Writing Britain Now: Sean Wai Keung
By Wasafiri Editor on April 27, 2021 in
The history of migration in the UK is also a history of food. And the history of British food is also a history of its cities. My maternal grandparents, my 公公 and my 婆婆 as I’ve always called them, migrated to Liverpool in the 1950s. From there, they traveled to different places opening restaurants and takeaways in a wide range of cities and towns throughout the North of England. They, and others of their generation, helped introduce local taste buds to a more globalised idea of food. It may not have been ‘authentic’ in the sense of direct translations of Hong Kong recipes, but it was still through their ability to adapt and cater to locally available ingredients and wallets that they were able to survive and flourish.
By using Glaswegian takeaways and restaurants as the starting point for some of the poems in sikfan glaschu, I hope to highlight this culinary-based migration history, as well as others, while also remaining true to my own experiences and identity.
chinatown
this place was built by migrants
therefore it is ours
they came from the gàidhealtachd
they came from the ghalltachd
sometimes i wonder what my 公公 would have thought
had he been given the chance to visit
he had lived in other cities built by migrants
hongkong – liverpool – bradford –
i like to think that if he had been given the chance
he would have liked it
but who can know for sure
when he first arrived in the uk i dont know
what glaschu would have been like
chinatown here opened in 1992
the year after i was born
i moved here three
years after he died
this place was built by migrants
and we have been eating here ever since
*
‘Chinatown’ is named after the first restaurant in Glasgow where I ate Chinese food. I moved here in 2016, and since then I’ve been fascinated by the way this city wears its migratory history on its sleeve. It’s a place that has for centuries been a magnet for those looking for new lives and opportunities, and this is evident in the restaurants here. ‘Chinatown’ tries to encompass a small part of this narrative, as well as my own place within it, by starting with the setting of the Chinatown restaurant and then, with the lines ‘they came from the gàidhealtachd/they came from the ghalltachd’, going all the way back to migration into Glasgow from other parts of Scotland (‘Gàidhealtachd’ being the Scots Gaelic term for the Highlands, and ‘Ghalltachd’ being a term for the Lowlands, or as a more literal translation, ‘place of foreigners’).
*
wing rush
the sound of helicopters above becomes overwhelmingly
present in the street as i walk down towards the park
on my allocated one-outside-walk-per-day but i start to think
what if they know my secret – that i was out in the communal
garden behind my tenement earlier i mean all i did was sit there
between the bins thinking about food or something else
non-essential but does that still count as a going out
what if the helicopter is filled with officials with telescopes
monitoring how often people go out what if people are
no longer allowed in the communal gardens behind their tenements
what if its some new government thing i havent heard about
something declared during the time it took me from leaving
my front door to this street here so devoid of people but still littered
with polystyrene containers almost as if that was all that was left of us
*
‘Wing Rush’, named after a local chicken wing takeaway shop, is based on an early experience of the first lockdown in Glasgow, a time characterised by governmental confusion over local restrictions. It also plays on a very real fear, which I share, of the government using lockdowns as an opportunity to extend their powers under the disguise of public health and safety. Like many people of my generation with migration in their recent histories, I have learned that all too often those in power are not my allies.
Beyond those fears, these lockdowns also marked the longest period of time in which I haven’t seen my family, most of whom live a five-hour train journey away, in Yorkshire. In my adult life I’ve never been one to spend a huge amount of time with my relatives, but no longer being able to visit them last year was more stressful than anticipated. During the year my 婆婆 was diagnosed with stomach cancer. My mum had to deal with most of her care needs. I was (and still am) struggling with feelings of guilt over my inability to be there to try to support them. ‘tomb-sweeping day 2020 glaschu’ was written during this time, named after the Ching Ming festival, a day observed by many Sinosphere cultures, reserved for remembrance and paying respect to our ancestors.
tomb-sweeping day 2020 glaschu
with thoughts of my 婆婆 and 公公 in england
i tried to imagine once what it would be like
living over half your life without being fluent
in the local language – how much more intelligent
you would have to become at things such as social
cues and body language – at reading expressions
more times correctly than
incorrectly – if you failed then the consequences could be
***
all my life i thought i had a slick imagination for that sort
of thing – even as a kid i would flick through the world
atlas looking up faraway places and think about what
life may be like over there
what kind of food they might eat
what language they might speak
if there would be anyone there who looked like me
***
meanwhile down the road at the front desk of the spring
bamboo they would sit together at the same time everyday
in a calm silence
thinking about inconsequential things
but doing so in 客家話
and there would be no need for words
because she knew that he had already put the change in the till
and he knew that she had already flicked the switch on the fryers
from the circle diagram to the one-line diagram
and they both knew that in a few minutes time they would unlock
the front door together before flipping the plastic sign
from the red side reading closed
to the blue one reading open
*
In the process of editing the poems in sikfan glaschu, my 婆婆 passed away. After travelling down for her socially-distanced funeral, in lieu of a proper Chinese wake, my family all bought fish and chips from her favourite local chippy, and then we ate together in the garden. Afterwards, I took the train back up to the city I now call home.
When I got to my front door, following the traditional Hong Kong Hakka customs that still meant so much to my 婆婆, I tied a red thread around the handle in order to keep the spirits away. The future of living and writing in the UK still scares me. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and some days it feels like the bad news will never end. But I also have faith in my ability to adapt, to carve space out for myself here, just like my ancestors did before me.
Sean Wai Keung is a poetry, performance and food maker based in Glasgow. His work often uses food as a starting point for explorations of identity and migration. He has published work about fried rice, chilli oil and munchy boxes, for organisations including the National Library of Scotland, GENERATORprojects Dundee, SPOONFEED zine and Vittles. His first full length poetry collection, sikfan glaschu, was published by Verve Poetry Press in April 2021, and uses Glaswegian restaurants, takeaways and cafes as a window to wider identity topics.
