Mrs Sui King "Lily" Kwok

Sui King Kwok (nee Leung), known as Lily, led an extraordinary life, in which she overcame murder, gambling addiction and poverty, with one ingredient as a lifeline –delicious food. It has been captured in a novel Sweet Mandarin by her granddaughter, Helen Tse, and will be the subject of a BBC dramatisation to celebrate the Beijing Olympic Games 2008. Lily opened Lily’s Fung Restaurant, on Taylor Street, at a time when foreign food was unknown and her legacy continues at Sweet Mandarin in the Northern Quarter, run by her three granddaughters. Born into poverty in Guangzhou, China, on 18 September, 1918, Lily moved to colonial pre-Second World War Hong Kong in 1925. But her father, who had built up a successful soy sauce business, was murdered by a competitor in the early 1950’s and the business was inherited by a distant male relative. The oldest of three sisters, Lily, her husband Kwok Chan and two children – Mabel and Arthur - were left with little. She took the heartbreaking decision to leave her family to make a better life for them and moved to England with a rich English family, the Woodmans, in the early 1950s. It was aboard the ship to England where Lily developed her curry famous Lily Kwok curry, which is still served in Sweet Mandarin. Having learned to cook serving the Woodmans Lily opened Lily’s Fung Restaurant in 1959. The restaurant, which served plain stews and Chinese cuisine was successful and Lily sent for her children but she had to sell it to repay gambling debts. She set up a successful takeaway in Middleton, before Lily opening more establishments across Greater Manchester, including Lily Kwok’s in Middleton which was frequented by Cliff Richard in its heyday. In 2000, Lily’s granddaughters – Helen, Janet and Lisa - opened Sweet Mandarin, something of which she was enormously proud.