Yolanda He immigrated from Anqing, Anhui Province, China in 1989 and now lives and Minnesota and is a co-owner of the Teahouse restaurant.
Beginning in Minnesota
At the beginning, we...I did not … I did not know we were going to open a restaurant. We moved here and my husband finish the school here, and then we went back to China doing business for few years, and then we moved back to Minnesota.
At that time before we live in Baton Rouge, then go to California, then we went to China for few years, after China for few years, then we came back to Minneapolis. After we came to Minneapolis, we did not find the...um...good authentic, I should say authentic Sichuan(1) style food--that’s my favourite cuisine--every time if we want the Chinese food, we have to drive all the way to Chicago [laughs] and so inconvenient. I grow up from a business family, own family, own business family. My grandma used to own two story: hotel and restaurant and grocery store back to my hometown, so we help her in her work yeah in elementary school. um...so I get that the idea and my grandma was a good cook, my mother was a good cook, um my mother is a good cook, so um… I like cooking yeah and then we realize that oh we should open a restaurant, so we ladies can work together. Sisters and mom work together then we can...can bring the good food into Twin City. So we open up the authentic Sichuan cuisine here with the first one brought the authentic Sichuan cuisine to the Twin City, that was 18 years ago.
At that time, it’s so funny, we open the restaurant, we only have the menu in Chinese not in English at all. We even realized that local people like the authentic Sichuan food, too. So um…after we put the advertisement at the Chinese community, a lot of Chinese family came to the Teahouse(2), at that time, the students- they bring their family, bring their co-worker and after a few months we started to have the local American customer come alone ask for the authentic food. They did not remember which one their friend order for them, and we realize that we need the English version, too [laughs]. Now we create an English version menu also.
http://www.sichuanchili.com/?p=3845
We introduce and educate them how authentic Sichuan Food is and tell them how, how it is prepared and, and encourage them to try the authentic Sichuan Food like string sauce chicken and Chao Mian, and Long Mian(3) is good too. It is authentic flavor is real Chinese Food.I’m the one um in the operation,a very daily operation, so everyday come over, most of time come over at 8 o’clock. Be on time just give out the assigned work for front and kitchen and make sure all the product in the morning come over fresh and… and that...just...just….take care of the party what’s going on and catering...make everything function, yeah.
Cultural Differences
For sure you always have a difficult especially for a foreigner. Yeah just to give a very simple example, we used to live in, uh Savage and we brought our first house in Savage and we once called a service to change my window which had storm damage and so the insurance covered it. So I call the service and service guys showed up. They changed the window, uh, with the frame. Everything. But they didn’t seal and they didn’t fix firm.
We had to move to Plymouth and we bought a restaurant in Plymouth. So the guy didn’t showed up and we thought it is over. So we moved, we sold the house and we moved. We called the realtor to fix the window for us and few months later, I think about year later, the court informed us that we must show up the court because we didn’t pay the bill. We explained everything but the judge, uh, think we should pay the bill. We thought why, they didn’t finish their work. But as long as they did the work, you have to pay the bill. If they didn’t finish job, you sue them back. So some illegally problem that we faced here that in China we had never face this kind of situation before. In China you have to finish the job completely, and I pay you, which is totally different with here. [That’s not fair], but you have to follow the court.
I just bought, once a while I just bought CD from China and then play it at the restaurant! It’s small world now. When we first moved to here, it’s so limited, it’s so hard to find it: music, and food, material, to make the hometown flavor, um, now it’s so convenient, we can order online, we can have a lot of lot of ah grocery store open start opening around. It’s very convenient, even though we still have some ingredients we have to order all the way from China, or New York, or Los Angeles, so we can keep our food authentic in flavor yeah, we still do that.
The first city I arrived in the US is Baton Rouge. Very south, yeah, and that kind of quiet, very quiet. In China, you know have a lot of people and since we moved to Baton Rouge, I still remembered the second day. I just look outside the windows, [and said] where is the people? I couldn’t find the crowded street, not at all, very quiet.
It’s totally different and that’s really interesting. For example, your can greeting people on the street, but in China, if you greeting people on the street, people might think you are crazy (laughs). Right here you say hi that is ok, don’t matter, you know, you need to know that person or not, then you just say hi. But in China you only say hi to the people you know [laughs] that’s the small thing yeah. And here people, different way, they always positively encourage you, you know, but in China, people canna be shy.
I think that a very interesting way is..um..eye contact, in China, if we contact with elder people, we cannot look at their eyes or stare their eyes and listen to you and talk to you. [looks down] OK, mother, OK. Maybe the new generation learn a bit different, but here, eye contact is so important, you have to look at the person,right? But in China, if you stare at elder people, that’s really insult, yeah.
You have a more opportunity here. I think China has been changed a lot in the last um...twenty, fifteen years after we immigrating to this country. Now is different, I think it’s really close to US right now pretty much, but back then, it’s different. It’s so hard to afford, you know right here the students you can…if I...if I wanna go trying business, I wanna stop going to college for few years, that’s ok here. But in China, you cannot quit the college, you have to go or you have to finish the college, then you find a job, here, a lot of students are very freedom, they can all try out the one semester: I wanna get a break or I wanna find a job first that for one or two years, then they go back to this school. But in China, it’s impossible [laughs]. I think it’s still impossible, is that right? It’s still yeah, if you go to college, you cannot tell the college hold on this...this for me, I wanna go to work for two years, and then come back and the college cannot be waiting for you.
Growing Cultural Acceptance
We always celebrate local holiday, US holiday, here. Christmas, or we always have some specialty, like uh Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, yes promotion for restaurant, a lot of special going on, but for Chinese um holiday, people, I should say in the last 10 years, the local people starting to celebrate the Chinese holidays too. For example, like, Honeywell, like, the General Mill(4) is starting all the catering from us, Chinese New Year, they have a lot of Chinese staff and they have a budget for them to celebrate the Chinese New Year. That’s a very good thing! Very thoughtful. We get a lot too, we do a lot of catering for Chinese New Year. They order hundreds of dumplings. For Chinese New Year they have the dumplings. It is a really wonderful! We have a small world now! Yeah, compare 25 years ago that’s totally different. Back then, no one even talked about Chinese New Year. Nobody talked about Moon Cake, the festival, or...not at all! Now, people get involved.
Community
[My grandma] was a very strong lady. When she was young, she lost her husband, and she raised four kids and she was a great business lady back then. I kinda, uh, I think she is my role model. She passed away when she was ninety-seven. A great successful life. She is always busy busy busy around and never stopped and she helped a lot in community in China. Everybody knew her in village and she helped a lot in community. I miss the community. People there were very close to each other and I grew up in a small city so people kinda very close to each other. If you have anything going on, everybody just jumps in to help. Just like a big family. You know what I mean? And, um, just like here, my husband lived in a big city, which is a totally different life and he said, he said he never have sleepover before. He said they only do that in U.S. But I say, no! When I was young, we had sleepover, just with friend on the same street. I think small city and big city is a really big difference even in China.
Unfortunately, I do not get a lot involved in community. We always moved around in US. After we moved to Minnesota we completely settled down, but after we settled down, we just opened, continually open the restaurant for four restaurant and that kept us so busy and unfortunately we did not get so much involved in the community. But I missed that part a lot. Just once a while we get a little bit involved that like in an auction for a company, we donate nice dinner for the auction for years. And I just get involved here and there but just not that much in person. We lately sold a lot of restaurant, we sold a restaurant in St. Paul location a month ago and we sold one in Minneapolis location a week ago. Yeah, a lot changed. Yeah, one of my main partner moved to Los Angeles two years ago. Two years ago, she opened the restaurant there and then she found the big partner from China in Beijing called the Mei Zhou Dong Po(5). Yeah, ok it’s a big restaurant they have- a hundred- around a hundred restaurants in China, 5 thousand employees- staff- yeah, in China 3 thousand cook. They gonna-- they open the restaurant together in, ah , Los Angeles three years ago, they gonna open two more in Pennsylvania this year and they sign the contract that the Mission Hotel in Las Vegas, they gonna open restaurant in the next year in Las Vegas. Yeah, that’s going on.
So that’s why I only concentrate on this location right now and do some catering. Then I can slow down my life, I can get involved in the community, I--I love people, that’s why I entered to do the restaurant. I enjoy what I’m-- the job I am doing. Yeah, I grew up in a big family, um, and since I was little I just see a lot of my grandma in the community so I always enjoy to um deal with people.
Footnotes:
1. Famous Chinese food style that uses a lot of garlic and other bold flavors.
2.Name of her restaurant, which is located off of Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, MN
3.Chao Mian is a type of fried noodle and Long Mian is very long noodle that people eat on their birthday to celebrate being “over the hill.”
4.General Mill and Honeywell are both companies which began in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
5.A restaurant franchise which is famous in China
Story Facilitators:
Elissa Severseike, Yang Li, Keyu Qian
No comments:
Post a Comment