Angela Hui’s moving and unusual memoir, published in 2022, recounts her life as a child of immigrants from China living in the Welsh valleys in the 1990s and 2000s. Her parents, like many members of their community, ran a Chinese takeaway in a village with very little ethnic diversity. The family found some appreciation for their contribution, but also experienced a degree of isolation and racial harassment.
Angela recounts her life working for the family business. She began learning some of the necessary tasks as soon as she could ‘walk and talk’ and by age eight she was helping out on the counter and packing food every evening from five to eleven. Understandably, she sometimes felt resentment and missed being able to play or socialise with her friends – but she also felt that this was something she owed her parents, that she did for love of them (despite a sometimes rocky relationship) and she certainly appreciated how hard they worked and what they sacrificed to give her and her brothers a good life.
Child Labour in Food Industries before the 20th Century
Although it does not seem to be a particular focus of what Angela wants to say in the book, there is much here to provoke thought and discussion about the use of child labour in food production and service. For the whole of human history, and before recorded history, children have made contributions to the hunting, gathering, preparation and serving of food. They have worked in fields, in fishing industries, in kitchens and selling in shops and on the street. Sometimes they have been paid for their efforts and were unambiguously employed persons in their own right; sometimes their work was part of a family package, where parents were obliged to bring them along to assist, particularly at busy times such as harvest. Sometimes, despite long arduous hours, their labour was viewed as simply helping out with chores in the family shop or farm, in the way that Angela experienced.
Child Labour in the 20th and 21st Centuries
In the UK, the employment of children in food industries has declined considerably since the late nineteenth century. There are many reasons for this. New technologies meant that child labour became less useful, for example in farming. Increasing adult wages meant that child incomes were less important to family economic well-being. Changes in social attitudes (only made possible by these other factors) meant that more and more people believed that children should be learning not earning. Legislation was put in place to enforce school attendance and restrict children’s working hours. The Employment of Children Act in 1903 made it illegal for children to work between nine at night and six in the morning. The 1933 Children and Young Persons Act placed further restrictions on child employment, particularly for the under twelves and on school days (although local authorities were able to decide on a great deal of the detail. Allowing young children to assist parents with 'light agricultural or horticultural work' was specifically mentioned as the sort of exception that might be made). Today, children are prohibited from working even part-time (with exceptions for acting and modelling) before the age of thirteen.
However, these laws have always been weakly enforced. Angela’s story is a powerful reminder that we should be looking at the reality of children’s lives and listening to their views. How many other children were in her position in the 1990s? How many live similar lives today? What do we feel, as a society, should be our response? Would it be appropriate to intervene to support these young people, potentially causing more hardship and distress to vulnerable families? More research and more thought is urgently needed.
References
Hui, A. (2022) Takeaway: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter. London: Trapeze Books.
Angela's Instagram account: # chinesetakeawaysuk.
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Historically, in a school in Southwark where I used to work, the children and their families would all decamp to Kent in the summer for the hop picking. Some of the parents remembered doing it.