It’s an admirable achievement. More so for chef Kang, who’s been put through the ringer, and then some. The eldest of five children, he suffered through poverty and constant hunger as a child, and dropped out of school when he was 11 to supplement his single-parent family’s income. “I’ve done all sorts of odd jobs in my life,” he recalls. “But I realised I needed a skill that these odd jobs didn’t provide, so I went into F&B. I started at a small restaurant. The pay was very little, but I was just grateful to be given the opportunity to step inside a kitchen. I never thought of being a chef (chushi in mandarin). I wanted to be a lawyer (lushi). But I must’ve mixed up the exams! At least you’ll never go hungry as a chef.”
After years of cooking in other chefs’ kitchens, chef Kang decided to strike out on his own. In 2002, he opened Canton Wok in Havelock Road. Business was purportedly “not bad”. But his personal investments took a hit during the Lehman Brothers scandal and he filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, which is now in remission. Undeterred, he tried again in 2011 with Canton Recipes House in Parc Sovereign Hotel, but that closed down after a few years as well. “What are you going to do? Give up? That’s not me,” he tells us. “I’m a fighter. I don’t give up. Ever.”
Chef Kang chalks up his previous failures to “luck and location”, among other things. “It’s like going through hell and coming out the other side. It gives you a certain amount of clarity,” he says. “I’m no longer impulsive when it comes to making decisions. I take time to mull over them. Many people come to me with proposals, but I don’t rush into them anymore. I like a challenge, but I’ll only do it if I can succeed. Failure is not an option. I’m just a regular guy, not a multi-millionaire. I don’t need big successes and it’s not about money. I just want my vision realised and for people to recognise my efforts. After all, money isn’t everything. There are so many unhappy rich people.”