In the past, pushing the “dim sum cart” around a Cantonese-style Chinese restaurant was one way to let diners choose their delicacies without leaving their seats. It was nicknamed “manipulating the grand bus.” Also, as a tradition in those good old days, the “bus driver” called out (sometimes in kind of a singing tune), what they brought along, such as “shrimp dumplings, siu mai (meat variants, seasoned pork dumplings), shark fin dumplings, chicken buns, glutinous rice with chicken, si bao (four ingredients) chicken...”
Mr. Lai Hung (also known to most people as “Brother Hung”), a dim-sum-making expert with over 50 years of experience in his trade, recalls the past when he started in the industry in Hong Kong, and he still talks about it with relish. “You can no longer taste such traditional dim sum in Hong Kong now. Many of the older masters have passed away, and many have emigrated. These experiences are all very precious...”
From joining the dim sum trade in the 1960s to moving with his Hong Kong boss in the 1990s to Australia to work there, Mr. Lai engaged in the catering industry for most of his life, working his way up from a handyperson position to the head dim sum chef position and managed an entire dim sum team. Now in his 70s, he, though “retired”, has not stopped getting involved and is often invited back to the restaurants to help out from time to time. Mr. Lai’s lifelong experience is the epitome of the older generation of Hong Kong people who emigrated to foreign countries primarily for the best interests of their children. Similarly, today’s Hongkongers who have moved overseas are also continuing in the footsteps of the previous generation and writing a new chapter reflecting the perseverance of the Hong Kong spirit.
A Handyperson in Kowloon at 13, Learned Dim Sum Making the Hard Way
“I had my schooling until the fifth grade at Tap Mun King Lam School in Tai Po. In those days, children from poor families started working at a young age to help finance the family. I started working as a food delivery boy in Kowloon when I was about 13 or 14 years old and entered the dim sum-making industry at the age of 16.” Mr. Lai recalled to us his boyhood. He was born in a large family in Tap Mun near Tai Po and was one of the ten siblings there. Life was hard in the post-war years, and transportation in Tap Mun was far from convenient, so they had to rely on themselves to make a living. He was living in a resettlement area, Kai Liu in Kwun Tong, which was the predecessor of modern-day public housing estates in Hong Kong. Because these early public housing blocks were all seven storeys high, they were commonly known as the “seven-storey buildings.”There were more job opportunities in the urban area. Mr. Lai started working in a cotton mill, but, upon finding the night shift there extremely hard to follow, he moved to work as a handyperson at a nearby Tin Yin Restaurant at Yue Man Square in Kwun Tong. He recalled that he got up at 2:30 in the morning every day, went to the restaurant to prepare, helped grind rice with a stone mill, and prepared rice paste for rice rolls. At 5 o’clock, when the restaurant opened for business, he began his “cart boy” journey selling dim sum. That would keep him busy until 11 o’clock. After the “show,” the rest of the time was spent preparing food ingredients and learning from the master. “At that time, it was all up to you to become a master or not. You had to start from the lowest level and not be scared off by all the hardship in the process. You even had to squeeze some mealtime to help cut vegetables and wrap chicken dumplings. Don’t be afraid of arduous work. Only when the masters like you can you follow them to another (better) job elsewhere.”
Mr. Lai again recalled what one saying goes, “A strict master makes a good disciple,” and he was lucky to come across a “strict master” at that time. One incident that gave him the most impression was when the dim sum master asked him to cook barbecued pork stuffing. Each time, he would work with a big pot, which would be about 10 to 20 catties (13 to 26 pounds). The thick soup thus made would “pop” and splash when brought to boil, and he had to keep stirring it during the process, with the boiling soup splashing onto his hands. In all cases, the first reaction from anybody out of common sense is to turn the flame off after boiling. Still, that dim sum master did not do that and just let him continue cooking until the pot started emitting white smoke and the hot soup could splash onto his arms, causing all sorts of discomfort.
Moved to Australia For the Sake of His Children and Started Over Again
Mr. Lai has worked in many of the esteemed Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong, such as the Lin Heung Tea House on Canton Road in Mong Kok, the Kwok Lin Tea House in Wan Chai, the Metropolis Restaurant in North Point, and the Sun Sui Wah Restaurant, among others. By 1990, he had been in this business for nearly 30 years. By then, the second generation of Hong Kong Sun Sui Wah Seafood Restaurant planned to open restaurants in Australia and Canada. As a senior chef, Mr. Lai was invited to relocate to Australia to work. At that time, he was already married and had two daughters studying in primary school. Life was gradually stabilizing, but still he decided to leave Hong Kong to pursue his career elsewhere. “My thought at that time was very simple—just to give the kids the opportunity to study. In Hong Kong, I, as an ordinary worker, would not find it easy to finance their study at university.There is no such thing as free university studies in Hong Kong, but Australia has. In my generation, we didn’t have such a chance and were not that well-educated, and many of us had to go out to work after leaving high school. I didn’t want my children to be like our generation. It’s better to seize the opportunity, go to Australia, and give it a try. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. At least they could receive an education from a university and didn’t have to go through the harsh work we did. If our generation works a bit harder, the next generation could be better off.”
In this way, when he was in his forties, Mr. Lai, along with his courage and skills, moved to Australia and started all over again. He had never learned English and had no relatives in Australia. He only had some Hong Kong friends who came to work here together, and everyone supported each other.
“Australia is a vast country and sparsely populated. The first thing I did when I came here was to learn to drive. The other thing I needed to adapt to was that all the shops were closed by five o’clock in the afternoon, and I could not buy supplies anywhere after that time. Night markets only existed on Thursday nights, where you could go shopping at night.” Mr. Lai believes that the pace of work in Australia is slower than that in Hong Kong. Restaurants in Hong Kong usually start stocking up at 4 a.m. and open for tea and dim sum time at seven. In Australia, they do not do that so early. We start stocking up around seven in the morning, open for business by 10:30 a.m., and finish around 3 p.m.
Bringing Hong Kong Style Traditional Dim Sum to Australia
There is a vast market potential for making traditional Hong Kong dim sum in Australia, as local people also like it, but there are still some things that need to be learned and adjusted. On this issue, Mr. Lai shared with us, “There are still some differences between the ingredients used in Hong Kong and those used in Australia. You can’t make it exactly like Hong Kong. For example, the texture of some flour here in Australia is different, and the taste of shrimp and meat is also different. Some items need to be remixed.”In bringing traditional Hong Kong-style dim sum to Australia, they also learned from practice what the local diners like most. Some dim sum with expensive ingredients that were not in line with local tastes were eliminated. “For example, we used to make “cotton chicken (chicken with fish maw).” The fish maw in Hong Kong is delicious, but the quality of the local fish maw here is just ordinary. As imported fish maw was expensive, we could not sell it at the normal price, so it was taken off the menu. There are also stuffed soup dumplings. The shark fin in them was also very expensive. With its prohibitive cost, and few people could afford it, I stopped making it.” He mentioned that the most popular ones in Australia were shrimp dumplings, siu mai, barbecued pork buns, glutinous rice with chicken, egg tarts, chive dumplings, fried taro puffs, and so on. He also mentioned that in the past, Westerners did not eat chicken feet or beef offal. Later, under the influence of the Chinese, they began to fall in love with these dishes too.
He also lamented the difference between older generation dim sum chefs, who still retain traditional techniques, and newer ones. For example, pure flour is used to make fried dough sticks, which requires about six hours of natural fermentation to preserve the natural flavor of the flour. But now, for those supplied from the outside central processing kitchens, the fried dough sticks are fermented with yeast powder in just a few minutes, making them taste completely different from traditional fermentation. “Present-day dim sum chefs look more at quick results and are gradually discarding the very essence of dim sum making from our older generations. Nowadays, people think that the Internet is everything, and can offer them all sorts of quick fixes. In fact, these are all chemical reactions and are in no ways comparable with our traditional craftsmanship.”
Mr. Lai later worked as the head chef at an Italian-owned Chinese restaurant. He remembered that when the boss first hired him, the business of the restaurant was not particularly good at that time. He, therefore, offered to work for three months and to continue only if the restaurant’s business improved. He started by promoting four types of dim sum: salted egg-custard buns, steamed beef meatballs with bean curd, crispy fried squid tentacles, and egg tarts.
Unexpectedly, it really drove the restaurant’s business. The boss was very pleased and strongly believed in his craftsmanship, and said to him, “You have been doing it for so long, I am sure you must have 500 dim sum recipes under your belt!” He then asked him to launch two featured dim sum dishes every month and let each manager try them before public release. This part of his career lasted another ten years.
This Italian boss also often took several of his dim sum chefs on “taste bud tours” to foreign countries, asking them to taste dim sums from different restaurants and to rate them, as well as to learn from their peers. These experiences have left a profound impression on Mr. Lai, further enhancing his sense of belonging in this group.
Mr. Lai believes that the most important thing for a restaurant to continue to do well is to have an impeccable system in place. “It’s no good to work individually. Being a part of the whole organization, a boat that moves forward as one entity, everyone on board needs to study how to make it stable and raise its quality at the same time. As a leader in middle management, I had to work side by side with my boss, as well as balance my subordinates and the boss’s ideas. Although there was pressure from both above and below, I was still able to perform well in the ten years I worked there. The business was also booming.”
When it comes to finding the right person to inherit his skills, Mr. Lai said he will first look at his character when accepting an apprentice. “You have to learn to be a person first, and then learn to do things. The mentality of young people nowadays is quite different from that of our time. Some people only value their success and lack the patience to learn and work hard. I am more than happy to pass on my skills, but it is not easy to come across the right person!”
