Follow us on:

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube

Domestic

Tribute to François Dang Kow   From Canton, China to Grand Anse Mahé, Seychelles |16 September 2021

Tribute to François Dang Kow     From Canton, China to Grand Anse Mahé, Seychelles

Mr Dang Kow

In this tribute to François Dang Kow, Seychelles NATION recalls his days as shopkeeper and restaurateur.

In his working life, François Dang Kow had two main enterprises. For people in Seychelles generally he was the owner, manager and chef of one of the most popular restaurants in Victoria. But for the Grand Anse community, he was the well-respected owner of the shop in that district which he and his wife ran for over half a century.

Born in Canton, China on February 16, 1936, he arrived in Seychelles with his mother in 1951 at the age of 15 years with nothing – not even a passport –, having travelled from Hong Kong via Bombay on a journey that he recalled took almost two months. Some years earlier they had left their home near Canton (Guangzhou) in search of a better life than what they had been experiencing in mainland China, then ravaged by war.

“My father had come to settle in Seychelles a few years back, to escape the turmoil of the Second World War, leaving my mother, sister and me in China. Life was hard at that time, because of the war, so I left Canton and travelled to Hong Kong by train, to seek work. It was while I was in Hong Kong, barely managing to survive, that some Chinese elders advised me to come to Seychelles. Since my father was already there, I therefore decided to follow him. I had only a stamped official document to prove my identity. I remember clearly that it took me 52 days from Bombay in a small boat to reach here,” Kow told Seychelles NATION in an interview in 2007.

In Seychelles the young Kow joined his father, Dang Weng, who was already well-established here, with a shop at Pointe Larue. Sadly, his mother passed away only three years after their arrival. Kow assisted his father in the shop and other work, quickly getting used to life in his new home. In 1960 he married Antonia Leong Wen Yam of Anse Etoile. In her, he found his beloved life companion.

Two years later the young couple were fortunate to find a shop that they could run themselves. This was at Grand Anse Mahé. It was a shop that had changed hands a number of times previously. Their acumen and hard work made a great success of the shop which was one of the only two in an area stretching from near the top of Béolière to Anse Boileau.

As importantly for them, they forged good relations with the people of the area, the majority of whom were humble agricultural workers, and became respected members of the community. For many, they were Ton Kow and Madanm Kow.

The 1960s were the days when a hard-working shopkeeper would not only stock his shop and sell provisions but would also engage in making and selling such traditional sweets as sikdorz (sucre d’orge) and nouga koko (the nouga fannen and nouga tape cut in squares). It was also a time of mutual trust between the shopkeeper and the customer. Faithful customers would obtain their konmisyon lemwan and odd items throughout the month from a specific shop on a system of kredi, with every item sold or bought duly noted in a karnen. Payment would be made when wages were obtained. It was also the tradition for the shopkeeper to give a gift to the faithful customer for the New Year. This could be in the form of a bottle of wine, lemonade and a big mafelisi baked especially for the occasion.

Mr Kow had to walk to town, via La Misère, to buy his provisions. He even sent a man on a bicycle to sell his commodities in other districts. Every morning, he had to get up at four and baked bread and cakes till 9am, to have everything ready on time. 

Mr and Mrs Dang Kow had made their home in Grand Anse and it is there that all their children, three girls and two boys, were born and grew up. The couple witnessed the building of the Church of the Holy Family, playing their own part in making contributions for its construction while other parishioners did voluntary work by providing some of the required labour. Mrs Dang Kow remembers with fondness that the last main gift her husband made to the church was an altar cloth that he bought in a specialist shop in Hong Kong. (Mr Dang Kow maintained links with relatives in China and he enjoyed visiting his only sibling, a sister, whom he had left as a boy decades ago).

Some twelve years after he and his wife had opened their shop in Grand Anse and with Victoria growing as a vibrant place with the budding tourism industry, Francois Dang Kow took the step of sharing his passion for food and his culinary skills by opening the King Wah restaurant in Benezet Street. To increase his proficiency, he undertook a three-month course in Hong Kong, perfecting his knowledge and skill in making sauces.

The King Wah started as a venture in 1975 with Mr Lai Moye, another adept of Chinese cuisine who unfortunately passed away some years after the opening of the restaurant. As a Chinese restaurant, King Wah followed other such enterprises as the take-away and later the restaurant of Mr Gerald Quilindo and the even earlier eaterie of the Maken family at the corner of Albert Street and Huteau Lane.

The opening of King Wah Restaurant and the take-away service made Cantonese cuisine available to an even wider range of people and at reasonable prices. The last menu of King Wah (around 1998-2000) listed an astounding 100 items. You could order a sweet corn soup at 10 rupees (R10); or one of fish with vegetables at R10 or with chicken and mushroom at R15. Spring rolls (two) were at R16. A foo yung main dish of vegetables with egg was at R23 while those with egg with chicken, pork or beef were all at R35. Pork (char shew, the King Wah Sap Yam. Yok…) and beef (with oyster sauce, or with green pepper or bamboo shoots or mushroom…) were not more than R50, some at R40. While you could have dish 66 (sliced fish with vegetables) at R35, the price of sweet and sour fish or prawns and steamed fish ranged from R70 to R100.

The prices of a few of the more expensive pork dishes, all four duck dishes and a number of seafood dishes were not listed, these being ones that tended to be ordered for special occasions and for which the important ingredients were not always easily available. They included dishes 70 to 75 – Butterfly shrimps, Crab meat Cantonese, Fish meat in egg roll, Stuffed fish meat in sweet and sour sauce and Fried shrimp with straw mushroom.

For customers looking for a quick dish or those with more staple tastes, dishes 77 to 94 offered a wide variety of vegetable-and fried rice or noodle dishes at the more modest prices of R25, R30, R35 and R40. The popular fried noodle pork was at R28.

The King Wah was a simple restaurant, serving simply good and delicious Cantonese food. Its 16 or so tables were often fully occupied at lunch time and sometimes also in the evening. People from all walks of life and Seychellois as well as tourists were its usually well-satisfied customers.

Mr Dang Kow’s reputation travelled beyond Seychelles and he received awards on two occasions. Locally, the King Wah was one of the most popular restaurants and take-away places in town. The delectable aroma wafting down Benezet Street tempted many a passerby to drop in. On nights when patrons chose it as the venue for a birthday party or other celebratory occasions, the staff would only finish work in the last hour of the day, with the restaurateur reaching home at Grand Anse well past midnight.

“It was with apprehension, that I launched this business venture, knowing that business was slow in Benezet Street at that time. The place was yet to be developed. I used to give taxi drivers free takeaways so that they would bring customers (mainly tourists) to my place. I also contacted some travel agents in town and they would send in customers. The rest is history,” added Mr Kow during the interview with Seychelles NATION back then.

 

In 2000, after 25 years of delighting the palate of thousands of customers, Mr Dang Kow decided to close the restaurant and devote more time to assisting his wife in running the shop at Grand Anse. His culinary skills were then reserved for the family but he did sometimes please close friends by preparing favourite dishes for them on special occasions. He retired a happy man in the midst of his family and the Grand Anse community.

Before starting the King Wah Restaurant business, Mr Kow along with a business partner, ran the Bamboo Night Club in town. They bought a band to play in the club, because at that time, there was not enough entertainment in town. They had sailors from the American or British corvettes.  The band would also play in the different social centres in the districts. To attract more clients, Mr Kow would tell the person in charge of the dance hall to let people in for free after a certain time. By then, he was also the proud owner of a pick-up, and during the day he would transport fish for fishermen after they had landed their catch around the island. 

Mr and Mrs Dang Kow closed down their shop business in 2014, fifty-two (52) years after its opening. They had eventually bought the building and the property around it. After renovation, the shop was leased to new operators.

It was in their house nearby that François Dang Kow passed away on the morning of July 22, 2021, surrounded by his wife and all but one of his children. Several of the messages of condolence received by the family also recalled the King Wah days. For many he was a legend of the Chinese cuisine that they had come to appreciate.

The Chinese boy who had left his native home in search of a better life 70 years earlier had indeed found it and he left this world as a proud Seychellois, known and respected throughout the country.

 

Contributed

 

More news