FATIMA LEE PLACES a bowl of steaming chicken and coconut soup before me, commands me to eat then races back through the transparent plastic curtain that separates the six stools at the back of her food store to her front-of-house 'kitchen'. From this long display cabinet on wheels, equipped with a two-ring gas cooker and laden with aromatic herbs, spices and bubbling broth, she works a certain pure, wholesome, culinary magic that ensures her central Macau 'store' is always buzzing with customers, many of whom queue patiently down the street at lunchtime to order one of the only five dishes on offer. 'What do you think? Do you like it?' she asks me, as she does each customer when they tuck into one of her popular traditional Myanmese meals, each costing only $10 or $12. The response is always the same, the sort of soulful groan of satisfaction only a hearty meal can invoke, which in turn sparks a warm beam of pride from the rosy-cheeked, grey-haired Lee, known to locals as 'Granny'. While in recent times six of the neighbouring shops have closed, Lee's Ngau Ngau restaurant (49 Rue de Bispo Medeiros, tel: [853] 530 023) is flourishing, perhaps because of her much-loved garlic and chilli shrimp paste, which she sells by the jar in four strengths of spiciness. But things haven't always been so good for the 62-year-old. While Macau is known for its long co-existing Portuguese and Chinese heritages, Lee is a part of a less promoted community which has added to its cultural diversity for decades. The political turmoil that spread across Southeast Asia like a bushfire in the 1960s and 70s became a blessing for the tiny island colony, bringing to its shores thousands of migrants, a much-needed population of workers in a time of the Asian textile boom. These new arrivals, mostly Chinese in ethnicity, fled persecution in countries such as the former Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam and made their way to Macau where residency, as opposed to refugee status, was easy to obtain and jobs plentiful. Some came directly from their countries of birth, while many came via China where they joined relatives, only to be met by the Cultural Revolution. Lee, her husband and three daughters were among this human tidal wave. When the democratic Burmese government was overthrown by the military and then replaced with the Burma Socialist Programme Party in 1962, Lee - although born in Rangoon - found herself labelled a 'foreigner' and deprived of the same rights as naturalised Burmese, including the ability to legally buy food. She also witnessed terrifying acts of violence. 'It was very sad. The government controlled everything,' Lee says through her daughter Lily, 33, who translates. 'They confiscated businesses. There was a lot of jealousy of Burmese Chinese because we worked hard and usually had money. There were riots and rich Chinese people were thrown out of their homes, sometimes killed, and their homes set alight.' Lee got by with the help of wealthy relatives, but finally made the decision to leave in 1972 because all the schools had closed and she wanted her children to be educated. By that stage the currency had been changed and a limit set on how much money each family could keep. 'My family was boiling their water using wads of money on the fire,' she remembers. Lee arrived in Macau penniless and turned to the Catholic church for help. The church gave her $300 with which to buy a street vending cart. 'I could earn $8 a day,' she exclaims. Yet even this haul was not enough to cover her $261 monthly rent and feed her family, so she still traipsed from church to charity for handouts. Eventually she was forced to quit her cart because of triad extortion. The church found Lee and her husband jobs as cleaners in the Santa Rosa Catholic girls' school - to the then 37-year-old's shame. 'I cried for a month,' she says. But the job provided free education for her daughters, so she stuck with it for 15 years. It was not until 1998 that she returned to her first love, the restaurant business. Lee's story is echoed throughout the community of 40,000 overseas Chinese and their offspring, from all over Southeast Asia, who make up 10 per cent of Macau's population. While Lee and her family initially lived in a subdivided corrugated iron hut in northern Macau because of its low rents, those more fortunate made it to the apartment buildings in the central area known as the Three Lamps, a series of streets shooting out from the Rotunda de Carlos da Maia. This weekend the heritage of the Three Lamps (Tres Candeeiras) area will be remembered during the Southeast Asian Food Carnival, offering more than 20 cuisines along with a street parade and local entertainment. One of the area's thoroughfares, Rua da Restaurando, will be closed to traffic. Because of its rich history, traditions and personalities, 'Tres Candeeiras has become a food-lover's paradise', a Macau Government Tourism Office spokeswoman says. 'It's important to attract visitors to the area and promote the culture of Southeast Asians in Macau.' The Southeast Asian Food Carnival, Rua da Restaurando, Tres Candeeiras, Macau. Tomorrow and Sunday, 3pm-11pm