'Her takeaway was firebombed': Glasgow writer tells story of Chinese gran's city life

This is the starting point of award-winning writer Hannah Caitlyn-Lee’s tale The Kam Sun – and it is based on a true story.

Hannah’s grandmother Yin Kwan was a first-generation Chinese immigrant who moved to Glasgow in the early 1960s with her husband.

The heartwarming – and often heartbreaking – tales she told Hannah have inspired the Strathclyde University graduate to write a collection of short stories, and the first of those won the Gold Award for Prose at the Creative Futures Writing Awards.

Hannah Cait-Lee (Image: Hannah Cait-Lee)

With a mission to make publishing more diverse and representative, the CFWA is the UK’s only annual national writing competition and development programme for all under-represented writers and has a successful track record for developing new talent. Now in its ninth year, it attracted a record 1400 entries from unpublished writers around the UK.

“I was so shocked to win,” says Hannah, who was born in Glasgow and grew up in the West End.

“Winning has really boosted my confidence in the stories that I want to tell as well as my ability to tell them. I have always loved and found complete comfort in writing. Although these stories are based on my own family’s background, they are stories that everyone can relate to. They have a feeling of ‘otherness’ and of being on the outskirts. They are stories about being human more than anything.”

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Hannah’s grandmother, whom she called Apaw, was 17 when she moved from Hong Kong to Glasgow. She and her husband worked at the Lucky Dragon, which Hannah describes in the story as “a drab restaurant with Chinese chefs and skinny Scottish waitresses…the tablecloths were red and papery and spotted with grease marks like the first raindrops that fall on Buchanan Street.”

Tragically, after the young couple had had four children, including Hannah’s father, Apaw’s husband died of a brain tumour, and she was left a single mother at the age of 21.

Hannah, who studied English, journalism and creative writing at Strathclyde University, explains: “When her husband was ill, she had to send her children back to Hong Kong to be taken care of by her family as she tried to carve a life out for them here.

“Life was incredibly tough when she first moved to Scotland.

“A lot of immigrant workers were not treated well, working long hours for not a lot of money. My Apaw worked as a dishwasher and then finally, as a chef. One day, she heard a tip off for the horse racing, put on an accumulator and won enough money for a deposit to buy her own takeaway in Larbert, near Falkirk.

“It is a story that doesn’t seem real but, luckily for us, it is.”

Hannah says the stories of Chinese immigrants making a life for themselves in Glasgow and across Scotland in the 60s and 70s are not often told.

“There was a real mix of reactions toward immigrants when my Apaw first came to Scotland, some people were really lovely, others less so,” she adds.

“In the early months of the takeaway opening they were all sleeping under the counter, living within the shop.

“Chinese gangs tried to intimidate her as a young single woman in Scotland – the takeaway was firebombed twice. She was brave and never let them take advantage of her or her new business. She faced a lot of threats and violence from them, but she stood her ground.”

Hannah adds: “The story focuses on the takeaway as being at the heart of a community, on the importance of food and family and I think really displays a part of Scottish history that just does not have enough coverage.”

Hannah, who left Glasgow for Falkirk, but is now planning to move back with her boyfriend, says she has a real “affinity” with the city her grandmother made her home in the early days of her arriving in Scotland.

The city features strongly in the story – in one section, Hannah writes: “High up behind the art school, where people her age lay their heads in each other’s laps and daydreamed of the future, Apaw turned to look over Glasgow.

“The city was covered in a fine mist and away from the harsh lights that lined Sauchiehall street, the city glowed a warm orange. She could just make out the dark spires of Glasgow University, the blockiness of the art school. She looked East to the college that taught their students about engineering and science. Gripping the coins tightly in her fist, she saw opportunity hidden in the silhouettes of Glasgow.”

Hannah adds: “I have always had such an affinity to Glasgow and have spent a lot of time in the city,” she says. “It really is one of my favourite places.”