Friday, November 3.
After training, Zayn raced home on his bike.
The family’s old Ford was already parked outside.
Zayn leaned his bike against the wall, opened the car door, and climbed into the passenger seat.
Anna glanced at him with a smile.
“I didn’t expect you to be this eager over one meal.”
“I’m helping my mom.
Of course I’m eager.”
Anna smiled and shook her head as she started the car.
Birmingham’s Chinatown was not far from Bodymoor Heath, only about a twenty-minute drive.
As Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham was known for its remarkable cultural diversity.
However, the city’s Chinatown was not particularly large.
It was essentially a commercial district spread across a few neighboring streets.
It was nowhere near the size of its counterparts in London or Manchester.
By the time they turned into Chinatown, darkness had fallen.
The signs lining both sides of the street glowed red and yellow, while shop names swept past the car window one after another.
Seeing the familiar writing again after so long made Zayn feel strangely at home.
Their destination, Jade Tower, stood on a street corner.
The frontage was modest, but everything looked neat and tidy.
The moment they reached the entrance, the rich aroma of sauce, star anise, and cinnamon washed over him.
Thinking about how long it had been since he had eaten anything like this, Zayn nearly shed a tear.
“Ms.
Anna!” A slightly plump man hurried out from behind the till to greet her.
“You’re finally here.
British taxes really do my head in!”
He spoke in Chinese, so Anna naturally did not understand a word.
Still, she smiled and greeted him with the phrase she had recently learned.
“Hello, Mr.
Chen.”
From the man’s accent, Zayn could tell that he had come from abroad.
That left him wondering why someone who clearly preferred spicy food was running a Cantonese restaurant in Britain.
“And who’s this?” Mr.
Chen asked, looking at the puzzled Zayn.
“My son, Zayn,” Anna introduced in English.
She then turned to Zayn.
“This is the owner, Mr.
Chen.”
Zayn held out his hand and spoke in Chinese.
“Hello, Mr.
Chen.
My name is…
Zayn.”
He deliberately spoke slowly, making his pronunciation sound noticeably stiff.
Mr.
Chen’s eyes lit up.
“Not bad, young man!
Your Chinese is pretty good!”
Just then, a girl with her hair tied in a ponytail emerged from the kitchen.
She was slender and delicate-featured, with black-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose.
She strongly resembled Mr.
Chen around the eyes, though her manner was completely different.
“Hello, Ms.
Anna.
I’ve organized all the documents you mentioned last time.
Could you check whether anything is still missing?”
Her spoken English was slightly hesitant.
“All right, let me have a look.”
Anna then turned and introduced her to Zayn.
“This is Mr.
Chen’s daughter, Evelyn Chen.
She studies at the University of Birmingham and has been helping her father communicate with me.
Chen was worried about her studying abroad alone, so he came here with her and opened the restaurant.”
Zayn was privately astonished.
What kind of family could afford to open a restaurant just to accompany their daughter while she studied abroad?
He nodded to the girl and offered an awkward greeting in Chinese.
“Hello.”
Evelyn pushed up her glasses and studied the blond-haired, blue-eyed British teenager standing before her.
She already had certain preconceptions about British teenagers.
“Hello,” she replied politely in English.
Anna accepted the folder and leafed through it, her brow gradually furrowing.
“Miss Chen, I can’t understand some of the product names on this purchase order.
Could you tell me which items are food ingredients and which are alcoholic drinks?
They’re subject to different VAT rates.”
Evelyn froze.
“VAT…
rates?”
She clearly had not understood.
Anna explained it again, speaking more slowly, but Evelyn only looked more confused.
Mr.
Chen stood beside them, anxiously rubbing his hands together.
“Evelyn, what did she say?
Come on, this is a perfect chance to practice your English.”
Evelyn’s face reddened slightly.
“Dad, she was speaking too quickly, and…
there were a few words I didn’t understand.”
With the conversation at a standstill, Zayn knew it was time to step in.
Speaking haltingly in Chinese, he said, “My mom wants to know…
which things are food and which are drinks.
Because…
different products are taxed differently in Britain.”
He deliberately added several pauses and filler sounds, frowning and biting his lip as though he were a foreigner struggling to piece together a language he had only studied for a few years.
Evelyn blinked.
That sentence had sounded far smoother than his earlier greeting.
“Oh, I see.” She opened the purchase order.
“Light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and oyster sauce are all ingredients.
The alcoholic drinks are mainly the Shaoxing wine and beer.”
Anna looked at Zayn in surprise.
She had only brought him because she knew he wanted a restaurant meal.
She had never expected him to provide any real help.
After that, everything became much easier.
Zayn served as a human translation machine.
He carefully controlled how fluent he sounded, deliberately stumbling over every sentence and occasionally pretending to forget a word while gesturing helplessly.
Even so, his supposedly broken Chinese was impressive enough.
Everything went smoothly from there.
With Anna’s professional knowledge and Zayn translating, most of Mr.
Chen’s tax problems were sorted out within half an hour.
Anna organized the documents and arranged to return the following week.
“Thank you for all your hard work,” Mr.
Chen said warmly.
“Stay for dinner.
I’ll let you try some authentic Shunde roast goose.”
Anna was about to politely decline, but Zayn had already blurted out, “Thank you, Mr.
Chen.”
He answered so quickly that he forgot to pretend to hesitate.
Anna glanced at her son and shook her head with a smile, but chose not to expose him.
With the matter settled, Evelyn let out a long breath and could not help looking at Zayn again.
“Your Chinese really is excellent,” she said seriously.
“Even the students studying it at my university don’t speak as well as you do.”
Zayn scratched the back of his head guiltily and quickly changed the subject.
“Maybe I’m talented…
Chen, if you like spicy food, why did you open a Cantonese restaurant?”
“You could tell?” Mr.
Chen looked even more surprised before sighing.
“There are more Cantonese people around Birmingham.
Decades ago, most of the people in this Chinatown came from Hong Kong.
If I opened a spicy restaurant, hardly anyone would come.
I’d love to serve dishes hot enough to send people straight to heaven, but who would dare eat them?”
Zayn understood immediately.
Birmingham’s Chinatown could trace its beginnings back to the 1960s, when many immigrants from Hong Kong moved to the industrial city after the Second World War.
Mr.
Chen had clearly researched the local market.
That was why he had hired a proper Cantonese chef to run the kitchen.
When the roast goose arrived, Zayn’s eyes genuinely began to water.
The amber skin glistened with oil, producing a crisp crackle at the lightest touch of his chopsticks.
The meat was so tender it almost slipped from the bone.
Dipped in a little plum sauce, the rich meat and sweet, tangy flavor filled his mouth at once.
Zayn ate without lifting his head.
Every meal he had spent longing for something like this since his rebirth was forgotten before that plate of roast goose.
Seeing him eat with such enthusiasm, Mr.
Chen cheerfully asked the kitchen to prepare another half and casually said, “By the way, what do you do?
With that build, are you an athlete?”
“Villa…” Zayn replied around a mouthful of goose.
“Youth academy…
U18 player.”
“Aston Villa?”
“That’s right.”
“Impressive, lad!” Mr.
Chen immediately became more animated.
“Villa mean business this season.
You even signed Terry, Chelsea’s legendary captain from Stamford Bridge!
“I’ve supported Chelsea for twenty years.
You know Gianfranco Zola?
I started following them back in his day!”
He turned and called toward the kitchen, “Liang!
This lad plays for Villa!”
A head wearing a tall chef’s hat appeared through the kitchen doorway.
“Aston Villa?
I only watch Chelsea.”
Mr.
Chen waved him off and turned back to Zayn.
“After Evelyn got into the University of Birmingham, I looked into the city’s two clubs.
I’ve watched Villa’s first team several times since arriving here.
“But I’ve never seen the youth team.
When’s your next match?”
Zayn swallowed the piece of goose in his mouth.
“Tomorrow.”
“Where are you playing?”
“At Bodymoor Heath.”
Mr.
Chen decided on the spot.
“Then I’ll come and watch you tomorrow.
Let’s see whether you play as well as you speak Chinese!”
Anna could not understand what her son and the family were chatting about.
She only knew that the roast goose in front of her was delicious.
It was especially good dipped in the sauce, which was sweet and slightly fruity.
Lucy would love it.
“Mr.
Chen, could we take some of this home?
My daughter loves sweet things.”