New Book Release: Sweet Mandarin By Helen Tse

Sweeping across one century, three generations and two continents, Sweet Mandarin is the epic story of a family of independent Chinese women and their struggle to survive.

From 1920s rural China to the bustle of colonial pre-Second World War Hong Kong and present-day Manchester; from poverty and murder to Triad associations, gambling addictions, alcoholism, bankruptcy and the isolation of being an immigrant family - each successive generation of the Tse family has been rocked by both international social and political upheaval and a rollercoaster of personal challenges. Battling against circumstances and often a traditional, male-dominated society, it fell to the strong women of each generation to overcome the odds and rescue the family. Extraordinary and moving, Sweet Mandarin is the story of their battle for survival and of the one thread that was their lifeline – food.

Helen Tse’s grandmother, Lily Kwok, was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father. Crossing the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s, Lily honed her famous chicken curry recipe. Eventually she opened one of Manchester’s earliest Chinese restaurants where her daughter, Mabel, worked from the tender age of nine. But gambling and the Triads were pervasive in the Chinese immigrant community, and they tragically lost the restaurant. It was up to Helen and her sisters, the third generation of these exceptional women, to re-establish their grandmother’s dream.

Sweet Mandarin shows how the most important inheritance is wisdom, and how recipes – passed down the female line – can be the most valuable heirloom.

Helen Tse, her twin Lisa and sister Janet now run the acclaimed Manchester Chinese restaurant Sweet Mandarin, sweetmandarin.com, and Sweet Mandarin is the first memoir by a British born Chinese author.