Burmese food expert on her ‘unusual life’ – she met her parents when she was 12, emigrated to Australia, then returned to Myanmar and opened a restaurant

On August 6, 1988, a girl was born in Mawlamyine, southern Burma, but the joy of the moment was not to last for long.

Two days later, the Southeast Asian country was plunged into anarchy as crowds of protesters – incensed by economic mismanagement and political oppression – took to the streets. Thousands suffered in the subsequent crackdown, and the country, renamed Myanmar in 1989, entered one of the darkest periods of its history.

For Hnin Yee Htun – the girl born on the cusp of the so-called 8888 Uprising – it was the start of a precarious and sometimes perilous existence characterised by long years of separation from her parents, who had been forced to flee.

“My father, Htun Htun Lay, has never really spoken to me much about what went on in 1988, but I do know he was deeply involved in the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, which was also known as the students’ army,” says Hnin. “Both my parents had to go into hiding, and they eventually made it across the border into Thailand. As I was tiny, they left me behind with my mother’s mother, and she brought me up.”

Hnin’s early life was a protracted odyssey from semi-orphan to penniless refugee to stranger in a foreign land. Next month, her journey reaches a watershed when a new restaurant opens in Hong Kong’s NoHo nightlife district. In her role as culinary consultant at Club Rangoon, Hnin has helped inject the flavours of dishes from her homeland that she introduced to head chef Karisa Cheque.

While Hnin was relatively safe as a baby living with her grandmother in Mawlamyine, the rest of the country was in uproar.