The situation was very different for Peter Chan, owner of Peter Chan’s takeaway in LS6. He came over to Leeds in 1974 at ten years old after his father had acquired a fish and chip shop in Hyde Park and turned it into a Chinese takeaway. 

 

Initially excited to be on a flight across the world to see Britain, Mr Chan’s enthusiasm was quickly dampened by the weather and the reality of life. 

 

“I did enjoy it to be honest, but that was because my mother had left me and my younger brother behind in Hong Kong while she was here with my dad,” he says in a true-blue Yorkshire accent. “It was so cold that I hated it, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all.” “But that’s life, isn’t it?” he adds with a chuckle. 

 

Peter Chan had been enrolled into the Reception Centre for Immigrant Children located in the Woodhouse Community Centre, where he learned English etiquette and culture prior to entering the Royal Park Middle School. 

 

“When I first came, we were able to speak a few English words, but not a lot,” shares Mr Chan. He has visibly come  a long way, as he and his wife Amy Chan are settled in well with two daughters who are now working. 

 

Mr Chan did admit however, that he had not wanted to take over his father’s takeaway business but had no choice. “The eldest child usually gets to do what they want to, I was the middle child and I didn’t want my younger siblings to follow my footsteps.” After he was rejected from Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Beckett University), his only choice was to either accept his offers in Reading or London, or stay and work for his father. 

 

“My father said: ‘you can’t all go away and study’, and didn’t want to let me go,” Mr Chan says. “My eldest brother had already gone to university and my younger brother just started GCSEs, so I decided to stay and in the end took over the business.” 

 

He did regret not being able to study for an Accounting degree, but figured that it was just a part of his life that he had to go through. “I always tell my daughters, don’t come into the takeaway business because it’s hard work,” he shares. He’s proud that both of them now hold good-paying jobs and doing what they love. 

 

He reflects on how times were different from his daughters’ schooling life and his, as he sits in his armchair in the room above the takeaway. “Racism back then was much worse when the English didn’t understand our culture, and I can say that I have been through a lot,” he says. His wife who had been sitting quietly at the side quips in Cantonese: “Oh yes, this man always got into fights when he was younger in school,” in a playful tone.

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