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This meeting is being recorded. Okay. So whenever you're ready, I can just start, but thank you so much for joining me here today. Yeah, of course, we were actually, we were on campus yesterday.

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Um, we–we live close by so we took our daughter to visit Rice for the first time and it was really weird— to be on campus and–and–and for it to be so empty.

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And I just came—I actually flew back like a day ago. So it is really strange to see it's so different. Do you know—do you know approximately what percentage of students are back on campus?

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It's around 40 to 50 percent. So a lot less. Okay. Okay. So today is September 13th.

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And we have invited Mr. and Ms. Feng to do the oral history interview for the Houston Asian American Archive. Thank you so much for being here today.

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My name is Ashley Tsang, and I wanted to start off by asking: where and when were you guys born? You can start. Okay, so I was born here in Houston, Texas, January 25th, 1984.

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My name is Diane and I was also born in Houston. But I was born on February 23rd, 1985. How would you describe the household that you grew up in, like the siblings, the environment? Um, I had—I

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have an older brother. He's 11 and a half years older than I am. So it's pretty significant, the gap. He was actually born in Taiwan, and I was born here.

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So it was pretty interesting growing up, just we—I think had two very different childhoods, even though we're in the same household with the same parents.

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I also have an older sibling. Her name is Aimee. She's two and a half years older than I am. We were both born and raised in Houston.

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And so a little bit different than Willet. And maybe we'll go into this further. But he traveled around the world growing up versus I lived in the same

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townhouse complex in the medical center for, like, 20 years. So how would you kind of describe that neighborhood then, next to the medical complex? So, the reason that we lived in the medical center

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is because my mom for the past 40 years, 40-ish years, worked at MD Anderson as a pharmacist. And so my parents made the decision to live in the medical center so that my mom could be close to work.

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What that meant is that the decision to live there was not for their children's schooling, it was purely so that my mom could get to work in a timely manner, she had to get there pretty early.

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And what that means for me as a kid growing up there was that I didn't really have that neighborhood experience. Sometimes when we're talking about growing up, and he talks about riding bikes with his neighbors, I didn't really

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have any of that, and not to say that there weren't kids that also live nearby, but just the area that I—that I lived in, it was a bunch of apartment complexes and

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townhouses, mainly housing people that worked in the medical center. So it's not necessarily like West University where people are moving there for their families and for the schools. And as a result, we were–

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we were zoned to a—I believe we were zoned to–to Cullen and so-so growing up, I didn't, I didn't attend the–the school that I was zoned to, even starting with–with daycare, there was a—I'm forgetting the name

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of it, but there was a daycare across the street, basically, for all the people who had to work in the medical center. So that's where I went for daycare. And then, once I needed to go to elementary school,

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they sent me to a Greek Orthodox school. So I was one of a handful of Asian kids at this private Greek Orthodox school. And that became pretty costly after a while so then

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I applied to a magnet school, River Oaks Elementary. Also not in my neighborhood. So my parents had to drive me and pick me up from school and I always did after–after school activities and then again

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for–for middle school, another magnet application to go to Lanier Middle School. So that's where I went to middle school and then high school. Again, I applied magnet to get into Bellaire High School.

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So I grew up in the medical center but for schooling, I was always just you know, being driven to school or bussed. So I didn't really grow up in a neighborhood per se. What about for you, Mr.

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Feng? So I, my family moved around a lot. My dad was a geophysicist, and he enjoyed traveling so I think

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we moved around about every four or five years. And so I was born here. We lived out in Katy but then we moved when I was six to New Orleans, and we

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were there for about three years. And you know, grew up in Kenner, had a pretty normal neighborhood. I had neighbors, people that—kids that went to the same

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school I did, we hung out after school, we went to each other's houses, you know, trick-or-treated with them, just typical neighborhood kid stuff. And when I turned nine, we moved to Brunei, Brunei

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Darussalam, on the island of Borneo. So, man, I kind of had to start over there was no Facebook or email back then, you know, I kind of lost all my friends.

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We might have written each other a couple of letters, but it's hard as–as kids, and especially, maybe especially as boys, to have that interest in writing letters so—Easy to make friends, you know, once we moved to

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Brunei, all the expats all the people who worked for the same oil and gas company, pretty much lived in their own bubble, and we will all the kids went to the same school, and we all live very close to each other.

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So again, it was—despite being a different country, across the world, it was a very normal childhood I feel. A couple years later for middle school, I went to boarding school in Singapore, because back then,

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Brunei, I believe, did not have any middle schools that were taught in English. So it was just normal for every kid that went to, went to Panaga School over there in the camp area, to then go to boarding

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school afterwards. So Singapore was really fun, boarding I mean, it's kind of like going to college, a lot of freedom, in a way. Was there for two years, really developed

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a fondness of Singaporean cuisine. Just the flavors there were really good and a lot of good memories as a kid having so much freedom. And then my parents kind of

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decided, well, eventually the goal is for me to–to go to one of the, you know, universities in the US, so they wanted me to go back for high school. So in eighth grade, we moved back to Houston.

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This time we settled in Sugar Land. So I went to high school at Clements, made new friends again. A lot of them were really close by, we rode bikes together, explored, went to the movies, the mall, etc.

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Just, I guess pretty typical, you know, high school kid stuff. So that was my childhood. Well, when you were talking about that it–it–it brought up memories of, since I

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didn't have neighborhood friends, my friend groups were pretty much composed of two camps, or three camps. The first camp was my Chinese school friends, right, so

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I attended the Institute of Chinese Culture. And the Institute of Chinese Culture was started by a lot of Tai—a lot of my parents and their friends who

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immigrated from Taiwan, right, so they immigrated in the late 70s in the 80s. So the Chinese that we were learning in that school was the Bopomofo, right? Not the pinyin, it's the traditional style.

00:10:15.300 - 00:10:28.500

So every Saturday, because my dad, my parents were really active, my dad was the principal, that's where we went every Saturday. So I had a lot of friends that came from there. So I had my Chinese school friends, I

00:10:28.500 - 00:10:41.130

attended there ever since I was four all the way till I graduated high school. So that was my first group of friends. The second group of friends, obviously, is the friends that I made at school. And then a third

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group of friends, or the friends that I made, going to a–a summer Chinese youth camp called CYC. So every summer from one week—for one week, we would go to camp and I would meet these kids from

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Sugarland, from Kingwood, from Louisiana. And so a lot of the—a lot of the schools that I went to growing up outside of Bellaire, they didn't have a huge Chinese population growing up, I was really

00:11:11.690 - 00:11:27.350

jealous of my friends who–who lived in Sugar Land, and they would talk about you know, after–after camp was over, they would see their friends again at school. And I'm like, I had that one week to see everybody, and then, and then it was just, you know, we would talk on good old

00:11:27.440 - 00:11:40.130

AIM instant messenger. And I'd have to wait till the following summer to see them again, or be really excited a week or two after camp to have a reunion, that was big for me, because I was more

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isolated from that Chinese community than everyone else was. Do you guys feel like you're still kind of like a cultural shock, especially for you Mr. Feng, like going to all these different, like, international locations.

00:11:55.420 - 00:12:15.160

Um, so when we moved to Brunei, it wasn't so much, I mean, so many the camp, they're pulled in, expats from around the world. So a lot of people from Europe, other parts of Asia,

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a few from the US. So I think I always grew up in pretty diverse settings. Um, maybe the shock was more on my end of such a different culture, a predominantly Muslim culture

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and very different style of food there, which helped broaden—it introduced me to new flavors at a young age. I think which, I mean, even as a

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kid, I was always very much into food. So, but it really helped expand my palate. What about for you, Ms. Feng? Living as an Asian American?

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Um, growing up? Can you repeat the question again? Um, so was there ever any, like, cultural shock living as an Asian American in Houston? Cultural shock, I kind of have to go back just because now that we're

00:13:16.780 - 00:13:33.790

here in Houston, in our 30s— I do think Houston has always had a pretty big Chinese population. Certainly, compared to–to New Orleans. Yeah, I mean, I–I wouldn't say that at any point, there

00:13:33.790 - 00:13:49.320

was a cultural shock in that I feel like— because we were both born and raised here. Um, we associate just as much as being American as being

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Chinese. So I don't think there was a whole lot of assimilation. Right. I think, I think if you want to talk about shock, we had more kind of reverse cultural shock when we, when did we move to Shanghai?

00:14:04.580 - 00:14:15.040

2012— 2013. So 2013 we moved to Shanghai for what ended up being, was it a year now? A year and a half.

00:14:16.440 - 00:14:32.290

And even though we're Chinese, we're not mainland Chinese. And people can see based on the way that we dress and the way that we talk, instantly, they've labeled us.

00:14:32.290 - 00:14:43.550

Hey, you're American Born Chinese. And that's not necessarily— Well in my case, they would assume either Taiwanese or Australian. I don’t know why. So there was definitely a shock.

00:14:45.760 - 00:15:01.230

Being American Born Chinese and feeling very comfortable growing up in America, and then moving to China and all of a sudden really feeling not ostracized, but we didn't necessarily get the benefits of being American, because we weren't white,

00:15:01.730 - 00:15:16.520

right? So our coworkers and friends and colleagues who were not Chinese-American, but American-American, or European, or basically not us, the moment they said like "你好"1

00:15:16.800 - 00:15:30.730

or something in Chinese, Chinese people sort of just bent over backwards to be like, super accommodating to them. And, and really nice to them and it's almost like, when they saw us, they're like, what are you?

00:15:30.800 - 00:15:43.110

Why did you come back? What are you doing here? And they were just really confused. Um, so I feel like in that instance, there was more shock than growing up Asian American in Houston.

00:15:45.010 - 00:16:02.720

So why did you guys move to Shanghai for that period of time? Um, I think we just decided we wanted to immerse ourselves somewhere in Asia, it didn't have to be Shanghai. But, you know, we looked at Hong Kong, Taiwan,

00:16:03.160 - 00:16:15.290

and Japan, Singapore. And I was already a cook at the time. And Diane was teaching. And we eventually kind of came to this

00:16:15.290 - 00:16:31.970

realization that it made the most sense for her to find a job first, and to use that job to bring us over. So she kind of applied throughout Asia. And it just happened that a school in Shanghai was the one

00:16:32.030 - 00:16:45.820

that she got into. So–so we settled there, and we just wanted to, you know, potentially take our Chinese, our Mandarin Chinese to the next level, but really more just an adventure before

00:16:45.890 - 00:17:00.290

we decided to settle down with a family. Yeah, so we–we met at Rice, at Rice University. Um, I think in an Asian Studies class, I'm not really

00:17:00.290 - 00:17:16.400

sure. And so we both graduated with majors in Asian Studies. So me, it was Asian Studies and Sociology. 1 Hello For him, it was Asian Studies and Managerial Studies. And we majored in Asian Studies, I think, you can

00:17:16.440 - 00:17:30.130

correct me if I'm wrong, mainly because we wanted to continue taking Chinese classes at the university level. And by doing that, it was, you know, take a handful more courses and you could—you could

00:17:30.430 - 00:17:42.900

complete that major. And I think once we graduated and started working, we realized that both of us never studied abroad, through our time at Rice,

00:17:44.410 - 00:18:02.470

and we wanted to really live abroad, have that immersive experience, instead of just vacationing, because when you're vacationing, it's more about just like a very cursory, you know, eat as much as you can see as much of the touristy sites, and

00:18:02.790 - 00:18:17.790

I—we really wanted to leave Houston, jump out of our comfort zone and kind of develop ourselves, both linguistically and just, you know, as people, as young adults, and I think that that was a really good experience

00:18:17.790 - 00:18:35.350

for us. Yeah. Did that have any, like, impact on your restaurant, like Burger-Chan? Not really, I have a lot of different experiences. Honestly, I've worked at probably almost as many

00:18:35.670 - 00:18:47.950

restaurants as I have years in the industry. I kind of jumped around to learn different things. I went to culinary school. I mean, certainly every place that I've been to, every place that I've worked, I take away

00:18:47.950 - 00:19:06.220

some ideas, some recipes, some knowledge that I apply to everything that I do. But I think it was—it was interesting. It was a—I was very fortunate and I landed the head

00:19:06.220 - 00:19:19.870

chef job at a restaurant that was co- owned by originally three people. So a Cantonese-American, from New York, who does architecture.

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And a Shanghai native who went to Japan for eight years, developed his passion for music, went back, he's been referred to as the godfather of hip-hop in China.

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And a Vietnamese-American who was the chef. And so these three people came together to open up a pork-centric restaurant called The Grumpy Pig. And I was just lucky enough that when I worked at Oxheart, in Houston, that chef came to

00:19:52.520 - 00:20:06.840

eat with his fiancé and her parents. And he told me about the restaurant, at that point we already knew we were going to move to Shanghai. So it was kind of like, well, let's exchange information, see if it pans out.

00:20:06.840 - 00:20:21.200

And it just turned out that he was going to move back to New York. And he wanted a–a replacement. So when the time came, the timing worked out, went over, kind of took

00:20:21.200 - 00:20:36.840

over the reins, you know, tried to improve upon what they had already set up and just continue what they were doing. But it was kind of a—an interesting situation where the core menu was not something I came up

00:20:36.840 - 00:20:52.280

with. The menu has a lot of influences from Vietnamese cuisine, Japanese cuisine, American cuisine. I kind of took the job, just, not in the sense of just so I have financial sta-stability.

00:20:54.120 - 00:21:03.700

But that was definitely one of the main reasons I took that job, just like, it's available. It's perfect. It's-it's an okay, fit. The money is good enough.

00:21:04.440 - 00:21:16.430

Um, but it was a really good experience. It was my first kitchen experience where I was in a more managerial side of

00:21:16.430 - 00:21:34.770

it, I up till that point was pretty much—have always been just a cook. And this was the first time I was a chef. And I think in that sense, it was very helpful. Even though to this day, I'm still not–not really a

00:21:34.910 - 00:21:49.540

manager type person. Still a challenge. I was—I–I was listening to what you were saying. And I was thinking about just kind of reflecting

00:21:49.990 - 00:22:04.850

about—on our journey. And I think graduating from Rice, at least for me, like when I got into Rice, like the way—the way to advance in life was very formulaic, right? So when you go to, from high school to

00:22:04.880 - 00:22:18.770

college, you can go down the list of try your best on the SATs, you know, do these extracurriculars. Right? It's very formulaic, like how do you get the—become the best? How do you excel, right?

00:22:19.660 - 00:22:30.000

And so I did that, right, to get into Rice. And then once I got to Rice, I tried my best. And then, and then once I graduated, it was like, what do I do next?

00:22:30.540 - 00:22:44.970

You know, it's like, all of a sudden, the formula, if you don't follow a certain path, right, if you don't become an engineer, if you don't become a doctor, if you don't, you know, become a lawyer, the path is a little bit less clear, right.

00:22:46.260 - 00:23:04.130

And so, um, for me, I really had no idea what I wanted to do once I graduate with a sociology degree. And so I started applying to graduate schools, because that's just something I'm good at, I'm good at taking tests, I'm good,

00:23:04.130 - 00:23:17.320

I'm good at applying to schools, I'm good at—I'm good at that. So I figured, okay, I don't really know what I want to do. So let me just do more school, and I like learning, and I like teaching, and I liked learning sociology.

00:23:17.320 - 00:23:31.800

So I did that. And that's a whole separate story. But I ended up getting there and realizing very quickly that that wasn't for me. Um, but I think that from

00:23:31.800 - 00:23:44.650

high school to college, it kind of felt like the world was my oyster. And it's like, oh, you have these five things, or these ten things that you can choose from, and then you'll choose one. And I–I think there was sort of a wake up call.

00:23:45.120 - 00:23:58.580

When I started applying to jobs, right? It was I started applying to teaching jobs, whether it was Houston, or whether it was abroad. And people are like, oh, what's Rice University, and I think I lived in a bubble in Houston, where I

00:23:58.580 - 00:24:13.120

was like, oh, man, Rice University is the best, and then, and then you go to a different place whether that different place is, Seattle, or whether that different place is–is China and–and–and all of a sudden, all that cachet you thought you had, you don't have any more.

00:24:13.980 - 00:24:26.380

Um, and so I guess what I wanted—when–when you were talking, people–people ask, like, how did you—how did you open this restaurant? How did you get to here? How did you get there?

00:24:27.280 - 00:24:39.800

Um, and it sort of just unfolds naturally. It's not like I had these five choices and I picked the top, and then I had these five choices and I picked the top. It's like, crap, I need a job.

00:24:39.800 - 00:24:53.720

Let me throw a bunch of resumes out there and see what sticks and–and our thought—our first jobs were not necessarily glamorous, like your first job out of college was not what you thought you would ever do,

00:24:53.720 - 00:25:07.540

right? What, Tsai Fong Books? Yeah, so he worked—you can tell-tell her what you did after— I mean my first job out of Rice University was very much just a kind of an entry level job.

00:25:09.320 - 00:25:25.890

It was an Asian book distributor here in town. Very nice place, nice owner, nice coworkers. Just not very challenging, not a, I wouldn't say necessarily a good fit for my skill

00:25:25.890 - 00:25:44.350

sets. I was—I work basically, with libraries, basically in sales just trying to get libraries to buy our books, because they usually have really big budgets. That was my first

00:25:44.370 - 00:25:58.020

job. I mean, just when you were talking and talking about Shanghai and how you got that job, and how, I got—I got the teaching job in Shanghai, basically, I was applying to a bunch of international schools and

00:25:58.020 - 00:26:09.820

wasn't hearing back. And then his older brother used to live in Shanghai. And I asked him to ask his brother, where did they send their kids?

00:26:10.510 - 00:26:24.270

And they said, SMIC Private School in Shanghai, and I applied, and I wouldn't have found out about the school otherwise, right? And I—it–it–it just got me thinking, like, when I really reflect back, people, you know, they look at your path, and they're like, oh,

00:26:24.270 - 00:26:35.370

man, how did you do this? How did you do that? It's like, a lot of the times, something just falls into your lap. And it’s—you just need one opportunity to take that next step. And then it kind of just unfolds.

00:26:35.370 - 00:26:46.690

So that was all I wanted to say on that point. Yeah. I also know you did, like, you did a lot of teaching like in Houston as well, with the HISD pro—

00:26:46.960 - 00:27:01.150

UTeach program. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, so–so when I graduated from Rice, I was accepted into a sociology PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle.

00:27:02.850 - 00:27:15.610

We flew out there, to Seattle, I did a quarter of my coursework, and I was really unhappy. I was really unhappy, because I instantly knew that graduate school wasn't for me,

00:27:16.310 - 00:27:30.410

I– I knew that I didn't want a life full of just research, and there wasn't one thing that I was passionate about. And I was really torn, because I've moved all this way I'd committed, everyone like, knew that this is what I wanted to do.

00:27:30.490 - 00:27:46.230

But in my heart, it just didn't feel right. And–and so I took a leave of absence from the school, went back to Career Services took that, you know, career tests, and the top two things were

00:27:46.230 - 00:28:03.140

teaching, I've always been really interested in teaching, and editing. So I took two jobs once I took a leave of absence, the first job was at Kaplan, I taught GRE classes. And the second one was copy editing here

00:28:03.710 - 00:28:16.990

and there. And I very soon realized that copy editing was something that I liked doing to help friends, but it wasn't something that I like to do as a job. Um, so I quickly crossed that one off the list and when I was

00:28:16.990 - 00:28:34.930

teaching at Kaplan, I discovered that I really enjoyed teaching. And so once I kind of solidified that, formally withdrew from U-Dub, it's like, look, I thought that this is what I wanted to do, turns out that's

00:28:34.930 - 00:28:44.740

not what I want to do. Okay. I want to teach. Um, so then we move back to Houston, because Seattle is very expensive.

00:28:44.740 - 00:29:00.200

So we moved back to Houston, moved back in with our parents, reapplied for schooling, he can talk more about his path. But for me, we moved back to Houston so I originally applied to

00:29:00.200 - 00:29:17.510

some teacher certification programs here in Houston, was gonna— I started a little bit at U of H. But then turns out he applied to a culinary school in Austin. So then I applied to UTeach, which is, which is at the University of Texas in Austin, and

00:29:17.670 - 00:29:26.630

then I moved up there with him. And the UTeach program is an amazing program, and it's predominantly for undergraduates at UT.

00:29:27.870 - 00:29:42.480

Um, back when I was an undergrad at–at Rice, I did take a few education courses, but Rice is not the type of school that is more career focused, right? So bigger state schools kind of have

00:29:42.620 - 00:29:54.380

more of that, like teachers certifications and whatnot, and–and–and Rice did have a pathway, but I took a few courses, and I just, I wasn't super interested at the time. So then the UTeach program I did post-

00:29:54.380 - 00:30:10.480

baccalaureate, took about a year and a half, and I concentrated on middle school math. Growing up—it was funny, growing up going to Saturday Chinese school, my dad was the math teacher even though he’s

00:30:10.480 - 00:30:23.110

a, he's an engineer by trade. And his form of teaching is–is very old school, very traditional Chinese where they basically just throw hundreds of problems at you that don't require any, like, creative problem

00:30:23.110 - 00:30:37.910

solving. But it's like, learn the method, and then do it again 100 times. And honestly, growing up, I really disliked that kind of math, I was more interested in more interesting problems. And same with teaching

00:30:37.910 - 00:30:51.240

math, like, honestly, growing up I hated my dad's math class, because I felt like he didn't teach the fun part of math, right? He didn't, Chinese people, they're not really interested in the why, they're interested in

00:30:51.240 - 00:31:05.270

just getting the right answer. And I feel like more in the American system, it's not enough to just memorize the formula, you want to derive the formula, you want to see, you know, more of

00:31:05.270 - 00:31:13.260

the applicability of what you're learning. And to me, that's really interesting. And I also think that math gets a really bad rep, right?

00:31:13.260 - 00:31:27.840

Like, if you don't get it one way, and if your teacher is only comfortable teaching it one way, they feel like you're not good at math. Um, but I feel like if you're a really good teacher, and you have a strong understanding of math, you can kind of understand where a

00:31:27.950 - 00:31:40.100

student is coming from, how they're thinking, and get them to understand the concept better, maybe not the way that the textbook says it, maybe not the way that you taught it the first time, but maybe the sec-, the second method, the third

00:31:40.100 - 00:31:57.160

method, and for me, that's my passion in teaching. And so once I completed the UTeach program, and got certified, this was back when there was like a total hiring freeze.

00:31:57.270 - 00:32:11.230

So like, I got my certification and nobody, nobody wanted to hire anybody. And a lot of t-teachers were being let go. So thankfully, since I grew up in Houston, I had

00:32:11.660 - 00:32:23.020

some contacts in Houston. My math teacher at Lanier Middle School, you know, throughout the years, throughout high school, college and beyond, we always stayed really close.

00:32:24.340 - 00:32:39.970

Which is really odd, thinking about that to have, like a good relationship with any teacher, let alone a middle school math teacher, like I've been to her house. I've met her children. Um, and this is all because of growing up I was a mathlete, so I participated in

00:32:39.970 - 00:32:50.860

MATHCOUNTS, it's a middle school math competition. Anyway, so she had some contacts. And she's like, you know, Lanier Middle School, the school that I went to growing up, they had like a

00:32:51.730 - 00:33:02.450

mid-year issue with one of their teachers, and they're looking for someone. And so incidentally, I was like, well I'm looking for a job. I'll, you know, I—I'll take it.

00:33:02.880 - 00:33:17.270

And so that's—and then that was really fun to go back to–to the school that I went to, and some of the teachers that I had, as a student, I was now working with, which was kind of weird.

00:33:18.460 - 00:33:32.250

So yeah, I taught. I taught at Lanier for a few years, and then we moved to Shanghai and I taught in an international school. And then when we moved back, and we had a kid,

00:33:34.020 - 00:33:44.620

I put teaching on hold. And then once he got the–the restaurant kind of up and running, or before he was—he had the restaurant up and

00:33:44.710 - 00:33:56.260

running, I–I started tutoring at T. H. Rogers, another HISD School. And my intention coming back was to like, ease myself back into teaching.

00:33:57.590 - 00:34:12.630

But clearly, that didn't happen because the past four years I've been working at Burger-Chan, so that's a different story. For you, Mr. Feng, how did—what drew you to culinary school after Rice University? I know you've

00:34:12.630 - 00:34:26.710

always had, like, an interest in the culinary arts, but... Uh, yeah, so when we moved to Seattle, I found it pretty hard to find a job. I applied to a bunch of

00:34:26.710 - 00:34:45.610

places in our first month there and pretty much had no leads. Any place that did reply ended up being just very basic sales jobs, cold calling people and just

00:34:46.250 - 00:35:02.960

things that I–I wasn't very interested in. So one day I kind of just thought, what about cooking, not necessarily thinking long term, but just I always wanted to

00:35:03.580 - 00:35:22.540

cook better. At that point, I wasn't a very good home cook. I was adequate, but I wanted to get better. And I thought, well, if I could somehow get into a restaurant, and learn how to get better, and get paid, while

00:35:23.590 - 00:35:40.490

learning to get better, it's kind of a–a win-win. So just kind of, by chance, we're at a sushi restaurant. And there was an apprentice behind the counter, and he was Caucasian.

00:35:40.580 - 00:35:54.370

So, you know, we were chatting as one tends to do at a sushi bar. Just talking about w-what led you to this sushi restaurant, you know, he's like, “yeah, you know, it's kind of weird seeing a white guy behind the counter.

00:35:54.440 - 00:36:05.790

But I'm just, you know, I've been kitchens for 10 years.” And he was just like, “it's really easy to get a job in a restaurant or any place is always understaffed looking for help.

00:36:06.150 - 00:36:18.060

A lot of it's entry level. And I just want to pick up a new skill. So here I am, at this, at this sushi restaurant.” After thinking about it, for a couple of days, I was thinking

00:36:18.490 - 00:36:28.520

sushi makes sense. You know, there's no cooking involved, it's all knife skills, and, you know, hand forming things.

00:36:29.620 - 00:36:44.840

So, I applied to a bunch of places eventually got a job at a place called I Love Sushi. And it was, it was, it was incredibly difficult.

00:36:44.940 - 00:37:05.680

It was going in with no professional experience. I was, I felt so slow and so clumsy and so stupid for the first couple of months, cut myself very frequently. I was actually very surprised, they didn't fire me after a couple of weeks,

00:37:06.460 - 00:37:20.710

I–I–I think I was very lucky. I think if I had gone to almost any other restaurant, I may not have stuck in food, I might have, I might have been let go and just thought, okay, I will always just be a consumer of food and not a

00:37:20.710 - 00:37:36.510

creator of food. But they must have been really desperate, because they kept me and I kept trying. And I think one thing I really appreciate now, after all these years, and seeing new people come into other

00:37:36.510 - 00:37:51.050

restaurants trying to learn, is all of my co-workers. One thing that kind of stuck with me is at the very beginning, they really encouraged me to

00:37:51.050 - 00:38:01.720

not be afraid of cutting myself. Versus I feel like in most restaurants, especially a hotel restaurant, for instance, it's always like safety first, don't cut yourself, you

00:38:01.720 - 00:38:14.520

know, don't, we don't want to have to fill this thing out, like say like, you know, X employee got injured, or we don't want you to lose productivity, we don't want you to, you know, potentially need to go get

00:38:14.520 - 00:38:28.250

stitches. Here from the very beginning, you know, some of the other cooks were just like, you know, we– we really wish we had worked on our speed, you know, some of them were so fast, so talented, so skilled,

00:38:28.250 - 00:38:43.430

but then some of the other ones were like, you know, I learned how to do everything the right way. And as a result, speed was harder to come by later. And over there, they kind of just, I don't know, if, but they

00:38:43.430 - 00:39:01.210

were just like, you should really try to do things as fast as you can, even if you're not sure you can do it. And as a result, I–I cut myself badly, a number of times, but I kept doing it, I kept going. And eventually I improved after, probably after a few months, it

00:39:01.210 - 00:39:17.300

took a while. And from there, you know, I think part of the reason I was able to do it was not living at home with parents. Um, I think it's scary

00:39:18.520 - 00:39:35.930

as–as an Asian, or just as anyone who went to college, to tell your parents that you're going to go pursue a career that is so limiting, in–in advancement, in

00:39:36.390 - 00:39:53.000

options, in you know, the—even when you reach the very top unless you are extremely lucky, you're probably not going to make very much. So, you know, I kind of, did the, the

00:39:53.000 - 00:40:05.460

whole time with the whole intention of stopping at some point. But then we moved back to Houston. I started my job search all over again. Not surprisingly, everything

00:40:05.460 - 00:40:25.810

was entry level, I was, I was basically getting the same jobs I was getting when I was applying in Seattle. Nothing that I felt was worth my time, and you know, I–I definitely felt like my parents thought it was

00:40:25.810 - 00:40:47.570

just a phase, that it was over that I would go back into an office setting. But eventually, I kind of worked up the courage to tell them, hey, I think I want to try cooking again. I want to keep going and see how far

00:40:47.570 - 00:41:05.000

I can go. And my dad, very traditional Chinese guy, his response is, just so typically Chinese is like, well, you got to go to school, you got to go culinary school, you can't—you can't advance

00:41:05.250 - 00:41:17.190

in restaurants. If you don't have a degree in restaurants, which is not true. Most restaurants actually don't care that you went to culinary school, and you definitely get picked on by the majority of

00:41:17.240 - 00:41:34.430

people who work their way up. So, but I jumped on the opportunity, because I knew it would be the quickest way to see the most things and learn. And, you know, I think randomly

00:41:35.120 - 00:41:49.650

on a Saturday, I was applying to a bunch of—a bunch of schools, a few of them in New York. So the big ones like Culinary Institute of America, ICE, and then a couple of ones that are near here.

00:41:49.800 - 00:42:10.930

So maybe a couple, maybe one or two in Houston, one in Austin. And just by chance, the one Austin, even though it was a Saturday, replied to my application within five minutes. I was I think, I was at Cafe La Tea in Chinatown.

00:42:12.390 - 00:42:24.970

I was applying and then suddenly I got a phone call. And I'm like, what is this, and I picked it up and it was a school. And they're like, yeah, um, we would love to have you here, come check out our campus.

00:42:25.480 - 00:42:37.580

And since it's Austin, it's very convenient. So I think that weekend or the next one, we drove up, take a look. And, you know, obviously, not as

00:42:37.640 - 00:42:47.420

glamorous as going to place in New York, but also given the convenience and everything else, it makes sense. So I chose the

00:42:47.420 - 00:43:03.010

one in Austin, it was Le Cordon Bleu, and then, so we moved there. Can you tell me about why burgers, specifically?

00:43:03.660 - 00:43:15.410

Um, so, full disclosure—burgers, not my passion. I like eating burgers, they're great. Cooking them, not so much.

00:43:15.440 - 00:43:26.710

It's not much of a challenge. At the time, after we moved back from Shanghai, I wanted to do Southeast Asian food.

00:43:26.710 - 00:43:44.310

So I kind of thought back, and I really miss a lot of foods I had in Singapore, and, you know, I thought it would be it would be pretty cool to do a Singaporean restaurant. The ones that keep popping up in Houston, whether it's Singaporean or Malaysian,

00:43:45.730 - 00:43:57.050

the really good ones for whatever reason, don't stick around. A couple of so–so ones that survive but they tend to just be better at strictly

00:43:57.050 - 00:44:13.420

Chinese food and not so much the Singaporean and Malaysian food. Um, so I was looking to do a Southeast Asian restaurant near where we lived at the time and still do, so the Montrose area. And just

00:44:13.420 - 00:44:27.630

couldn't find a location, it was very hard to find a location. Every place that had an opening favor vendors, restauranteurs, who already have an existing, you know, concept, so they have proof of concept.

00:44:28.820 - 00:44:45.280

I'm going in there with basically no idea. I'm just trying to wing it. And I think probably fortunately, they could see that, and I didn't get end up getting places because I

00:44:45.280 - 00:45:02.480

probably would have been in over my head. But eventually a friend who owns Greenway Coffee and another friend who owns The Rice Box, they had stores in Greenway Plaza.

00:45:02.570 - 00:45:17.420

So it's an office building with a really happening food court, underground, they're like, you know, there's–there–there’s restaurants here that are looking to get out. Like this burger restaurant.

00:45:19.170 - 00:45:29.360

So they made the introductions. I wasn't very thrilled about it, I wasn't interested. So I said no. And fast forward a couple of months,

00:45:30.680 - 00:45:44.790

I'm just getting impatient, getting itchy, kind of just like, I don't know when I'm ever going to find a place where I can open up. I know I don't want to work for anyone else. So I reached back out, and they're like,

00:45:46.800 - 00:45:59.440

yeah, still here. Let's talk about it. So we talked about it. You know, they were asking for X amount for me to jump in there and take their concept. And I ended up

00:46:00.080 - 00:46:16.930

agreeing to it, even though it was kind of overpriced, even, and even though knowing I'm not using any part of their concept, I didn't think it was a very good concept, it wasn't doing so well. So I came up with my own concept within, you know, the

00:46:16.930 - 00:46:31.670

realm of burgers. What drew us to it, ultimately was, pretty low rent. So it seemed like, okay, even if this doesn't really take off, we only have to shell out X amount per

00:46:31.670 - 00:46:47.750

month. It's not the end of the world. Um, it's just lunch service, potentially breakfasts if we wanted to. So that's good for family life because our daughter was born. So it's kind of like, we don't have as much time

00:46:47.750 - 00:46:58.920

and traditional restaurants are there really late. It's only weekdays, so the hours were good. The rent was–was good. It's kind of like, even though it's burgers, even

00:47:00.260 - 00:47:16.170

though there are a lot of limitations, it felt like it was the right opportunity at the right time. And so, so we opened up and– and no regrets. It's been good.

00:47:17.070 - 00:47:33.170

We had to change our name partway through because we opened up as Kuma Burgers, which means bear in Japanese, it was inspired—it inspired our logo. You can see over here, but it was inspired by a cooking comic manga

00:47:34.780 - 00:47:52.620

called Shokugeki No Soma, or Food Wars. There's a character in there that wears just an apron when he's cooking, and there's a bear on it. And it was actually Diane's idea. So I thought it was cute.

00:47:52.620 - 00:48:07.210

We ran with it. And then we got served with a cease and desist from a place out in, out in Chicago, and we changed our name and trademarked it this time, make sure it would be ours.

00:48:08.470 - 00:48:19.700

Um, and it's been good. We recently closed due to coronavirus. Um, it's not a bad thing. I think a lot of people think it's a bad

00:48:19.740 - 00:48:30.080

thing. And they're always like, we're so sorry. And it's like, yes, it's–it's sad. But it made sense. Um, it's been very stressful since the pandemic.

00:48:31.780 - 00:48:45.600

Staffing has been kind of wishy-washy, people are like, you know, my roommate got it, my parents got it, I don't know if I got it. Just out of an abundance of caution

00:48:45.660 - 00:49:01.600

having to close every now and then or just run really understaffed, and not to mention sales were way down. So we decided to close. We do have our other location that we are working on set to open next

00:49:01.600 - 00:49:14.710

year. We think it's gonna be a really good opportunity. So we're continuing with burgers, you know, I haven't, I haven’t given up on burgers. It wasn't what I wanted to start with.

00:49:15.560 - 00:49:28.910

But I think it's an OK vehicle for my–my abilities. I do want to do more out of our next outpost, I think we're going to do dinner. So hopefully we can do a lot of non-burger items too.

00:49:32.040 - 00:49:47.220

So then, what are you going to be doing in kind of like the meantime? So in the meantime, we are—I have been doing some private chef events. people contact me to go

00:49:47.220 - 00:50:03.060

cook for their house. Usually a party. Tends to be quite profitable. And I've started a YouTube channel. So just trying to create more content for my YouTube channel.

00:50:04.040 - 00:50:23.500

Um, you know trying to—we both like to boulder, so finding time to go to the bouldering gym. I think out of most gyms or physical activity places, it's relatively safe in the sense that it's a large

00:50:23.500 - 00:50:36.620

space, they cap the number of people that can go in at any one time. So it's very easy to socially distance, I think we're usually, you know, more than 10 feet away from anyone, it's easy to just stay away.

00:50:37.720 - 00:50:51.920

And it's mask on the whole time. So just trying to climb more and recently, I've been trying to lose some weight too, because I've been 25 to 30 pounds overweight

00:50:52.000 - 00:51:05.650

compared to my college weight for over a decade now. And with restaurants, it's just hard. It's–it’s the stress, the hours. Usually you're shoveling food down as fast as you can.

00:51:05.650 - 00:51:19.810

So you, you–you choose things that are high in calories, so you stay full. So recently I've switched to predominantly lower calorie foods, eating slower, eating more often, a-and it's been

00:51:21.110 - 00:51:39.210

quite helpful. So just improving the quality of our lives, really. On my end, HISD just started virtual schooling. And for privacy reasons, because we're–we're not

00:51:40.090 - 00:51:56.750

celebrities, but we're quote unquote public figures as the co-owners of a restaurant. So I'm very, I'm very protective of our daughter's privacy. I–I don't reveal her face online, and so I've dubbed her emoji

00:51:56.750 - 00:52:07.260

baby. Because I would show a picture of her, and I put a sticker, I put an emoji on her face. And now she's just known as emoji baby. And we call her that so that we don't reveal her name.

00:52:07.400 - 00:52:20.550

And so emoji baby was supposed to enter kindergarten this year. And because of coronavirus, it's virtual. And what that means is

00:52:20.550 - 00:52:37.870

from 7:30 to 2 to 3pm. she's supposed to learn everything in front of a laptop, which is a big ask for a five-year-old. Um, our daughter, for better or

00:52:37.990 - 00:52:51.630

worse, is usually not glued to screens the mo—the way a lot of other kids are, right, you put a movie in front of them, and y-you've got two hours to yourself, but you know, 30 minutes in and she's like, I want to play with you!

00:52:51.670 - 00:53:06.330

And we're like, no, just watch the movie! And so we knew that virtual schooling was gonna be a challenge. And I have the–the teaching skill set to make that as–as manageable as I can.

00:53:06.330 - 00:53:25.300

And so when we were debating closing our restaurant at the beginning of August, this was definitely one of the considerations that just, it made more sense, right? So, um, this past week, um, you know, we–we–we take turns i-in–in supervising her learning,

00:53:25.300 - 00:53:38.230

but between the two of us, he's better at doing the stay at home meals, right? So making sure that when it's breakfast time, we have breakfast, when it's lunchtime, we have lunch, and so I don't have to do

00:53:38.230 - 00:53:53.260

everything. And then I'm better at like, making sure that–that our daughter is paying attention, making sure that she's engaged, making sure that she's muted, right? That's–that's an issue that a lot of the kindergarteners are–are–are

00:53:53.310 - 00:54:08.210

dealing with. When you're on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, if–if not everyone is–is muted, then you're just hearing all the kids and you're not hearing the teacher. And so that's been a very interesting challenge.

00:54:10.030 - 00:54:27.530

I think it's very easy to complain about it because it’s–it's not an ideal scenario for most people. Virtual learning doesn't replace the benefits of in-person schooling.

00:54:28.030 - 00:54:43.560

And so—and especially for five-year-olds, right, you don't have the 19 other kids around you to have that peer pressure to pay attention. And so it's been a really interesting challenge to tackle

00:54:43.800 - 00:54:59.280

and to also document. So ever since coronavirus reared its head back in March we've been pretty transparent about how it's affected us on social media.

00:55:00.830 - 00:55:14.940

And so once we close, I continued to be not 100% transparent, right? I'm not showing you everything, but just being really transparent about the difficulties of

00:55:18.330 - 00:55:30.320

websites crashing, and students not paying attention. And I think it's really important because not everyone is living the same

00:55:30.320 - 00:55:45.660

COVID life. Right? And some people, let's say, if you don't have kids, and your job is really easy to do from home, it's–it's–it's not that hard. And for other people, you have multiple kids, and you have jobs,

00:55:46.140 - 00:56:03.350

where you have to be on site, like it's on the other spectrum, and it, and it just everyday feels impossible. And I think that for a lot of people who don't work in restaurants, or don't have kids, or don't have this

00:56:03.350 - 00:56:14.200

or that, right, i-it's just really interesting, right? Because a lot of people wonder, and–and now that social media is so prevalent, it's so easy to kind of, like, instead of you wondering, let me tell you what it's like.

00:56:14.820 - 00:56:29.070

And I find that, I find that, I find that helpful. A-and it starts a dialogue with a lot of strangers that I've never met, whether they are also parents, whether they are also restaurant owners, and I found that really

00:56:29.070 - 00:56:43.550

valuable to kind of connect with people during this time, where it's actually very difficult to connect with people that you normally would. So that's been, that's been a new 2020 thing for

00:56:43.790 - 00:56:58.120

us. I also know that you guys have been doing some, like, hospital meals, while Burger-Chan was still there. Can you tell me more about it? Yeah, I mean, ’cause way back in March, the moment there was a stay at home order,

00:56:58.360 - 00:57:12.150

boom. Right, we are underground, and we serve predominantly, the people who are in the adjacent office buildings, you know, once 11, 11:30 hits, they just leave their computer, they come

00:57:12.150 - 00:57:23.760

downstairs, they get in line, they order and it's steady, it's pretty steady traffic for all of the vendors down there from 11 to 1, right, and then we would close at 2.

00:57:25.280 - 00:57:43.040

And then once, people were either instructed or wanted to work from home, overnight, boom, empty. And we were like, what do we, what do we do? Um, and we closed, we closed

00:57:43.130 - 00:57:54.920

for, we closed two weeks. A, because everyone was supposed to stay at home, and B, we had to figure out if it was worth reopening, if it was safe to do so.

00:57:55.580 - 00:58:03.100

You know, all this. And we were not initially on the same page about that. He didn't want to open.

00:58:04.260 - 00:58:15.770

I did. Um, and we ended up reopening. And without your building clientele, I mean, those first few days is, I mean,

00:58:15.770 - 00:58:28.450

the first few days were fine in that you have all these supporters, whether they're friends, family, online supporters, they come out. But that's not sustainable, right? Because you can't, you can't just have all

00:58:28.450 - 00:58:45.030

these people who out of the kindness of their heart come out to support you once. They're not going to keep coming Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So— So I will say for the entire time that we're open for four months or so, like, we had a pretty big group

00:58:45.320 - 00:59:00.800

of regulars that would order at least once a week, if not two or three times a week. Pretty impressive. I mean, super impressive. Um, but after a few days—and we, you know, this is still at the beginning

00:59:01.400 - 00:59:15.940

of COVID. So we still have that–that fighting spirit. How do we stay alive? So I did some internet traveling to see what opportunities were out there. And one of the opportunities I saw on Instagram, right,

00:59:16.010 - 00:59:30.060

other restaurants would post, hey, we did these X amount of meals for this hospital sponsored by blank. So whoever it said, sponsored by, I'd Google them, I would contact them like, hey, we are available to

00:59:30.200 - 00:59:43.050

also do these meals. And what I think people don't realize is we're not doing these meals out of the kindness of our hearts. What's happening is that other amazing individuals are donating to these third

00:59:43.090 - 01:00:00.730

parties. And then these third parties connect individual people, or business, whoever donations, to restaurants, and then deliver it or we deliver it to, to the hospitals. And so I kind of just applied to

01:00:00.730 - 01:00:10.450

anything that I could see, and started to get to the pits, right? Because at the beginning of March, there was a lot of momentum, a lot of people were donating.

01:00:11.740 - 01:00:25.950

And so we were thankful, we were lucky enough to get a gig, close to midnight was it? It was, which–which prior to COVID, we'd be like, no, we close at

01:00:26.080 - 01:00:37.670

2, ask somebody else. But we were like, how many do you need? What time, right, we were just like, we will do this. And w-we didn't even have the rest of our staff, it was literally us and

01:00:37.740 - 01:00:51.620

one other person, was it. And we didn't even make burgers because it didn't make sense. So we made Hainanese chicken rice, like 200 portions for midnight, um, what was the

01:00:51.700 - 01:00:58.100

organization called? I'm blanking. Feed the Front Line. So Feed the Front Line is a huge organization. And we did that.

01:00:58.860 - 01:01:11.410

And that organization is really great in that there's sort of equal opportunity, right, so they weren't going to come back and keep using us, they were gonna, you know, take donations and–and–and provide the opportunity

01:01:11.440 - 01:01:25.650

for another restaurant, another restaurant. So I had to continue looking for opportunities after that one. And then I reached out to an organization started by Rice MBA students, and that one was called Snacks

01:01:25.650 - 01:01:37.960

for Med Staff. And, you know, I'm sort of playing up like, hey, we're also Rice alum, I was like, I'm gonna play up any sort of advantage I might have to–to, you know, like, whatever I can get. And so that

01:01:38.020 - 01:01:50.100

one, and this is the beauty of social media, right, is that with hashtags, with everything, it's like, really easy to–to–to tap in on opportunities. So we did that one.

01:01:52.050 - 01:02:08.600

We did one through the Texas Restaurant Organization . And the thing about that, is they were great, right? Because we're used to banging out like 200 transactions a day, and on average, during COVID would be like,

01:02:08.940 - 01:02:22.980

20 to 40. And so the question is, how do we fill that not only in terms of sales, so that we're, you know, not losing money, but also to keep our staff morale up, and to keep them

01:02:23.540 - 01:02:36.420

busy and to keep them motivated? And so the hospital meals, they weren't every day. But they were—they were definitely good for

01:02:36.670 - 01:02:47.310

us to just feel like we were doing something. Um, but they started to dry up by June, right? Because after a span of three

01:02:47.560 - 01:03:00.690

months, right, like people—people can't keep giving forever, and–and everyone—the people that–that were, that were behind these organizations, they were volunteers. They had day jobs.

01:03:00.690 - 01:03:14.600

And by June, right, they had to go back to their consulting job, they had to go back to their teaching job. And so once those opportunities went away, we really had to evaluate

01:03:16.450 - 01:03:29.600

what we could do to keep going. So what were some of the most like—how did you guys safety-wise adapt to the coronavirus situation in the restaurant?

01:03:31.920 - 01:03:46.200

Um, we consulted the CDC guidelines, right? During March and April, when all of this was new to us, I was reading that website daily. I was printing out all the guidelines.

01:03:46.200 - 01:04:03.530

I was pasting it on the walls. I was compiling just all the do's and don'ts. And so the first few weeks of March, masks weren't required, right? So if you go back and look at social media, even though coronavirus was

01:04:03.530 - 01:04:21.460

out there and there was a lockdown, it wasn't, it wasn't a thing. Masks were recommended but it wasn't as pervasive as it was—as it is now. Ironically, people are all about gloves. And so one of his pet peeves is that non-industry

01:04:22.810 - 01:04:39.120

people have this false sense of security, seeing hospitality with workers wearing gloves, but what they don't realize is that sometimes, or a lot of times, restaurant workers are wearing these gloves, but then touching

01:04:39.120 - 01:04:50.400

their face, touching their mouth, and then touching your food. Right? It's this false sense of: oh, they're wearing gloves, they must be safe, versus if you don't wear gloves, you can constantly, right, wash your

01:04:50.650 - 01:05:05.450

hands and be hygienic. Yeah, I mean the main thing is, prior to Burger-Chan—and at Burger-Chan, because we are an open kitchen, and we're doing ready to eat foods, the expectation is to wear

01:05:05.450 - 01:05:17.440

gloves at all times. So we have been doing that, since we opened. But prior to that, you know, at a Japanese restaurant doing sushi, traditionally never wear gloves.

01:05:18.370 - 01:05:30.390

Um, I did a lot of work at fine dining places that only open for dinner service. And at those places you never wear gloves because health inspectors don't come out at dinner time.

01:05:31.640 - 01:05:49.040

We have gloves, so when they do a random, you know, inspection during the day, everyone suddenly puts on gloves. But otherwise everyone works with their bare hands, you just—you wash your hands. The problem with gloves, and we–we wear them at Burger-Chan,

01:05:49.770 - 01:06:05.370

is they're supposed to be single task. So it should never be, you do one thing and then you switch it, and y-you keep using them for a different task. Um, but when you take off your

01:06:05.470 - 01:06:21.450

gloves, technically, you're supposed to wash your hands before your next pair. But more often than not, especially in any busy kitchen, you don't have time. So even if you try your best to stick to that, the

01:06:21.450 - 01:06:33.520

best you can do is just switch gloves. You–you don't have time to wash your hands, you're just going from one glove to the next. And I think that's very typical for most kitchens. Either that, or you just don't wear gloves.

01:06:34.660 - 01:06:49.370

Yeah. But going–going back to at the beginning of COVID, right. There was the—we did post a video, I think it was relating to us banging out a–a big order for a hospital.

01:06:49.420 - 01:07:03.880

And at that time, we weren't wearing gloves, or one of the girls wasn't wearing gloves and I think at that time—or this was an old video and we weren't wearing masks Yeah, she's not a cook. So she's literally just putting boxes into bags.

01:07:05.170 - 01:07:22.560

But we were getting comments like where are the gloves, where are the masks? And then I think we were like, we're kind of the type of people maybe borderline rebellious,

01:07:23.390 - 01:07:36.990

where if someone tells us to do something, we're like, well, we don't believe in it, we're not going to do it. And it's not that we were anti-masks, because we're very pro-masks, especially now. But I think it was just, and this goes back to just like a weird—I

01:07:38.130 - 01:07:52.980

could go off on a tangent about dealing with comments and internet trolls. But anyway, let me, let me steer the conversation back to—once i-it became very clear that mask wearing was important, not only to protect others, right,

01:07:53.910 - 01:08:08.040

we–we went out, and we purchased masks, a-and not the single use, but like a cloth mask. And it was very important for us to use the ones where you could tie behind the back, right, so you can't take it off during service, and it's a

01:08:08.040 - 01:08:20.550

very secure fit. So we bought one for each of our staff, we instructed them on how to wear them properly. Because even though people are wearing masks, half the time they're not wearing it properly, or they're

01:08:20.550 - 01:08:33.200

not even wearing the proper type of mask. So for us, that's really important. For me, specifically, I'm a rule follower. So if you give me rules, per CDC guidelines or whatever guidelines, I'm going to follow

01:08:33.250 - 01:08:49.120

them to the T. Right? And so, you know, we wore masks and as the co-owner/manager, I made—I'm—I made sure I was, I was watching each person like a hawk, right so if your mask was slipping a little bit,

01:08:49.520 - 01:09:00.640

redo your mask. If you touch your mask, go wash your hands. Right, and so that became one of my–my new duties. And we did temperature checks.

01:09:02.070 - 01:09:18.310

And we kind of ramped up everything like logging and more contact tracing. Once we actually had to close due to COVID positivity on staff, I forgot what month

01:09:18.730 - 01:09:33.600

that was, maybe June, I think it was June, and you hope kind of like with dental, dental hygiene like, hey, if I brush my teeth

01:09:33.600 - 01:09:49.390

twice a day, and I floss, like I'll be fine. And so I had that same mentality with COVID right. Wear the mask, follow the rules, you'll be fine. The problem with that is that as owners and managers, you only have so much

01:09:49.390 - 01:10:01.800

control over your employees, and I mean you have control over yourself. But with employees, the difficulty is that a lot of employees have multiple jobs.

01:10:02.470 - 01:10:16.360

They have housemates, they have family, right? And all of a sudden, before COVID, I didn't care what you did after work, as long as it wasn't illegal. Now I'm in everyone's

01:10:16.360 - 01:10:31.690

business. Right? I have to—now if your roommate, who I don't even know, if your roommate has a pool party, and then gets sick, that now affects my

01:10:32.130 - 01:10:44.020

employee, right? Through—and then my employee, let's say, wasn't doing anything wrong, but the fact that they live with someone else who now got sick, I'm

01:10:44.020 - 01:10:56.470

now one man down. And then, you know, once positivity—the positivity rate in Houston really skyrocketed all of a sudden, it's like, I'm one man down, I'm two man down, I'm three man down, it's like,

01:10:56.770 - 01:11:13.530

I can't open. And there was a lot of public scrutiny about being ultra-transparent, going above and beyond CDC guidelines, and really telling the public. And it's not to say that we were hiding anything, it's

01:11:13.610 - 01:11:24.200

that the public doesn't always need to know certain things, right? Especially if it's controlled. Um, but public

01:11:24.260 - 01:11:38.080

perception is that if you're not being 100%, transparent, you're hiding something. And so that's an additional stress, right? And so we, um—

01:11:38.370 - 01:11:53.430

Okay, I think you're missing a big point is when someone on our staff got it from their other job or from their housemates. Everyone on staff tested, everyone came back negative, we've been in the presence of people that were positive at work in close proximity for eight hours a day for

01:11:53.430 - 01:12:06.820

multiple days. And we've never gotten it. That first time that we closed, everyone was negative. It shows mask wearing works. Subsequent times, we're a lot more careful.

01:12:07.590 - 01:12:25.160

The moment we think someone might have it by them reporting something, they stayed at home, eventually, they tested positive, they never came back. Everyone else took the test again, to be safe, everyone's still negative. So I think when wearing masks

01:12:25.160 - 01:12:39.360

properly, it really slows down the spread. I think it's true, because we've had multiple instances before we finally closed, where we were in close contact with someone that was positive, and no one ever got it

01:12:39.360 - 01:12:52.610

from anyone else at work. It's only from other quick things that they do outside of work. That's true. And I think what really helps is that when we reopened after we closed two weeks in

01:12:52.610 - 01:13:08.180

March, we made the decision to do online ordering only, to the detriment of potential sales, because people are really used to walking up to the storefront, picking up a clipboard, checking off exactly what

01:13:08.250 - 01:13:20.610

they want, right, and paying, right? They're used to that. And a lot of people, they don't like to be inconvenienced, they don't understand that the on-online ordering is better for both parties given COVID.

01:13:22.200 - 01:13:35.720

And so we lost quite a bit of sales because of that. And, you know, we got verbally assaulted because of that, people—office workers calling us stupid and all these things. But as a result of being online ordering

01:13:35.740 - 01:13:48.400

only, we were really able to create a barrier. Like literally, we had tables and chairs in front of our storefront that had a separation between customers and between staff.

01:13:48.940 - 01:14:02.790

And that created a lot of peace of mind, not only for us as owners, but also for the rest of our staff to say, we can control each other. Like, if–if it's really hard to tell customers,

01:14:04.650 - 01:14:14.690

they're wearing their mask wrong. It just it's hard. They're strangers, you know, you're supposed to be accommodating versus, you know, I can control my staff and say, hey, you're doing this wrong.

01:14:14.990 - 01:14:27.250

And so because we were online ordering only, it really allowed us to say like y'all are gonna do whatever you're gonna do, whether you're wearing a mask or not, or whether you're yelling me, this is my space, you either order you don't.

01:14:27.250 - 01:14:39.310

And then if you do order, here's your food. Like even if they're not wearing a mask, and they ordered, we just drop the food on the table and we just scoot right on back. And so people can argue that we were

01:14:39.310 - 01:14:51.570

overly cautious, um— Well, despite having tables with maybe a six-inch clearance on either side. We still had people go across that barrier.

01:14:52.000 - 01:15:03.550

Yeah, they would like find a tiny gap in between the tables as if like, that's what you were supposed to do, like, Oh, that's the entrance we created for you— Or one guy who just wanted to grab our napkins. It's like, are you serious?

01:15:03.670 - 01:15:16.400

Or, so it's really hard to hear, right, with masks on? So they would approach and then take off their mask, because they thought that that was the smart thing to do. And so it–it just became—it'd be— all

01:15:16.400 - 01:15:30.230

these things, it became very stressful to run a restaurant. You've lost most of your building clientele. The remaining ones either don't want to order from you because you’re online ordering, or they say racist

01:15:30.230 - 01:15:41.890

things like do you serve bats? Or they can't find us, or they think our hours are too restrictive. All these things, we're just fighting such an uphill battle, right?

01:15:42.520 - 01:15:55.780

The–the stress of every time I get an early morning text, who's going to be out, whose family member is potentially sick, right? And then testing to this day is

01:15:55.830 - 01:16:08.750

really hard, right? See, to be able to get reliable and quick results is still difficult to this day, it was just like, is this really worth it to be selling on some days, like 20, 30 burgers, like we're not even breaking

01:16:08.750 - 01:16:25.720

even, I can't even cover payroll, like we're opening at a loss. And it's been happening, and the hospital meals kind of helped at least breakeven and other things were helping, but by July and August, it was just like, I don't know how much longer we can do this.

01:16:25.720 - 01:16:32.430

Because I think back in March, people are like, oh, by July, everything will be fine. Right. And now we're in July, August. And it's just like, I don't know,

01:16:32.480 - 01:16:37.350

people are crazy. The government's crazy. This is all crazy, I don't know. And everyone's just exhausted.

01:16:37.400 - 01:16:55.350

And it's like, us included, we were exhausted, our staff was exhausted. And it just felt like, okay, maybe we should close preemptively on our terms, so that we can take our time and energy and just

01:16:55.610 - 01:17:07.460

kind of divert it to something else that makes more sense during this downtime while people are adjusting to going back to school and all these things. And then just focus on our second restaurant.

01:17:08.210 - 01:17:19.210

So that's what we've been doing. How do you think that the restaurant scene and then your new restaurant in the Galleria will kind of change post COVID then? Do you see any lasting changes?

01:17:19.980 - 01:17:35.480

So, potentially, we haven't thought that far yet. Thankfully, not thankfully, um, our restaurant has been delayed a number of times through various things. But we're hoping that by the time it opens, things

01:17:37.050 - 01:17:51.550

will have stabilized a little, normalized a little. Hopefully there's a vaccine by then. Um, our menu system was kind of inspired by a sandwich shop called Which Wich.

01:17:52.160 - 01:18:03.460

So, theirs it's like printed directly on these brown paper bags and you take the bag, check off all the things you want. I really loved that system. I thought it was genius.

01:18:03.510 - 01:18:17.330

And so we did it, but just kind of on paper on clipboards. Since COVID, we got rid of the clipboards. So we haven't fully figured it out.

01:18:17.330 - 01:18:27.610

One potential—you know, clipboards, and then the Sharpies that go along with it, everyone is touching. And of course, these things, surface transmission is not that high.

01:18:28.070 - 01:18:41.920

But it's also kind of an unnecessary risk. We, you know, maybe there's a chance that everyone just needs to order online. Maybe we have, I don't know if it's any better, but maybe self-

01:18:41.920 - 01:18:57.680

ordering kiosks that could sanitize after each use, something. Yeah, we're still—we're still in the brainstorming stage because we have a bit of time. But a few weeks ago, we had—our landlord called us.

01:18:58.400 - 01:19:14.620

And Will just straight up said, we're not opening our dining room till there's a vaccine. And I think—I think they were really shocked to hear that because a lot of restaurants are trying to maximize whatever the—whatever if it's 50% or

01:19:14.620 - 01:19:23.330

75%. They're trying to maximize, right, the dining room. But for us, we still don't trust other people. That's the main thing. And

01:19:23.330 - 01:19:40.580

when you open up your dining room, it's just so hard to control what other people are doing, and we'd rather just not deal with that I think. Yeah, there are enough daily challenges in operating a restaurant

01:19:40.620 - 01:19:50.840

under the most ideal circumstances. My threshold for bullshit is not high enough to open up the dining room in the middle of this pandemic.

01:19:50.910 - 01:20:06.230

I will probably stab some unruly customer one day. I think what's also difficult is that a lot of restaurants have tried to open up patio space. And while that's well-meaning, we live in Houston.

01:20:07.120 - 01:20:22.330

And–and Houston, while we love Houston, and it's not, it’s not a patio city, right and–and–and we tried it too, we've sat outside, we've gone to a farmer’s market, and within 5, 10 minutes, we're like, dying, or sweating,

01:20:22.660 - 01:20:36.750

and our daughter is–is–is cranky. And I, and I think it's just—it's really challenging to–to pivot in that respect in terms of making dine-in safe. I

01:20:36.850 - 01:20:50.480

think that, for lack of a better word, I think some people, I don't want to say delusional, but they just— they want to believe that if they're outside, they'll be fine. And I'm like, you're outside, but you should still

01:20:50.780 - 01:21:03.440

be distanced, like you–you can't just like be next to each other. And like— Versus, now any restaurant with a patio, you look at the patio and it's packed, they’re like sardines, and no one's wearing a mask, and everyone's partying, and it's just like, okay, this

01:21:03.440 - 01:21:22.010

thing's never gonna end until we get a vaccine and convince most of America to take the vaccine. So, that's cool. So we're not slated to open till early 2021. You know, people talk about vaccines coming soon.

01:21:22.530 - 01:21:37.260

I think we're not even cautiously optimistic at this point, we're just cautious. And we're trying really hard not to like let the pessimism get the best of us. I think that's the coping strategy.

01:21:40.120 - 01:21:53.710

How do you think the government could have better supported, like, the restaurant industry during this period of time? I'm not sure that they could have, honestly, I mean everyone is like, sign this petition, sign that

01:21:53.710 - 01:22:06.490

petition. Where's another handout, where's another, you know, PPP or something, and it's helpful. But if this drags on for too long, I don't think there's much to save.

01:22:06.510 - 01:22:20.520

I think it's just inevitable places will close. This is just, unfortunately, weeding out places. And it's just one of those things that's going to affect everyone. And I don't know that you can bail out everyone.

01:22:20.580 - 01:22:36.470

It's not—I think it sucks, but I don't know. ’Cause you know, you—What can you do? You know, even if landlords don't charge rent, you still have costs. What do the landlords do?

01:22:36.470 - 01:22:47.460

Where do the landlords get their money from? Eventually, there's just not enough money to save everyone. Yeah. And I feel like maybe it's a Chinese mentality

01:22:48.490 - 01:22:57.090

to not rely on handouts and to not wait on the government assistance, right? Obviously, we applied.

01:22:57.860 - 01:23:10.730

Um, just like Chinese people. They're like, apply for all the scholarships that you can, right, so we applied for all the grants, and then PPP and everything that we could, but we also like we can't wait and rely

01:23:10.860 - 01:23:27.700

on this as our you know, just wait, you have to think realistically, how can I survive on my own? I think part of it is like, you know, our parents immigrated here, right. It's not like this—we grew up here multigenerational.

01:23:27.700 - 01:23:39.570

We have a lot of resources, we have a lot of trust. And not that we have distrust of the government, but it's sort of like, take care of yourself. You, that, you know, when we closed,

01:23:41.550 - 01:23:51.840

we've had people come out and be like, man, that's great, you can jump on that unemployment now. And I think there might still be a $300 benefit or something. We were like, we're not gonna apply for unemployment.

01:23:52.660 - 01:24:03.220

We have ways to make money. Like we're not helpless. Like 很丢脸2 like, I can't tell anyone I'm on unemployment. That’s— And the thing is, it's like, there are people who legitimately need

01:24:03.290 - 01:24:10.570

unemployment. And we're not that group. We have options. We have ways to make money. So–so we're lucky. Anyway.

01:24:10.570 - 01:24:22.800

I mean, you'll be the first one to know this. Right? And this is very Asian. They don't cut ties once you become 18, right.

01:24:22.800 - 01:24:38.270

So when we went to college, fully funded, right, by our parents. Yeah, well, we need to move back home. We don't pay rent. But you know, we have Caucasian

01:24:38.270 - 01:24:51.040

friends or other friends. It's like, I know, some of my–my friends when they hit 18, their parents expected rent if they're staying at home and some of them did not get assistance. Or maybe only got partial

01:24:51.040 - 01:25:05.860

assistance to go to college. Um— Yeah, I mean, even now when we've closed the business in our mid 30s, and we have a child, both sets of parents said, hey, we'll give you this stipend per month to make it through

01:25:05.860 - 01:25:18.400

these tough times as if we were, you know, children in school who needed allowance. And for us, it's, um, invaluable. Right. And so, just grateful for that.

01:25:18.400 - 01:25:30.600

2 “lose face” - shameful/embarrassing And I definitely know, some other Asian restaurant operators that are friends with us, good friends with us. And you know, they've kind of said the same thing like,

01:25:30.950 - 01:25:42.890

Yeah, really, without our parents helping us out, um, we wouldn't have made it to the first year for restaurants, because restaurants are just that hard. And if you're solely relying on yourself, you're probably going to fail.

01:25:42.890 - 01:25:55.400

Or other people who open restaurants they have, they have investors, and we're like, that sounds great. But our investors are friends and Mr. Wu, Mrs. Wu, Mr.

01:25:55.460 - 01:26:05.340

Feng and Mrs. Feng. So they don't have super deep pockets. And–and–and our goal is to not lean on them, right, our

01:26:05.340 - 01:26:19.100

goal is like any other kid is, is to fly on–on your own. But we're also we're not going to deny the fact that we have this resource and this privilege. And, you know, our parents moved here and got secure jobs and work

01:26:19.170 - 01:26:34.120

them for 30, 40 years, so that we would have this opportunity, right. This opportunity to open a restaurant to pursue our passions. These are both things that they didn't do, that's not their mindset, their mindset is,

01:26:34.520 - 01:26:50.310

you know, get as much education to get the best paying job to support the family. So then, how do you feel like the pandemic also revealed any structural inequalities, I know that you said like, someone was like, joking about you serving bats, or something.

01:26:52.800 - 01:27:08.360

I mean, I think—I think there are always going to be racist and ignorant people out there. But I think what COVID really, really did shine a light on is–is the extent of the chasm

01:27:08.360 - 01:27:20.770

between the haves and the have nots, right. So if you have the resources, and if you have the type of job where you can easily work from home, and hire a nanny, and still

01:27:21.040 - 01:27:36.630

send your kids to daycare or whatnot, and–and make a pod, then- then not to say that you're relatively unscathed, but you have layers of protection, and you have more resources to deal with the stress right, and to kind of not

01:27:36.630 - 01:27:49.620

have it all be on your–your shoulders, you still can have some sort of support system. But there are a lot of people who still have to mul—work multiple jobs, and they have multiple kids, and it puts them in an impossible situation, and

01:27:49.620 - 01:28:07.630

they may not have access to unemployment benefits, or this or that benefit. And it really just, to me I feel like it lays bare that inequality. Also with virtual schooling, kids may not have access to internet, they may not have

01:28:07.680 - 01:28:23.010

anyone supervising them. Um, I've cooked for really, really wealthy families since the pandemic started, offering, you know, high-end tasting, tasting–tasting menus

01:28:23.420 - 01:28:42.470

at home, and they're having parties ten people at a time, you know, and just as if nothing's changed. Just—and then, you know like, oh, we're gonna go to our vacation home in Aspen or somewhere for—until this

01:28:42.470 - 01:28:53.750

blows over. And it's just like, that's nice to have that option. That's cool. Yeah, well, that's actually made me think. So when we, when we closed on August 28, right.

01:28:54.390 - 01:29:05.280

About two weeks ago, the Houston Chronicle wrote an article about our closure. And I didn't read—I didn't read it till a few days later, maybe a week later.

01:29:05.680 - 01:29:18.680

Just because we were getting inundated with–with messages and whatnot and I just really needed to step away from social media. But I finally—I finally went back to read the Houston Chronicle article online.

01:29:18.720 - 01:29:32.650

And I did something that you're never supposed to do but you always feel compelled to which is I read the comments section. And one comment said, it was at the very bottom it said, just another Chinese owned—what’d

01:29:35.100 - 01:29:52.300

it say? Just essentially, just another Chinese-owned business closed by the Chinese virus. And my first thought that I wanted to reply with, just another piece of shit comment by a piece of shit individual.

01:29:52.730 - 01:30:09.850

And so, and so my gut reaction was to create a fake email account to create a fake username. So it wouldn't come back to the restaurant, to write what he had said.

01:30:11.410 - 01:30:28.200

And I was like, you know what? There's no need to hide behind anonymity, like, we straight up as two Chinese Americans, these are our names Diane and Willet, we don't like what you said.

01:30:28.350 - 01:30:47.640

Ah, was that kind of like a step back then for the perspectives of Asian Americans and—or was that just revealing what people already thought? I think it's just revealing what some people already think.

01:30:47.640 - 01:31:02.820

I think it's just–just the way the world is. I don't know that—I don't, I think pre-COVID someone would make just as stupid a comment. I think it's just out there.

01:31:04.250 - 01:31:19.800

I mean, it's the same with you know, when it rains, it pours, right, so COVID happened, and then Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter happened. And we had so much on our plates that we didn't have time to really read about what was going on.

01:31:19.800 - 01:31:34.540

But at some point, again, with social media, and–and–and us being quote, unquote, kind of like public figures, people expect you to say something, right? Because they, they would argue that if you don't say anything, it means you're complicit, it means

01:31:34.540 - 01:31:47.980

that you think that black lives don't matter. You know, so, um, I didn't do the whole blackout Tuesday thing, because I just, I didn't want to jump on some trend that didn't have a lot of meaning. And so I kind of, you know,

01:31:47.980 - 01:32:02.600

did a little bit of reading and I thought, you know, what would be an appropriate response that was authentic, because with our social media, and with everything that that we post online, um, it's not a PR

01:32:02.640 - 01:32:17.890

person. It's literally just us. And so the question is, what do we want to say? And to be—to be honest, we're not very political people, we're not very, you know, we don't

01:32:17.930 - 01:32:30.740

have a lot of strong beliefs. We're not, we're not religious, whatnot. And so— We believe in being good people, we would like to think that we're good people.

01:32:31.570 - 01:32:43.610

And so in reading and what Black Lives Matter stands for we're like, we agree, we agree that systemic racism is an issue. We–we agree that a lot

01:32:43.610 - 01:32:58.260

of times, you know, there's–there's a lot of unfairness, and there's a lot of unnecessary police brutality. It's like, we agree, and we take a stand. And–and, you know, basically solidarity, this is not our fight.

01:32:59.020 - 01:33:09.910

But that also doesn't mean that we should be silent. So we will stand beside, right? We have friends that are black, we have coworkers who are black, it’s like, we recognize that this

01:33:10.040 - 01:33:25.570

is an issue, we will listen to your thoughts, we will be a megaphone for whatever you want to promote, um, just know that we are allies, right? So I think I posted a graphic that said something like

01:33:25.670 - 01:33:38.890

Asians stand with Black Lives Matter or something. Um, and then we got a—I was surprised that we got on Instagram a direct message from an Asian customer.

01:33:39.550 - 01:33:50.830

It really shocked me to the core. I had no, I had no response. I was like, oh my god, this is a person that I like said hi to, and I didn't know her very well, because she's just

01:33:50.830 - 01:34:04.930

customer. She's an Asian customer who basically said that we are brainwashed by CNN. Black people are lazy. Black—this, that, and the other right?

01:34:04.930 - 01:34:15.170

And it just went on and on and on. And I was so shocked by her response. I like, I didn't know what to say. I had to like take a deep breath.

01:34:15.170 - 01:34:24.850

And then she sent me a–a video of Candace Owens. I didn't know who Candace Owens was at the time. I watched the video. I kept waiting for the vid-video to, like, change.

01:34:26.790 - 01:34:38.080

And then when I finished the video, I was like, oh my god. This is a crazy video. This is crazy. And so I started reading into it and I–I honestly, I just started showing it to my black friends. I was like, who is this person?

01:34:38.390 - 01:34:48.760

Like, how do you feel about them? They were like, offended to the core. I was like, Okay, this is terrible. And so I asked them for like, what's a really good

01:34:48.760 - 01:34:59.980

response? Like, what would you want me to say? And then I kind of took all that and then I responded to her thinking like okay— Oh, he responded, cause like I was just pissed. And so he responded.

01:35:00.840 - 01:35:14.000

I crafted a very generic, middle of the road, like, we don't agree with what you said. Let's just agree to disagree. Thank you for being a supporter of Burger-Chan, just very kind of—

01:35:15.910 - 01:35:23.480

Not emotional. Which is what I would have done. And then she responds again. Yeah, no, her response was ridiculous.

01:35:23.480 - 01:35:37.490

It was just like, well, if you support defunding the police, the next time you need their help, don't call 911. And it was at that point that we realized some people just can't be—you can't engage with them.

01:35:38.920 - 01:35:52.720

Um, which is great. Like, having social media, it's a double-edged sword, right? You have that accessibility, to like people that you would never talk to in person, for better or worse, right?

01:35:52.720 - 01:36:02.630

So you have like, all these cool people who are like, oh, we love what you're doing, blah blah blah, and you're like, yay thank you. And then you have like crazy people who are like, I think your ears like—I think you're crazy. And I don't

01:36:03.300 - 01:36:13.410

even remember the other ones. But it's just like, you have to know when to stop. Or like, someone replied negatively to our COVID response.

01:36:13.410 - 01:36:26.910

It had to do with an incident where we had a sick staff member, who at the time, tested negative, he tested negative, but he felt sick.

01:36:27.000 - 01:36:41.020

And he felt—he felt like he really needed to see a doctor, but he didn't feel comfortable driving himself. And we were at work. And we're like, we don't know what to do. So we—I consulted one of my

01:36:41.090 - 01:36:57.840

friends who works in the medical industry, I was like, hey, should I call an Uber and send the staff member to the hospital to get checked out? Because I–I feel like it would weigh on my conscience if I did nothing, and something

01:36:57.980 - 01:37:07.130

were to happen. And h-his only form of transportation was going to be later that evening, possibly. And I was like, I don't—I don't feel

01:37:07.130 - 01:37:20.240

comfortable. And so after consulting with my friend, she's like, yeah, that makes sense. Because you know, an ambulance will be really expensive, and they may not come out for something that's not truly an emergency.

01:37:20.460 - 01:37:33.360

So we did it— Nor should they. Well, that's what the thing is, like, ambulances are in high demand, it's–it's a limited resource. So if he's not bleeding out, but he's in pain, he should not get an

01:37:33.360 - 01:37:48.310

ambulance, he should take an Uber. So anyway, that happened. And then after we had closed for about a week and a half, due to COVID, right to get everyone tested to be able to get our staff healthy.

01:37:48.310 - 01:38:00.730

And by the way, like our staff fully recovered, and they're fine. Um, we were very transparent about the whole process about how it's extremely stressful, and I kind of just documented everything in terms of, you know,

01:38:01.140 - 01:38:14.770

going to emergency centers and paying 150 bucks a pop for each employee to get tested and lining up in the wee hours of the morning. And I just, I just wanted everyone to know. So I included that anecdote about how we called an

01:38:14.770 - 01:38:29.850

Uber for that employee, and I easily could have left all of that out. I didn't have to say anything, I just felt like people needed to know and of course, a commenter on Instagram said, you know, how dare you put

01:38:30.700 - 01:38:43.030

the safety and life of that Uber driver in danger and–and all of a sudden, we were getting attacked, and they're like, there's this huge Reddit thread online. And I'm like— It wasn't huge, but there was a Reddit thread.

01:38:43.030 - 01:38:59.520

There was a Reddit thread— for an Uber driver— whatever. And I'm like—and of course you take it personally, because we own this restaurant. And I'm like, and you know, they're, they're being really, really rude to us. And we asked for professional medical staff opinion, people who

01:38:59.520 - 01:39:08.600

are doctors and nurses. Yeah, they backed us up. It didn't matter. These people just came and just shit on us and it's just like, okay, whatever we're done, let's move on.

01:39:08.780 - 01:39:20.760

And the thing is, the driver, according to the Uber app said that they were masked, our employee was masked. If you have two masked people in the car and they're wearing their masks appropriately, it should be fine.

01:39:20.760 - 01:39:38.070

And he also—we had no suspicions that he had COVID at the time, it ended up subsequent tests he did test positive but at the time, we had no idea if we had known that he was COVID positive perhaps we like we would have suggested something otherwise but just given

01:39:38.240 - 01:39:51.800

the intel at the time, that was the best decision and my friend who works in an ER backed us up and so we crafted this dispassionate like, trying to have—trying to explain, we, what I just said to you that we

01:39:51.800 - 01:40:05.010

tried to make the best decision at a time, we are sorry that you disagree, but these are the type of people like they're not engaging to have a meaningful conversation, they are there to poke and prod,

01:40:06.320 - 01:40:18.810

and just be the nasty individual. Um, and at some point, you just know when to back off from internet trolls and be like, at this point, you're wasting

01:40:19.230 - 01:40:31.880

my time. And I will respond once, maybe twice, not for you— but for other people. For other people to see that we have responded, and this is what we think. And once it devolves,

01:40:31.880 - 01:40:44.110

and it's very clear that like, you're not going to change their mind, then it's like, I've done the best that I can. And then kind of going back to when the previous people who DM'd you, how do you—what would

01:40:44.180 - 01:41:04.990

your advice be for people trying to get rid of the racism between minorities as well? I don't know, I mean, I think it starts young. Right. And so for me, my responsibility is, I mean—

01:41:05.030 - 01:41:18.840

I mean, I don't think you can really convince people that are set in their ways to not be racist, you would hope that they become respectful. Um, you know, if they have this mental illness, then hopefully

01:41:18.840 - 01:41:35.360

they don't reveal it. I think maybe just society in general, schools, celebrities, need to make an effort to make sure the next generation are not as influenced by their own parents, if their parents are racist, you

01:41:35.360 - 01:41:51.960

know. The parents will die out, eventually, a next—a new generation comes, that's just, there's always another generation, another generation, and all we can hope to do is to make sure each generation is better. Yeah, I mean, a-and what I was gonna say is

01:41:53.460 - 01:42:07.520

your–your circle of control starts from inside and out, right? And so our immediate circle of control, like I have control—I feel very confident having a conversation with my husband. I feel like what he said, I don't agree with him, I feel like maybe I could

01:42:07.520 - 01:42:22.690

change his mind. Within that circle is also our daughter, right, our daughter is very impressionable. We hope that you know, things that we–we, right, so we don't want her to be racist, we want her to be kind,

01:42:22.690 - 01:42:34.400

these are things that we can pass on. Not only saying to her, but also you know, in our actions, this is within our circle of influence. And even within our parents, and my sister, even

01:42:35.590 - 01:42:47.320

though their family, there's only so much you can do. Like my dad who's 70, he will not get a flu shot. I have tried to convince him that he will not get sick from a flu shot.

01:42:47.630 - 01:42:56.530

He's like, it's just, it's–it's an—it's a non-issue. He's stubborn, he's like, I can take care of myself. And I have to respect that, right? As long as he's not harming other

01:42:56.530 - 01:43:12.520

people. He's like, I'm staying at home, I'll be fine. Then if I tried, and I realized, he's not going to change his mind. Um, but I think that when it comes to racism, when it comes to

01:43:13.850 - 01:43:28.420

being mean, it's like, if you have bad thoughts, and if you don't like someone, I'm not going to try to convince you to do 180. But I would at least like you to come back to central, which is neutral.

01:43:29.490 - 01:43:42.800

Which is, at least don't be mean. Right? I'm not going to try to get you from here to oh, be the nicest person in the world, I want you to be like, if you

01:43:42.800 - 01:43:59.830

have nothing nice to say, just don't say it. And—because I think it's very hard—like, for instance, I have a friend who's Chinese American. She's very Democratic.

01:44:01.440 - 01:44:17.840

And her parents are very Republican. And these are her parents, right? And she has arguments with them. And even at that level, neither one can convince

01:44:18.340 - 01:44:36.420

the other. And it's just this constant battle. And sometimes you just can't change people's minds, but at least you can be respectful. And I feel like that's part of being a good parent, being a good teacher, being a

01:44:36.670 - 01:44:48.700

good member of society is at least be civil. There are certain things that you think and I don't need to be a mind-reader, and I don't want to be a mind-reader. But please don't act on them in public.

01:44:49.830 - 01:45:07.890

And all these things and I think unfortunately, because of the latest presidential leadership, the President has done things and said things that I find inappropriate, regardless of political

01:45:07.890 - 01:45:19.790

beliefs, that kind of just diminish all the rules of civility. So it's like, oh, he can do it. Well, now we can do it. And I think that that—that is

01:45:20.840 - 01:45:34.150

what I find unacceptable. And then one of my final questions would be, what would be your advice for people bridging— interested in bridging cultures and nations, especially with your, like, Asian Studies background?

01:45:40.820 - 01:45:54.330

I would say, listen more than you speak. Find similarities. I think every culture is different. But we're all the same race.

01:45:54.360 - 01:46:05.180

We're all part of the human race. Why can't we focus on that? It shouldn't have to take an alien invasion or some other worldly enemy to make us realize that we should unite as one.

01:46:06.540 - 01:46:22.570

And I think all of that really starts at a much younger age. I just think wherever you are, the school should really embrace diversity and help everyone realize that. As a chef, I would like to say through

01:46:22.810 - 01:46:36.010

food, but it's kind of cliché, I mean. You don't have to enjoy a culture’s food just to be open-minded. That's all the questions I have. Thank you so much for doing this.

01:46:36.220 - 01:46:43.310

I really appreciate hearing your guys’ stories. Thanks for having us. Our pleasure. Yeah— Have a great day. You too.