrants: Angela Hui’s Takeaway.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 10 Aug. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/08/10/takeaway.

Jennifer Wong was born and grew up in Hong Kong. She is the author of Letters Home (Nine Arches Press) and Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). She has a PhD in creative writing from Oxford Brookes University and currently lives in the UK. [Jennifer Wong and chajournal.blog.]