The air-conditioning doesn’t work and it shows on the foreheads of the workers at Ai Mei Thai Restaurant on a warm Friday evening. The customers gulp down their water as waiters race to keep the glasses full. In the background, the restaurant’s namesake paces around the sprawling dining room, handling to-go orders and making conversation with guests.
“Hello!” she waves to a new group of customers. “Long time no see!”
“Welcome back,” says Gillian Bertrand, 36. “We’ve missed you!”
“Aw, we miss you all, too,” says Ai Mei Lo. “It’s good to be back.”
“I’m sorry about your loss,” Bertrand says, patting her on the back.
“It’s all right. My father in a better place now.”
Friday is the restaurant’s first day open following the death of family patriarch Kuo Sen Hsu in May. Lo closed down the restaurant, on Pinellas Point in St. Petersburg, Fla., for a month to honor her father’s wish to be buried in mainland China, the land from which he was exiled decades ago. It was a final reunion after a lifetime of estrangements.
Hsu was a 14-year-old on his way to enroll in school in 1939 when he was abducted by Nationalist troops and conscripted to help fight the Japanese during World War II. He was not allowed to tell his family where he was. After the war with Japan, there was a civil war in China, which the Nationalist Party lost to the Communist uprising. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, where Hsu began a second separation, this one from his homeland. Though Hsu set up a new life in Taiwan, married Yeh Yuen Mei and had a family, he still missed his parents, according to the story his daughter, Lo, tells today.
Growing up in Taiwan, Lo was the oldest of four children and chafed under her parents’ pressure to be the “perfect daughter.” Tired of school, tired of tradition and tired of her father’s strict militarylike demands, she eloped to the United States in 1973 with a boyfriend. She was 18.
She easily found work at a series of immigrant-owned Thai and Chinese restaurants in Missouri and Florida. Though she loved her newfound freedom and independence, she missed her parents in the same way her father had missed his. Lo said life was difficult for her on her own. Her first marriage ended, and she moved from one bad relationship to the next – a faint scar on her right cheek is all that remains of her second marriage. Eight years passed before Lo would call her parents, ending her self-imposed exile.
They immediately forgave her and in 1990, her mother and father migrated to St. Petersburg to help her start her own business.
Ai Mei Thai opened in 1991 at the intersection of 34th Street and 51st Avenue South. It was a success on several levels. It was one of the first Thai restaurants in St. Petersburg, and served fresh seafood and traditional Thai dishes.
But more importantly, the restaurant served the needs of the family. Most of the employees are relatives or friends. A second generation has grown up in business, including Lo’s nephew and niece, Rick and Mimi Hsu, who migrated to the United States with her parents.
“We fought over snow peas. When my sister wasn’t looking, I’d sneak a bunch into her pile,” Rick Hsu said. “God, I hated cutting snow peas.”
Now adults, the siblings still help out at the restaurant, which has become the answer to the family’s lifelong struggles, Lo said.
“This business is for helping the family.”
Lo met her current husband Khamnob Thongprasit, 49, at the restaurant. He had spotted her working there and asked for a job as a cook so he could get to know her. They’ve been married 14 years. Thongprasit’s intricate pine and rosewood carpentry decorate the restaurant today.
“He’s an artist and has a gentle spirit,” Lo said.
The business moved to a new larger location further down 34th Street South in 1997. Lo’s mother died two years later. Unlike her husband, she requested a burial at Royal Palm Cemetery, 10 minutes away from the restaurant, so Lo could visit her every day.
In recent years, Hsu’s diabetes and heart conditions worsened. His leg had to be amputated and he was bedridden. Lo said she did her best to take care of him, but he recognized that he was interfering with business and decided to go back to Taiwan in 2002 so relatives could tend to him.
Lo traveled to Taiwan each summer for two weeks at a time to visit her father. Her husband stayed behind to tend to the restaurant. She recalled how before her father left for Taiwan he left her with a revelation.
“Of all my children, you’re my special one,” she recalled he said.
“But dad,” she responded. “I didn’t do nothing for you to be proud of me.”
On May 20, Lo dreamed that her father was back in the restaurant, appearing somber as he bid her farewell. She woke up to a phone call from her sister notifying her of her dad’s death. Lo hung up and started packing. Arrangements were made to feed the fish. The sign out front announced an extended closure. The air-conditioning was turned off.
More than 200 friends, family, neighbors and military officials attended her father’s funeral. His body was cremated in Taiwan and his ashes were buried in his family plot in mainland China, his death ending 67 years of separation from the home of his birth.
When Darlene Bowers, 42, first saw the closed sign last month she was afraid the restaurant had shut down for good. But then the hair salon owner noticed the sign announcing the re-opening of Ai Mei Thai.
“I have a lot of clients who’ve been waiting to go back,” she said.
For Lo, the restaurant is now a source of comfort. She’s worked in Asian dining rooms seven days a week since she ran away to America more than 30 years ago. She is grateful for the everyday hassles of work.
Even the broken air-conditioner.
Interested in more? Click here to see the related photo project, “A father’s farewell, a daughter’s promise.”
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