When I was growing up in Canton, China, options were really limited for girls. There was so little we were allowed to do: ”Just go to school, and go home and help your parents.” We were not supposed to go anywhere after school. We sneaked out to movies. But that`s all.
My father was in the food business. He had a restaurant when I was little and then later on a grocery store. In China when you have a good business, you can afford to have cooks and maids. My mother didn`t cook. All she did was play mah-jongg and invite people over. We were not allowed even to go into the kitchen. I was always interested. I would sneak in there to play with the cook.
I was 18 when I got married. My husband Tony`s aunt and my aunt were next-door neighbors. It was an arranged marriage. He was living in Hong Kong, and I went there with my mother and my little brother to meet him.
His family was of a higher class than mine because they had more education. In China if you own a restaurant, you`re lower class. I thought I could learn a lot from him.
After we got married, it was nice for awhile. He was always more like a father than a husband. He was 11 years older and he had more education and he knew more. And I let him think that he had to okay everything that I did. I agreed with him at first. I was young and scared. But after awhile, I realized he was not always smarter than I was and I could do things my way.
In 1953 many people were allowed to come to America if they had relatives to sponsor them. Everyone wanted to come because the opportunities were better. We went to Minneapolis because my husband had to have a job before we could come to America; his sister and her husband gave him one in their restaurant. He worked there for a couple of years.
I stayed home and I did sewing for people. Since girls in China couldn`t go anywhere, we learned sewing, embroidery and cooking. That was my first business. We needed the money. I also realized there was so much business out there because nobody was doing sewing. I did alterations first and then later on I made wedding gowns.
My oldest daughter was born in Hong Kong and was 3 1/2 years old when we came here. Right away I had more children, and my sewing business allowed me to be with them.
After a couple years of doing that at home, I got a part-time job at a women`s clothing store and I learned quite a bit about how people like their clothes fitted. I met a lot of people and learned to speak English, too.
I fixed lots of dinners and lunches for some of my clients and when my husband brought people home for dinner. People commented all the time that I should open up a restaurant. My husband said I wasn`t good enough. He always said I had a lot to learn and that I shouldn`t believe what people said.
Finally, I started teaching in a high school community education program. I also taught private lessons. When I was teaching, my students were afraid to have a dinner party with Chinese food and they asked me to help them. Pretty soon people asked me to do it all by myself, not just help them. In a short time I was a caterer. It was hard because my kitchen and refrigerator were small. I didn`t even own a car, so I had to take the bus to buy groceries.
I had to do it because my husband kept telling me I couldn`t do it. He said, ”In the first place you don`t know how to save money and you can`t do anything without money. And you can`t do anything if you don`t know the business and you`ve never done it before.” I just wanted to show him I could do it.
Even now, he tells me I`m just lucky, that I don`t know enough. It makes me mad. I just think, ”What`s the use. He`s not going to admit that I`m smarter than him.”
I came from an old-fashioned home, too, but my parents also taught me how to look for opportunities. He has difficulty because if the woman has to work and goes out by herself, he thinks people look down on him and that people will talk. I said, ”They can talk all they want. I`m just doing my business.”
Every time we would go some place if people wanted to know about the business, they asked him. They just ignored me, like I just washed dishes. He tried to answer their questions, but many times he couldn`t. Even today Oriental people who don`t know the news or read the paper still do talk to him about the business. I just keep my mouth shut and smile. I can`t make him feel bad. He puts up a pretty good act. But he would never say, ”Ask her. It`s not my business.” He feels he`s the king in the family. It`s sickening.
My mother never made any money and let my father do anything he wanted. My husband thought he could do the same thing. But it`s different when you make your own money. You don`t let people tell you how to do things. When I wasn`t making any money, no matter what my husband said, I never dared to talk back. Now I don`t talk back much, but I ignore him a lot. Making money gave me more confidence, and I knew I could always support myself. I was affected a lot by the women`s movement. It changed my thinking, little by little.
The first restaurant came about when I was looking for a location for a Chinese grocery store. In the back I thought I would teach cooking and do catering. I thought three businesses would pay for it.
At that same time, the landlord suggested a restaurant. I started thinking about it and I got some backers among people I taught or catered for. They invested $125,000, and I sold recipes for a cookbook (”The Betty Crocker Chinese Cookbook, Recipes by Leeann Chin”) to General Mills and invested the $15,000 I got.
The investors brought in a manager, a man, right away. I found out he didn`t know anything about Chinese food and he didn`t think about competition from other restaurants. It was hard to keep up with the business and deal with him, too.
When I told the investors, they hired another one. He knew even less. He had four months training. He had been a high school football coach and had no idea how to talk to the employees and how to manage them. My backers told me just to worry about my recipes and cooking. But you can`t do that. A restaurant is not just good food. You have to have the back and the front working together. Otherwise, the employees will leave and you have to constantly hire and train new ones.
Eventually, I ran it all myself and I managed to pay my investors off. They were pretty surprised.
But I knew I could make a go of it because of all the happy customers–we were really busy–and because of the employees. When I taught them to do something, they worked so hard to please me. And they could see they had a bright future, because no one else was teaching American people to run a Chinese business. I trained them, watched them, worked with them and promoted them. It gave me confidence.
There were other Chinese restaurants around, but I could produce good food for less money with buffet service and did not have to charge as much because I didn`t have to hire an expensive chef. I bought a lot of food and paid all my bills on time, and so the suppliers were really good to me and told others I was a good business person.
