What we mean by verified tradition

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/chinese-american-family-business-22071632.php

By Ko Lyn Cheang,Staff Writer at the San Francisco Chronicle

Like Li, Felicity Chen, 32, also grew up working in her family’s business, which sells fermented traditional Chinese sauces to customers from P.F. Chang’s to family-owned Chinatown grocers. She was the family’s default English translator, writing emails, communicating with compliance agencies and meeting federal food inspectors.  

Union City-based Union International Food Co. was started by Chen’s grandfather, Huang Yung Pin, who fled from Fuzhou, China, to Taiwan in 1949.

He survived by working in restaurants, where he learned to make soy sauce and sesame oil and ferment chile peppers and beans for traditional sauces. In the late 1970s, he immigrated to the U.S. and began door-knocking in Chinatown to sell his sauces.

Chen initially felt that she wanted to forge her own path after college.  

She started a business in 2017 called Potli, infusing shrimp chips, sriracha sauce and even honey from her dad’s backyard bees with cannabis.

“It was certainly something where my parents were like, ‘What the heck is happening?’” she said. But starting her own business helped her find her voice.

Today, she works for her parents but is soon launching a spinoff brand to be sold online called Dou, catering to English-speaking customers.  

She also is updating the recipes to use healthier ingredients, such as extra virgin olive oil instead of soybean oil.

“Dou is a brand that is about inheritance, honoring the funk that is in Chinese food,” she said.