AAmber Fan, the 22-year-old protagonist of Kit Fan’s heartfelt and elegy second novel, is ready to say goodbye. Goodbye to her parents, who have booked a midnight flight from London to Hong Kong to enjoy their sunset years selling the family restaurant in London’s Chinatown. And goodbye to the old Chinatown that he and the hard-working Hong Kong expatriates of his generation represent, the Chinatown of Peking duck, red lanterns, rude waiters and sticky tables. She loves them both in her own way, but she has her own plans for the future.
The story begins in late 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, as Amber prepares to open her own restaurant – an East meets West “cool fusion restaurant” called Luna. “This is the worst time to open a restaurant,” she says. Global markets are in recession and Chinatown’s old Cantonese-style joints, often founded by people who, like Amber’s parents, fled Hong Kong for Britain in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, are closing and generally selling off to cash-rich mainland Chinese investors. Everyone agrees that this is the end of an era.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Amber, a talented chef, soon establishes herself as one of London’s rising stars. Adding ginger to her chicken broth (strictly verboten in traditional Chinese cooking but resulting in “complete satisfaction of the taste buds”) resulted in queues of hungry diners lining the streets. She soon comes to the attention of Celeste Gao, a mysteriously wealthy Shanghainese woman. Celeste is brash and fearless, possibly connected to the Chinese Communist Party, and ready to determine the future of Chinatown (“My family is going to own Chinatown. That’s a fact”). The two bond over their separation from their parents and shared memories of the Tiananmen incident, and Amber is eventually won over by Celeste’s offer of a cash injection and the promise of making her an “Asian Alain Ducasse”.
For Amber, a second-generation immigrant, food expresses a love and a shared history that is difficult to put into words. “His relationship with his father was built not on hugs and kisses but on noses and mouths, garlicky fingers, frying pans, fire, cleavers and chopping boards.” While she’s trying to win over her younger brother Bobby, with whom she has a complicated relationship, which is the emotional core of the novel, Amber makes him a special burger (the recipe of which is included). However, Bobby has his doubts: “I think he’s developed a love of food from a very young age.”
The story moves from 2001 to 2007-08 to 2019 and finally to 2020. Each time it is inspired by historical events: the destruction of the Twin Towers; global financial crisis; Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The focus moves from London to Shanghai and Hong Kong, and we see events through the eyes of different members of the family. As Amber’s star rose, the situation in Hong Kong worsened. In 2020, the National Security Law was introduced, triggering a new wave of migration. The scenes in which fans mourn the changing Hong Kong (covered equally vividly in the author’s previous novel Diamond Hill), and Bobby riskily joins the protest movement, are some of the most affecting in the book. It’s not just goodbye Chinatown, but goodbye Hong Kong.
There is a fascinating tone of conflict throughout the novel. Amber’s status as an outsider trying to make a place in a competitive industry is tempered by the fact that she herself is privileged. (She attended Marlborough College and Oxford University, getting into the latter by slightly devious means.) Also interesting are the complexities of being a successful, ambitious immigrant, and the loyalty (or not) to a country and a culture that is left behind.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t weaknesses here (including sometimes clunky prose). But the fire and taste with which Fan delivers this ambitious, exuberant, and often quite brave salute to a district, a city, a world passing in history, makes it a highly satisfying offering.
