The Tale of Taste of China

The News originally planned a feature article on New Haven’s Chinese restaurants and their experiences during the pandemic. As a co-byliner and a native speaker of Mandarin, I reached out to Taste of China, the most iconic Chinese restaurant of New Haven, and scheduled a call with the owner.To get more news about Taste of China, you can visit shine news official website.

Yes, absolutely,” she answered when I asked her for an interview, “Come to my place tomorrow for lunch, and I’ll tell you everything. Aunty Hu is a woman with a lot of stories.”

We met up the next day after peak lunch hour. Waiting for me were a plate of bok choy and a pot of Mala Xiang Guo (Szechuan-style spicy stir-fry), two cannot-be-more-authentic Chinese dishes. In our native language of Mandarin, we talked over the food and hot tea about her life before coming to the States, her life before Taste of China, and how she popularized authentic Chinese food in New Haven. The interview lasted over three hours.

Ms. Chen, who connected the News with Ms. Hu and has known her for over twenty years, commented, “[Ms. Hu’s] story is, truly, a tale of how Chinese American immigrants thrive, thousands of miles away from home.Below is Ms. Hu’s story, written in the first-person, from Ms. Hu’s perspective. The story is constructed from her life stories she shared during the interview.

I was born in 1965 and grew up in Nanjing. During my childhood and teenage years, China was still slowly recovering from the impact of the Cultural Revolution, but I was fortunate enough to not be heavily affected. My parents were well-educated, and they brought me books, Chinese and Western literature. The books opened up a new world for me. The Chinese literature I read felt tragic; the books contained an insurmountable despair. The Western books felt much brighter—even in a Shakespearean tragedy, I could feel a hint of hope at the end. I became curious about the “outside world.” I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

When I graduated from college, study abroad opportunities finally began to materialize . As a design major, I wanted to study in Paris, but my visa didn’t go through. I ended up in a graduate program in Singapore.It didn’t take me too long to realize that I might’ve not been prepared enough. My English wasn’t good, and I couldn’t understand the lectures. My school soon realized the same problem, and they put me in an ESL program. And that was where I met Jonathan.

Originally from America, Jonathan was my ESL instructor. We were around the same age, both around the age of looking for someone, and we gradually got to know each other. He was truly a sweet dude, and he cared for so many small things about me. Eventually, we fell in love with each other. I didn’t use my time properly to perfect my English.

We met each other in ’95. My time in Singapore soon came to an end. We both wanted to continue our relationship, but I was from China, he from America. Where should we go next?

We decided to go to China, him following me. It wasn’t an easy decision. Back then, China as a country still wasn’t too used to being open, and it was quite some news in my social circle for me to bring back an American boyfriend. It wasn’t an easy time for him, but we had a plan.

When I was in Singapore, I noticed how fast language schools appeared one after another. There were so many East Asian students pouring into these few narrow alleys, where language schools clustered, and foreign students learned English before getting their coveted Singaporean university degree. China was rapidly integrating into the rest of the world, and people would love to study abroad. Well, I was a Chinese student who’d studied abroad, and Jonathan was American. Where else could you find a better couple to open a language school?

Unfortunately, Jonathan couldn’t get a permit to work in China, so no language schools. The same question popped up again. Where should we go next?My parents weren’t optimistic about our romance at all, but they couldn’t stop someone like me, who, in their words, was “completely blinded by love.” I decided to follow Jonathan and go to America.

We came to Connecticut in ’97. The first few months were really, really tough. I was like an infant. I barely knew how to speak English. I couldn’t express myself. I had nothing besides Jonathan. I had to depend on him for everything.

Think about where I came from—I’d always been accomplished. I was smart enough to study abroad in Singapore. But in America, nobody acknowledged my diploma and my achievements. I was really depressed. My parents might’ve been right, that it would be hard for Jonathan and me to work out, and I’d have a hard time in America.

But why couldn’t I be right, too? Why couldn’t our relationship work out? He loved me so much, I couldn’t quit after just one month in America. I myself made the choice to date him and to follow him to America, and I needed to be responsible for my choice. Plus, if I quit, and he followed me to China, he’d have to struggle the same way I did. I couldn’t bear selfishly watching him struggle. I made up my mind to fight for a way to live.