“We actually named our restaurant Hai Hong after the ship that brought us to freedom,” Helen says to me in Cantonese as she points at an old painting of a large steamboat on the restaurant’s wall. Leaving their home in the middle of the night, Helen and her family boarded a small dinghy which took them to the Hai Hong, an old industrial steamboat. Traveling for weeks by sea, the Hai Hong attempted to dock in Singapore and Indonesia but were rejected by each of the local governments. Eventually, she bought out the restaurant and moved it to Collegetown, changing the name to Hai Hong as a commemoration to her past. Just like the ship that took Helen and her family to freedom, at Hai Hong, every dish is a journey.

Source: Daily Sun October 17, 2019 03:45 UTC