Lily Kwok

Lily Kwok (26 September 1918 – 8 December 2007), also known as Sui King Kwok and Sui King Leung, was a Chinese-born restaurateur in the Manchester area.

Early life and family

Sui King Leung was born in the Guangdong province of China, in a family of six daughters. Her father was a small businessman, who manufactured and sold soy sauce to restaurants in Hong Kong. The family moved to Hong Kong when Sui King Leung was a girl. When her father was killed by rivals, she and her sisters were considered ineligible to inherit his factory; instead, the daughters supported themselves with sewing, making deliveries, and domestic service.[1]

Sui King Leung married Kwok Chan in 1946, when she was seventeen. They had three children together. When the Kwoks separated in the early 1950s, Sui King Kwok went back into domestic service, this time as a caregiver in an English family, the Woodmans. She started using the name "Lily Kwok" in their household. When the Woodmans returned to England in 1953, Lily Kwok went with them.[2]

Career in England

Lily Kwok continued to work for the Woodmans at their home in Somerset. In 1959, the Woodmans gave Lily Kwok a loan to start a restaurant in Middleton, near Manchester. Lung Fung was one of the first Chinese restaurants in the United Kingdom,[3] and became a popular late-night stop for musicians and celebrities.[4] She soon added two satellite locations for takeaway, in Bury and Blackburn. In the 1970s she was forced the sell all three locations to settle gambling debts. She opened another restaurant, Lung Fung Too, and left that business to her family when she retired in 1993.[5]

Legacy

Lily Kwok died in 2007, in Rochdale, aged 89 years.[6] Her three granddaughters, Lisa, Janet, and Helen Tse, have continued in the hospitality business with Sweet Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant they opened together in 2004 in Manchester, where "Lily Kwok's Chicken Curry" remains a menu item.[5] In 2007 Helen Tse published a family memoir, also called Sweet Mandarin about her grandmother's life and career,[7] which has subsequently gone on to be adapted into a stage play by the Royal Exchange Theatre, Yellow Earth and Black Theatre Live. Lisa Tse and Helen Tse have also published cookbooks based on their grandmother's recipes.[8][9]

References
  1. Willa Chen, "Kwok, Sui King [Lily] (1918–2007)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press 2011).
  2. Yun-Hua Tsiao, Women in British Chinese Writings: Subjectivity, Identity, and Hybridity (Chartridge Books Oxford 2014): 67. ISBN 9781909287921
  3. "Obituary for Lily Kwok" Menu Magazine (December 2007).
  4. "Obituary: Lily Kwok" Manchester Evening News (19 December 2007).
  5. "Fortune Cooking?" BBC.co.uk (1 February 2007).
  6. "Town Mourns as 'The Boss' Dies" Manchester Daily News (20 December 2007).
  7. Helen Tse, Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of Chinese Women and Their Journey from East to West (Ebury Press 2007). ISBN 9780091913618
  8. Helen and Lisa Tse, Dim Sum: Small Bites Made Easy (Kyle Books 2015). ISBN 9780857832689
  9. Helen and Lisa Tse, Sweet Mandarin Cookbook (Kyle Books 2014). ISBN 9780857832092
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