How the story of Hong Kong’s ‘dumpling queen’ beat Hollywood’s Thunderbolts*
Daughter of founder of Wanchai Ferry recalls family’s difficult journey in building business empire that has been turned into film leading box office on mainland
Joanne Wong Pui still remembers how anxious and helpless she felt while waiting for her mother, Chong Kin-wo, to return from her first day selling handmade dumplings at Hong Kong’s Wan Chai ferry pier in 1979.
Wong and her younger sister waited until midnight at the entrance of the staircases leading to their 70 sq ft cubicle flat in a dilapidated tenement building on Russell Street in Causeway Bay.
“I remember clearly that my heart was beating fast, and I was so scared that I asked the tenant next door to help me find my mum,” Wong, now 56, said.
She said she was relieved when her mother, exhausted and upset, finally returned home.
“I did not understand at the time. She did not say anything. She only pushed us into our room and scolded us. I saw her crying too,” Wong recalled. “When I was older, I began to understand how my mum felt at that moment as a woman who struggled to survive by working as a street vendor and tried to keep her defeated moments from others.”
The single mother from Qingdao city in the mainland Chinese province of Shandong rose from a street vendor to the founder of the Wanchai Ferry empire selling dumplings and other frozen food products. She died in 2019 at the age of 75.