I like reading a good biography. I find it interesting to read about the lives of other people. Hence, when I had the opportunity to review a copy of Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse, I could not pass it up. I knew the book was going to be about the lives of several generations of Chinese women. I did not, at first, realize the book was going to lead up to the opening up of a restaurant in Manchester, England, named Sweet Mandarin.

The majority of this book focuses on Lily Kwok. She was born in 1918 in a small village outside of Guangzhou -- a city relatively close to the European colonies of Hong Kong and Macau, but a world apart in more ways than one might think. Lily, not surprisingly, leads a rather harsh life in her youth. Her father works to raise the family's living standard by peddling his special soy sauce to the food vendors in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, his life is cut short when Lily is still very young. Lily finds work as an amah (think maid/nanny) and applies herself with the same determination her father had to raise herself above her lot in life.

Lily experiences a series of ups and downs over the decades. The part of the biography that almost sounds like it came from a gangster novel focuses on her husband, Chan. While I don't want to give away Chan's story, suffice it to say it involves the Triad (Chinese gangsters) and other than being the father of Lily's children, Chan seems to have caused more grief in Lily's life than anything else. A second portion of Lily's life that I found captivating, but was unfortunately glossed over, was her experience during World War II, working for a Dutch family and traveling back and forth between Hong Kong and Japan.

Lily ultimately emigrates to England at the behest of another family she worked for. Lily has to leave her children in Hong Kong for several years and actually has to give up her youngest for adoption. Over the years she is able to save money to bring her children halfway across the world to be with her. She also opens a Chinese restraint that is very successful.

Around this point in the book, Helen switches focus to her mother, Lily's daughter, Mabel. While one could argue Mabel's life is much improved in many respects over what it would have been had she remained in Hong Kong, one can understand the resentment a child might have to be plucked from a world she knows and placed in one so radically different.

Mabel, like her mother, marries out of love (unusual in the Chinese tradition), but also experiences hardships with her husband (again I do not want too much away). Fortunately, Helen's father realizes the errors of his ways when his children are born. Her parents had to start over with their own fish and chips shop, and through hard work, they too made something more of their lives. And this leads us to Helen's generation. Despite a longing as a child to finally be done with the food business, Helen (who went to school to become a lawyer) finds herself drawn back to it when she opens Sweet Mandarin with her two sisters.

Helen Tse has a very easy writing style to follow, deftly weaving together her family's stories into a coherent tale. Throughout, she talks constantly about food, so if you start craving Chinese cuisine and you gain a few pounds while reading this biography, don't say you haven't been warned. (I know if I am ever in Manchester and can make it to Sweet Mandarin, I will be curious to try Lily's special chicken curry recipe, Mabel's clay pot chicken and the family's traditional Buddha's Golden Picnic Basket.)