 | | The three generations of Sweet Mandarin women |
So now they’ve got their own restaurant, is there a chance they might blow it all at some new super-casino? "I don’t think we’ll be stepping foot in there!" she says with some confidence. Her grandmother’s 1950s gambling addiction is just one of the cautionary tales revealed in 'Sweet Mandarin' – an account of the struggles faced by three generations of women in her own family and also the name of the restaurant they opened together in the Northern Quarter. What connects Helen’s grandmother Lily Kwok, her mother Mabel, Helen and her sisters Lisa and Janet is the restaurant business which, despite all the setbacks and challenges life has thrown at them, has kept them going.  | | Helen's gran Lily (front row, right) in Hong Kong |
"Opening Sweet Mandarin [in 2004] was really a dream come true for the family because I think it brought us full circle," she says. "It restored the family name and it brought me and my sisters closer as the third generation of women restaurateurs." In writing 'Sweet Mandarin', Helen has become the first British-born Chinese woman to be published. It centres on Lily Kwok’s journey from East to West, from 1920s rural China to present-day Manchester and is an epic tale of poverty, murder, Triad associations, alcoholism and immigration. | "It restored the family name and it brought me and my sisters closer as the third generation of women restaurateurs." | | Helen explains why Sweet Mandarin is so important to the family |
But despite having found success with the opening of the Lung Fung restaurant in Middleton back in the 1950s, Lily Kwok then lost it all in the casinos in Manchester. Helen still has huge admiration for her grandmother and serves up Lily Kwok’s Chicken Curry at the Sweet Mandarin in her honour. But gambling is one ingredient in life that Helen can do without. "It’s easy to enter the casinos, as a social venture," says Helen. "But that’s how my grandmother started, just meeting her friends.  | | The Tse sisters |
"In those days, the only place the Chinese would go was the casinos because they worked until midnight and they spoke Cantonese so it was really a social scene for them. But as anyone who goes there knows, the House always wins – so I just urge others who go there to be cautious." Already being talked about as the new 'Wild Swans', Sweet Mandarin is being published in 33 countries and a film is in the pipeline. Sweet Mandarin is published by Ebury Press on Thursday 1st February 2007. | 
