Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui 

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Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui: The Happy Gathering

Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui

The Happy Gathering

BBC Radio 4 - Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui, The Happy Gathering

Angela Hui’s vivid account of growing up in Lucky Star Takeaway in a small Welsh town.

Angela Hui’s account of growing up in her parents’ Chinese takeaway in a small Welsh town. The family take their weekly trip to meet friends in Cardiff and stock up on supplies.

Angela Hui grew up behind the counter of her parents’ Chinese takeaway, Lucky Star, in the former mining village of Beddau, Wales.

It opened on the luckiest day of the century, 8 August 1988, an auspicious date with the number eight signifying good wealth, fortune and prosperity in Chinese culture – three key factors needed for a young, growing immigrant family.

On one side of the counter Angela interacts with the takeaway’s loyal staff, Cecilia, Dewi and Lowri. They serve and deliver food lovingly prepped and cooked by Angela’s parents. Regular customers pester Angela at the counter as she tries to do her homework.

Running a Chinese takeaway is hard work and there is tension in the overlapping spaces of home and work, playground and business. Angela and her two brothers, Keen and Jacky, also have to act as go-betweens for their parents when there are language barriers.

But there is also beauty in the rhythm and joy from living in the takeaway and being surrounded by the food of Angela’s home culture.

On the other side of the counter, Angela enjoys family dinners before service, dishes a world away from the simplified, watered-down Western version ordered by the locals - whole steamed sea bass, Cantonese soup, steamed egg, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce. To them, food is love and food symbolises family.

A blending of her Welsh and Chinese heritage, the takeaway was a place that embodied the dual identities that Angela herself was experiencing.

In this episode, Angela struggles to communicate naturally with her Cantonese speaking parents at home. And when the Hui family go on their weekly trip to Cardiff to meet friends and restock with supplies, Angela’s aunties tease her for not mastering their ancestral tongue.

Read by Priya Hall
Abridged by Anna Magnusson
Produced by Alexandra Quinn
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

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Angela Hui remembers growing up at the counter of her parents' Chinese takeaway in Wales.

Book of the Week. Angela Hui recalls growing up at the counter of her parents' Chinese takeaway in a small Welsh town. Read by Priya Hall.

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