History
In 1938, Kam Shui-fai (ççİç ) began selling siu mei at a dai pai dong on Kwong Yuen West Street, near the old Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Pier. After some success, he converted it into a restaurant in 1942, leasing the premises at 32 Wing Lok Street in Sheung Wan for HK$4,000. During the Second World War, the building was destroyed in a Japanese air raid. In 1944, the restaurant was moved to 32 Pottinger Street. It moved into its current premises on Wellington Street in 1964, and after four more adjacent buildings were acquired, the lot was rebuilt in 1978 to become today's Yung Kee Building.
The sixth floor of the restaurant building is occupied by the Kee Club, named after Yung Kee and described by founder Maria Rhomberg as "a place for people tired of discos but still too young for formal restaurants and stuffy establishment clubs"; she met Kam in Shanghai to present the concept to him, and opened the club in 2001. During the SARS outbreak that year and again during the avian flu scare, Yung Kee was forced to temporarily stop serving roast goose and other poultry.
Read more about this topic: Yung Kee
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)