Tireless Tofu Lady
Guarding the Family
Having started her career as a retail business owner at a young age, Tofu Lady Mrs Law (Chow So-neoi), aged 85, has demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit of taking risks and persevering against the odds for a good part of her life. Her strong work ethic and business sense have also inspired her children to excel in business.
Mrs Law started her very first business at a tender age of 18 – selling salted fish at home in the countryside in Mainland China. After coming to Hong Kong with her children in 1967, she opened a bean curd market stall in the Kwun Tong resettlement estate (later redeveloped into the Tsui Ping Estate) to serve nearby residents and distribute products of her husband’s bean curd factory to the booming catering trade in the Kwun Tong industrial district. The stall was later relocated to Tsui Ping Market. To this day, she still acts as the quality gatekeeper for the factory’s daily products. “I test the food from the factory every day to ensure that bean curds have the right smoothness, and the bean curd puffs are evenly fried,” she said.
Being dedicated to one’s work, respecting others and putting quality first are values Mrs Law espouses and has imparted to her children. She is a living example of those virtues. Throughout the years, she has stood on her own feet by handling all matters for the market stall on her own without adding burden to other people.
“Mom was nicer to the colleagues at the factory than to us,” her daughter Law Lai-hung joked. For many years, Mrs Law has kept the tradition of preparing a sumptuous dinner for the factory staff twice every lunar month to thank them for their hard work. When her children were young, she had them help out at the stall and showed them pointers on how to succeed in life and business.
My mother taught me about integrity and quality control, so our factory is committed to offering quality products free of additives and preservatives.
While hard work does not necessarily pay off, it is definitely a crucial factor for success. For well over 50 years, Mrs Law has kept to the daily routine of waking before dawn to ready the shop and working until evening. Retirement is not in the cards, given the strong ties she has developed with the kaifongs over the years. “Serving kaifongs by providing their daily fresh food shopping makes me happy. I offer senior citizens a discount on bigger portions when they buy from my stall.” Her tough yet caring spirit goes beyond saying.
Photo provided by Topsoya
Business Wisdom Rubs off
on the Next Generation
It is hard to miss the link between Mrs Law’s son Jeff Law’s strong business sense and his upbringing by his parents, both successful business people. In 1996, Jeff followed in his parents’ footsteps and took the helm of the bean curd factory from his father, who was suffering from ill health. Given the catering trade’s need for bean curd with a longer shelf life, Law’s business thrived when he successfully developed refrigeration and vacuum technologies to produce tofu that lasts longer and has no preservatives. In 2007, he launched the Topsoya brand of made-in-Hong-Kong soya bean products.
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