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Sweet Mandarin - A Family Autobiography ©
by Helen Tse
 About the Book
It was during our weekly shopping
trips that my grandmother told me about my family’s history. Of course, I
knew some things, like the funny characters and anecdotes that all families
share when they get together but never the full detail. The story slipped
out in parts as if each bottle or package in the store was tied to a chapter
in her life that she wanted to share with us.
Spanning a hundred years, this
evocative true story tells the story of three generation of exceptional
Chinese women. An extraordinary journey that takes us from the brutal
poverty of the villages of mainland China, to newly prosperous thirties’
Hong Kong, and over the sea to the UK. Although their lives were played out
across different eras and countries, they are as dramatic as the times they
lived through.
It is food that has pulled each
generation through the most devastating upheavals. Helen’s grandmother Lilly
Kwok was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her
soy sauce manufacturing father. She honed her chicken curry recipe as she
crossed the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s eventually being the first
Chinese woman to open one of the earliest Chinese restaurants in Manchester.
A restaurant she tragically lost as gambling and Triads tore her family and
ruined them financially.
Sweet Mandarin shows how the most
important inheritance is wisdom, and how family heirlooms can be recipes,
passed down through the generations.
(Picture on the right: three generations,
Mabel Tse, Janet Tse, Lisa Tse, Helen Tse, Lilly Kwok seated)
About the Author
Helen Tse and her identical twin
sister, Lisa were born in 1977 and grew up in Manchester UK. She studied law
in Cambridge University before working as a finance lawyer in London, Hong
Kong and Manchester.
She opened the award winning
restaurant, Sweet Mandarin with her two sisters, Lisa and Janet in 2004,
following in the culinary footsteps of her mother and grandmother
www.sweetmandarin.com Together,
 they
have appeared on ITV Granada, BBC, radio and have featured in numerous press
and magazine articles.
(Picture above: Helen Tse and the amazing Xinran)
Helen is the first British Born
Chinese author and this is her first book.
Sweet Mandarin is published by Ebury
Random House on 1st February 2007 in the UK, Europe, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore and Hong Kong. To pre-order your copy
go online to
www.sweetmandarin.com
Here is the
Chinese Translation of the book cover.
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