Did everything cost five takas in this park? The packet was so small that she would have to buy two of them. She was hungry. She had had just one luchi and half an egg that morning, with some vegetable labra, but that had been a while back. All that had been digested a long time ago. Of course, if she went home now, she would get hilsa polao, eggplant cooked in yogurt and spicy duck curry. There would laso be a tomato salad, tossed with onions, green chillies and cilantro. To go with the duck meat, there would be brown rice. There was no relief from this menu. Every year, on their birthdays, Farida Khanam prepared this menu with the dedication shown in a religious ritual. Not only that, after the meal, as a sunnat, following the Prophet’s practice to finish meals with a sweet, there was always rice pudding and homemade sweet curd.
‘Hellfire’ by Leesa Gazi (translated by Shabnam Nadiya)
In school everybody called Thuy that Chink. Spawn of Deng Xiao Ping. Goon boy of Beijing. In the neighbourhood everybody would see him and ask, hey when are you going back to your country. Have you sold all your furniture yet. The headmaster was summoned to the local police. Student Âu Phương Thuy should be watched closely. Student Âu Phương Thuy’s family have expressed their wish to stay in Vietnam. The higher-ups are still deliberating. The higher-ups have not yet made up their mind. But it’s our duty to ensure he is watched closely. The party congress has decreed that Beijing is enemy number one of the Vietnamese people. Student Âu Phương Thuy should be watched closely. The family might not have shown any signs yet. But it’s our duty to ensure that he is watched closely. After meeting with the police, the headmaster summoned a staff meeting. After meeting with the staff, the form teacher summoned a student council meeting. The next day a murmur went through the whole class, that boy Thuy is a problem. The next day again a rumour went through the whole school, that boy Thuy’s family is on the counterespionage police’s watchlist. That boy’s Thuy’s family receives secret documents from Beijing all the time. In class no one talked to him. No teacher called him to the blackboard. The other students looked away when he walked by. He was left out of military classes. He was exempted from writing letters of solidarity to servicemen in the Spratly Islands. In the final year of high school even the worst-behaved students were admitted to the Communist Youth Union. Not Thuy. They didn’t even mention him. They acted like they’d never heard of Thuy. They acted like there was no Thuy in the class.
– ‘Chinatown’ by Thuân (Translated by Nguyȇn An Lȳ)
I am using two recent publications, ‘Hellfire’ (2020) and ‘Chinatown’ (2022), to highlight how recent literature allows for the reader to be semi-literate in other cultural practices, or historical events. Whilst neither of these novels are set in London, nor feature a family settling into a different world, they both deal with family issues and cultural experiences outside of the standard “English” fare. Food retains its traditional name, we are meant to have a basic understanding of the Chinese sentiment in Vietnam.
Timothy Mo’s ‘Sour Sweet, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1982, is one of the early examples of characters from overseas coming to terms with living in London. The narrative primarily focuses on restaurant worker Chen, his housekeeping wife Lily, their son Man Kee and Lily’s sister Mui, who is a more recent arrival to London. Each of them have various levels of integration, for example Mui won’t leave the house and receives her education in English ways via television soap operas:
Only with difficulty would Lily persuade her to come to the living-room, where she deposited Mui on the sibilant black sofa and tried to draw her out. It wasn’t easy to find out what was wrong with Mui. Mui herself didn’t seem to know. She had worked for a foreigner before. Perhaps it was the concentration of them here that she found so disturbing. Lily went to work gradually; took her to the window and pointed out the shops on the other side of the street. She had to propel Mui to the net drapes with a firm hand in the small of the back. From this point of vantage Mui clutched the curtains and peered round the edge in a fair approximation of the evasive behaviour of one threatened by a manic sniper on the rooftops. Nevertheless, Lily persisted. She indicated the various premises on the shabby street: the Indian restaurant, the Hellenic provisions, the Jewish alterations tailor. Mui’s reaction was not encouraging.
Early in the novel we have been placed in the area where immigrants settle.
There is a concurrent thread of Triad gangs that use extortion on Chinese businesses, run illegal gambling dens, trade in high grade heroin and all of the usual associated tropes you would associate with organised crime. Timothy Mo introduces us to the various players using a simple resume, background style chapter detailing each character one by one. He also uses a simple literary device to explain to English readers the history of the Triad by having the leader give a lecture to new recruits.
Naturally the family who has moved to England to start a new life falls foul of the Triad, a favour is owed, however it is not in the linear narrative where the riches of this story lie, it is through the experiences of each of the family members, and later Chen’s father who is sent to live with them by the surviving brothers. An immigrant’s life, the hardships, racism, they need to withstand, their lack of understanding of the tax system, what is required to set up a new takeaway food business, items that “fall off the back of a truck” Lily can’t understand why they’re not broken, etc.
The Chen family decide, for various reasons, to open a takeaway Chinese food shop in a dilapidated part of London:
The food they sold, certainly wholesome, nutritious, colourful, even tasty in its way, had been researched by Chen. It bore no resemblance at all to Chinese cuisine. They served from a stereotyped menu, similar to those outside countless other establishments in the UK. The food was, if nothing else, thought Lily, provenly successful: English tastebuds must be as degraded as their care for their parents; it could, of course, be part of a scheme of cosmic repercussion. ‘Sweet and sour pork’ was their staple, naturally: batter musket balls encasing a tiny core of meat, laced with a scarlet sauce that has an interesting effect on the urine of the customer the next day. Chen knew because he tried some and almost fainted with the shock the morning after, fearing some frightful internal haemorrhaging (has Lily been making him overdo it lately) and going around with a slight limp until in the mid-afternoon the stream issued as clear as ever. ‘Spare-ribs’ (whatever they were) also seemed popular. So were the spring rolls, basically a Northerner’s snack, which Lily parsimoniously filled mostly with bean-sprouts. All to be packed in the rectangular silver boxes, food coffins to be removed and consumed statutorily off-premises. The only authentic dish they served was rice, the boiled kind; the fried rice they sold with peas and ham bore no resemblance to the chowfaan Lily cooked for themselves, although it was popular enough with their West Indian customers. The dishes were simple to cook; well within Chen’s capabilities, which was hardly surprising since they had been invented by Chinese seamen who had jumped ship or retired in East London a generation ago.
As a best seller in the early 1980’s this novel expertly portrays the life of recently arrived immigrants, whilst being obvious in its approach, almost educational in parts (what the numbers signify to the Triads for example), and was possibly ground breaking in an era of post-war novels about trauma. Whilst other works of the time do have immigrant characters, for example Alice Thomas Ellis’ ‘The 27th Kingdom’ has a Russian immigrant as the main character, but she is satirised, and in no way elicits the reader’s sympathy.
Grandpa Chen was already awake but in the darkness of his cubby-hole it was not possible to see that his eyes were open. He crawled out from under the take-away counter, where he had made his home shortly after arriving in the UK, stretched his old bones, and headed for the bathroom to relieve his weak bladder. He has perfectly logical reasons for wanting to live in the counter. Never a despot, even when his family had been young, he was disinclined to try and lord it in his son’s house. He wished to make himself as useful and unobtrusive as possible. The most immediate way of doing this was to take up minimum physical living space. He had spent his first nights in his son’s house in the chamber which had been prepared in his honour. He had found it draughty, alien, and unpropitious. He had never in his life slept anywhere except on a ground floor, near the earth, as a man was meant to sleep. Animals lived in the cock-loft. Upstairs he had a sensation of vertigo; he feared he might float up into the clouds unless he stayed awake. The window was also frightening: the drifting white curtain, the colour of death, and filmy too, indicating the world was a dream, seen through a veil of illusion. (He had got morbidly imaginative since his wife’s death.) In any case a window had no right to be at the back or front of a house, where devils and spirits might enter. In any sensibly planned home they were at the side. He left the top floor and established himself under the counter between four crates of Coca-cola which wedged him in snugly. He was deaf to all attempts to lure him upstairs again.
A worthy inclusion on the Booker Prize shortlist, in a way a ground-breaking work, even if it painstakingly points out lore, myths and beliefs of the Chinese characters. Although omniscient it can be slightly frustrating as the author is knowingly withholding vital information (especially when it comes to the links between Mr Chen and the Triads), this does allow for a “best seller” feel to the whole work. Timothy Mo would go on to be shortlisted for the Booker twice more, in 1986 for ‘An Insular Possession’ and again in 1991 for ‘The Redundancy of Courage’.
It’s wonderful to see how truly global literature published in English has become, long may it grow.
Messenger's Booker (and more) 