She was born in Guangzhou, China, and moved to Hong Kong as a teenager in the late 1960s.
She lived in a small apartment in the working-class neighborhood Kowloon, where she worked in sweatshops and factories. The hours were long and difficult.
She would often get off work late and go straight to a dai pai dong for a cheap dinner. When I was a kid, she would wax poetic about the impeccable sear and char of the dishes.
In 1974, she moved with my father to New York.
As she told me: “Wok hei is so difficult to find in America. If you want the perfect texture and taste of the char, it lives only in Hong Kong.”