Is Manchester's Chinatown as good as it could be - and what's it like to be in business there?
Chinatown has seen plenty of changes in the last four decades - good and bad. But where does it go now?
Simon Binns
Harry Yeung remembers a time when customers would already be queuing around the corner before he opened the doors of the Yang Sing.
The Chinatown restaurant opened in 1977 on George Street before moving to its current Princess Street premises and celebrates its 40th anniversary this November, a success his daughter Bonnie chalks up to hard graft and passion - at nearly 65 her father still works 'eight days a week'.
But four decades on he finds himself in a very different Chinatown. The queues have died away as footfall has dwindled - and many of his old friends have packed up and left.
A few doors down, one of the area's oldest Cantonese restaurants, Kwok Man, closed down after 55 years in March blaming roadworks for 'killing' the business.
"We've probably lost 50 per cent of our business in the last 12 months," a staff member said at the time.
"We just can't afford any more. Lots of other businesses in Chinatown feel the same. Some are thinking about shutting."
Its departure followed other high profile closures including the New Hong Kong on Faulkner Street, another stalwart from the area's 1970s and 80s heyday.
Kwok Man
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"In the last few years we've seen some really big restaurants and families who came over earlier or at the same time as us, who were lynchpins in the community, they have left," says Bonnie.
"They've closed down their businesses, haven't managed to remain buoyant, and they've simply packed up and left."
Many business owners, including Harry, believe increased and extended parking charges, coupled with traffic issues resulting from transport projects such as the Second City Crossing and the bus priority package, are driving people away from the area to out-of-town Chinese supermarkets and restaurants.
"It certainly affects businesses in Chinatown who rely massively on these families who come in," says Bonnie.
"It's what Chinatown was built on. If you had a takeaway or a chip shop or an ethnic business outside of the central business district, you'd come in, you'd engage with the community and that's how the community was built.
"Now, as we lose that kind of custom it's replaced by tour groups, Chinese students, really transient people, so that sense of community, looking after other members of the community, helping each other out, doesn't happen as much any more and it's quite sad.
"You'll see more and more of the newer custom and the people coming into Chinatown are much less community and space aware."
That's evident on a busy lunchtime as groups of tourists mill around the famous arch straddling Faulkner Street, iPhones poised and ready.
Bonnie Yeung and father Harry
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Brought to the city from China in 1987, the impressive structure was the first of its kind to be built in the UK and celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
What the tour groups' Instagram filters probably won't show is the broken pagoda beyond it, a snapped-off section of its fencing lying forlornly on the floor. Inside, it's strewn with litter, cigarette butts and a half-drunk bottle of cheap cider.
It's a sorry sight, and a source of frustration to businesses who feel the area has suffered from a lack of investment from the council in recent years.
"I just feel like we've been kind of left to fend for ourselves," says Winnie Leung, manager of her family's restaurant The Great Wall, which has been open since the 70s.
"And we're in the centre of Manchester - the council should do more to help us."
Like much of central Manchester, the area has also seen a sharp rise in the number of rough sleepers - a problem horrifically highlighted when two men tragically died in a fire in the derelict building they had been sleeping in on Nicholas Street last year.
Attempts have been made on both sides to address the issues, but businesses say little progress has been made.
"A couple of years ago we formed a community group and we had people at the meetings from CityCo and the council who were willing to fork out for the upkeep like the painting work and the change of lights around the pagoda," says Winnie.
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"That's stopped, probably because our community group stopped as well. It was difficult because I was trying to attend meetings but there wasn't enough people to staff the restaurant, because you just can't get the staff nowadays. And obviously when the Chinese community lose interest, the council are also going to lose interest."
'You just can't get the staff' may sound like a flippant remark but it's a real problem that's reaching crisis point in Chinatown, where tough immigration regulations are making it difficult for restaurants to recruit skilled chefs.
Bonnie describes the situation as a 'ticking time bomb'.
"For us, recruiting chefs is nigh-on impossible," she says.
"You can't simply recruit people from overseas. If you do, they have to be on the skilled worker list and you have to pay them something like an extra £10,000 above the going rate, which makes us less competitive than other businesses."
A little-known loophole also prevents restaurants sponsoring a skilled chef from serving takeaway, depriving them of an increasingly lucrative revenue stream in the age of Deliveroo and UberEats.
Deliveroo is an increasingly lucrative revenue stream for restaurants (Image: PA)
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Yang Sing had to stop trading on Deliveroo for nearly a year until a Chinese dim sum chef it was sponsoring was granted permanent residence.
"For us, Deliveroo is an extra month in the year in terms of revenue, so to lose that is a big thing," says Bonnie.
The problem is compounded by ageing kitchen teams, many of whom are nearing retirement age. Most of Yang Sing's chefs are now aged over 50 and Bonnie says it's a similar picture throughout Chinatown.
"It's a ticking time bomb because you'll find the majority of restaurants are the same. The majority of their chefs are 40 plus," she said.
"Ten years down the line, 20 years down the line, it's going to become a bigger issue."
Employing British chefs is an option but traditional Cantonese cooking skills are not commonly taught in culinary schools.
"We have Malaysian, Singaporean, Korean, Japanese and English staff, there's a whole spectrum," says Bonnie.
"But there has to be some nascent understanding of the food, what dim sum is. If you have no concept whatsoever it's very difficult to train that. It takes a much longer period of time."
Immigration is a loaded issue that Bonnie isn't optimistic will be tackled in the post-Brexit climate, but she does sense an opportunity as the UK seeks to strengthen its trading relationship with China.
"There is Chinese money coming into the UK but there isn't the focus on how we improve facilities in the UK for the existing Chinese populace or to attract more Chinese investment," she says.
Harry Yeung in the kitchen at Yang Sing
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"There should be a closer look at Chinatown to say 'China have invested in us in the past, we've got the arch, look how well we've looked after Chinese migrants and investors in the past, look how well we've done and how great it is to live in the UK or invest your money in the UK'."
Most of the first wave of Chinese settlers were economic migrants who came to the UK in search of a more prosperous life, initially working in the laundries trade. By the 1950s, many had begun to open takeaways and restaurants after the arrival of home washing machines and chain laundrettes. Manchester's first Chinese restaurant, Ping Hong, opened on Mosley Street in 1948.
"In the 60s and 70s in Britain there was no other option as an economic migrant who didn't speak the language, who didn't have a British education. Your ethnicity was something you could trade on and food was part of that," says Bonnie.
Now, those same businesses are having to compete with an increasingly wealthy Chinese economy that is luring skilled chefs back home, while younger generations educated here are increasingly pursuing their own ambitions.
"I think we need some new blood in the city," says Nicholas Woo, who opened bubble tea franchise Chatime on the corner of Princess Street and Faulkner Street two years ago.
"From what I'm seeing there's a lot of British-born Chinese, the second generations, who are not willing to take over the restaurant business of their parents, which is a natural thing to do - they have to pursue their own dreams.
"The only way Chinatown could survive is young people starting to invest in new restaurants and new ideas in the area."
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Nicholas is doing just that. The Malaysian-born entrepreneur, 27, came to the UK to study law in 2009 and now runs three branches of Taiwanese chain Chatime in Manchester and Liverpool. Next month he will open the first UK branch of Taiwanese restaurant Dazzling Cafe on Mosley Street.
"We have the most international students outside of London and in recent years more from Asia - Chinese, Malaysian, and now I see a lot of Koreans and Taiwanese," he says.
"You can see the trend of people starting to come to Manchester and they bring the culture in as well. We need to follow the trend of people."
While most of Chinatown's original community came to the UK from Hong Kong and southern China, now it's more of a melting pot with newcomers arriving from all over the country and its neighbouring nations.
The changing demographic is reflected in restaurants such as Thai basement cafe Siam Smiles and Japanese kitchen Yuzu which now sit side by side with the original Cantonese businesses.
Rhys Whalley, executive director of Manchester China Forum, which seeks to strengthen the city's ties with the country, said it was essential for the area to evolve to reflect the changing needs of its customers.
"Chinatown is an extremely important component of the city. It's been there for a very long time and not only caters to a very large local Chinese population but also to those from around the region who come to enjoy Chinese cuisine," he said.
"As with any other food and drink or retail district in a city, it's essential that it evolves to reflect the changing needs of its customers.
"As our engagement with mainland China evolves there's an opportunity to look at how we can diversify the availability of different cuisines that come from mainland China.
"It's an extremely diverse nation, you can go from Sichuan, which is famous for its spicy dishes, through to the north to Beijing or Mongolia, which have very different flavours again.
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"It's a large area with a broad range of ownership and what comes with that is certainly challenges in defining a consistent approach across the board.
"There are clearly many very successful examples of how those operators have modernised and adapted to reflect some of the more sophisticated needs of customers.
"On the flip side there are others who perhaps haven't done as effective a job and there's an opportunity for us to look at that and how we can encourage those changes and perhaps bring in some new blood and greater diversity."
The city's response is the Chinatown Project, which it says exists to 'improve the local environment and provide a more positive impression of the area for businesses, residents and visitors'.
Much of the emphasis is on the businesses to take the lead.
Nigel Murphy, the council's executive member for neighbourhoods, said: "We've launched the Chinatown Project specifically to combat issues with commercial and domestic waste and have ramped up inspections in this area.
"Businesses have a legal responsibility to have a waste contract in place and we've seen real willingness from traders to work with us to get this right.
"Chinatown is a wonderful asset for Manchester and we will carry on working with local business and residents, to make sure it continues to thrive in the future."
Patrick Smith sits on the edge of Chinatown. An outsider looking in, he's been the landlord of The Seven Oaks pub for the last decade.
In that time, he says, he's seen an area that has largely been left to 'fend for itself' while other parts of the city - such as Spinningfields and London Road - attract the attention of investors, and the city.
"It's mostly the same old issues in Chinatown," he says. "The car park, the pagoda, rough sleeping, general maintenance. They've never really been properly addressed.
Litter strewn in the seating area near the Chinatown arch
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"It's difficult to get cars in, and when they introduced Sunday charges fo parking, that hit a lot of businesses here hard."
Over at the town hall, Cllr Murphy defends the council's recent transport policy.
"The major improvements to our transport network are helping more people to get in and out of the city centre efficiently and mean that more visitors are coming in on high-quality public transport, as well as by car," he said.
"I met with representatives from the Chinese business community to hear their views on this issue during the consultation process and am more than happy to meet with them again.
Smith thinks the talent drain from the area around Chinatown has had an impact too.
"Mosley Street has changed, which has had a knock on effect," says the pub boss. "Lots of the banking jobs moved from there to Spinningfields and that took a lot of trade away. We've had to adapt and change our business to deal with that too."
Smith's pub now has a late licence after midnight and is an exclusive drinking hangout for people who work in the hospitality industry, as well as media workers.
"We do more business off that than we do in the daytime across the week," he says. "We still get the big groups in at weekends before or after they've been to eat - and especially at Christmas - but I think it does get a bit overlooked.
"It becomes a focus for Chinese New Year, then that's kind of it. And even that event has spread across the city now and perhaps diluted the focus from Chinatown."
A snapped off section of fencing from the Chinatown pagoda
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Smith's pub is perhaps an incongruous entry point to a hundred square metres of Asian eateries and shops, but it's just as much a part of the community as any other business. Smith meets with other local business owners whenever possible. They share information and support each other.
"Yes, I like to eat in Chinatown," he says. "I think the mix has changed from those big buffet restaurants to places that are a bit more interesting. People don't expect to see an old boozer like ours on the edge of Chinatown but the local community use it. They come in and drink. It works."
The idea of a Northern Quarter style makeover isn't one that appeals to Smith though. Over the years, those higher up in the city have lamented the look and feel of Manchester's Chinatown compared with versions in San Francisco or Vancouver. Gentle approaches have been made to the local community about a new direction, but have never really been met with much interest.
"Chinatown is very safe, probably because there isn't a proliferation of bars," he says. "We very rarely get trouble. The Northern Quarter has a whole host of new problems to deal with these days.
"The whole essence of Chinatown is - and should be - that it's driven from the inside, not by the outside. If you start bringing in new businesses and trying to shape it into something it's not, it may actually harm its authenticity. You'd be surprised how many people actually live in Chinatown. It's a big community.
"Some cash for redevelopment and improvement would be good but will it ever come? Could the car park site be better used and would NCP ever give it up? Probably not. The key to it all is investment - but everyone has to play their part in that."