As the long-running argument simmers, they also deal with the daily running of the restaurant along with the staff they inherited, many of whom have been with the restaurant for decades, including Nan and Ah-Jack. Maryland’s Beijing Duck House is at the center of the story: Jimmy and his brother Johnny took over their family’s duck house after their father passed away and they argue over the restaurant’s direction and whether it should stay as their father would have liked (Johnny) or if the Duck House should be modernized and made into something fresh (Jimmy). Each character’s story weaves across three generations and navigates issues of class and immigration, but also of love and family. Management and staff each navigate their own problems in Li’s Number One Chinese Restaurant. Number One Chinese Restaurant, Lillian Li (Henry Holt, June 2018) We have enough money… That doesn’t change the fact that we work in a shitty Chinese restaurant. Just a few pages earlier, Nan’s manager, Jimmy, the owner of the Beijing Duck House, bemoans his own situation to his mother: There’s a moment, late in Lillian Li’s debut novel, where one of the main characters shouts in frustration at her current situation and, in particular, at the owner-manager of the restaurant where she works:īut he tosses me a small scrap, and I’m supposed to be thankful? I gave that family thirty years of my life.
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