The following article was submitted by Kristi Chu, the 2021 Chew and Howly Hoi Memorial Award winner as the top part-time graduate student. She received a Master’s Degree in Business Administration in data analytics at the University of Delaware. She is the granddaughter of Sui Ching Lau, and the daughter of Elina Chu, the Scholarship Fund’s treasurer.
For as long as I can remember, my family always had dim sum at Empress Pavilion in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. It was located at 988 N. Hill St., on the second floor, next to a multi-story parking structure. These memories are from when I was 8 to 12 years old, because unfortunately Empress Pavilion closed in 2013. I remember getting to the plaza, walking out of the elevator and being super excited to quickly window shop at all the vendors on the way to the restaurant. Anything from hair accessories, purses, wallets, Hello Kitty jewelry or Sailor Moon toys, I wanted to buy them all. All the trinkets looked so pretty and shiny, but I never got a chance to look for long because I was shooed into the restaurant.
My grandparents (Tat Ming and Sui Ching Lau) were close friends with the managers and hostesses at Empress Pavilion, and so no matter how many people were waiting for tables, our family always walked straight into the restaurant – without pausing in the lobby. My grandparents would greet their friends with “jo sun” and say how many people were in their party, and soon enough, there was a table ready. I never realized how privileged we were for getting a table quickly. Instead, I was distracted by how pretty the hostesses looked in their cheongsam, and wondered when I could wear one too.
Dim sum was always an adventure. You never knew who out of our 30-plus family members would show up. Sometimes it was boring if it was just my family and Po Po (grandmother Sui Ching Lau) and Gung Gung (grandfather Tat Ming Lau). Oftentimes we would have two tables where all of my cousins would be around and we could eat and play our Nintendo Game Boy Colors at the same time. I had the see-through purple Game Boy Color, and my favorite game was the gold version of Pokémon.
My brother (Mathew Chu) and I were very basic eaters at dim sum (and I would still consider my brother basic to this day). As the most Americanized grandchildren we ate Chinese meatballs, beef rice noodles, char siu bao and Chinese sausage bao. To make us look even more basic, we would drown our food in the sweet soy sauce that the Chinese meatballs came in. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I started to refine my dim sum palette with suimi, hac gow, chicken feet, and so much more.
The most important part about dim sum was the dessert. I was the weird one for not liking don tat, so that left two options for me: Jell-O and mango pudding. I remember one time, I wanted the Jell-O because it had a pink umbrella. So as the dessert cart passed by, I pointed at the Jell-O to my mother. However, the food cart was moving too fast down the aisle. My grandmother had seen me point at the Jell-O and had made it her mission to fetch me my Jell-O. She picked up the stamp card and headed for the dessert cart. There have been multiple times that she had been chastised for getting up and getting food from the carts, but she was, and still is, a proud grandmother who loves taking care of us. Whenever we went to dim sum, she wanted to make sure that our bellies were full of all the food that we like (it was important to tap or point at your tummy at the end of the meal and say “bao bao”.) Little did she know that the Jell-O was awful (I don’t think they put any sugar in it) and the real prize was the little pink umbrella.
What also made Empress Pavilion special was the carnival machine rides on the ground floor. There was the carousel and the single pony ride, and if we were lucky, somebody would pay to let us ride. I remember the music of the carousel being super loud, especially when you were inside and the music was echoing underneath the metal tent, but it was fun to actually be riding when normally we would just sit and pretend it was turning.
Empress Pavilion closed around the time I entered high school, and dim sum hasn’t been quite the same. Maybe it was because my palette had become too sophisticated, and my favorite dishes are now cow intestines and fried turnip cakes. It could be that these new places are only giving us 3 baos instead of 4 in one plate. Or perhaps it is because, as the grandchildren, we are the ones paying for the meals, and treating the family.
However, when looking back, it was the memories at Empress Pavilion that held the magic. The direct translation of dim sum is “touch the heart”, and to me it has always meant the act of gathering people together to share some food. What kind of food does not matter, it is the moments of sharing our meal with friends and family that are important. So even though I can no longer experience the magic at Empress Pavilion I can always enjoy dim sum when I am eating with my family.
