Immigrants building an American dream, By TOM LAVENTURE, Staff Writer

Now in its third year under new management, the owners of Dragon China Buffet at 1901 Valley Pine Circle, say it was an unexpected opportunity that let them begin building their American dream in International Falls.
After working a year for the previous owner, Chen Yan said she was given to opportunity to buy the restaurant from her ailing uncle. Together with her father Chen Ming Hai, and mother Zheng Xiu Fang, they have run the restaurant daily ever since.
“I never planned this, but it happened,” said Chen Yan. “It is beautiful here and the people are very nice. It is very cold, but it is also a very safe place.”
The family comes from the Minnan region of Fuzhou, in the Fujian province of China — just across from Taiwan. As a young man, Ming learned to cook as a street vendor and improved his flair for Fuzhou style cooking at his cousin’s restaurant in New York.
Chen Yan came to live with her parents in New York’s Chinatown in 2004. She said a call brought her to the Falls to help her uncle with the restaurant. She was just learning English, and recalls that she spoke only in pleasantries back then.
Yan, 30, said it is quite a challenge to not only start a business in a new country, but also to adjust to a new language and culture. It works, she added, because she focuses on running the restaurant and is very proud of her family’s cooking.
“We changed the menu a lot and I think the food is much better,” Yan said. “We are happy with the first two years.”
Though the buffet style business emphasizes American Chinese, the Chen’s say they bring a lighter style, based on their Fuzhou heritage, with steamed vegetables, soups, oysters, soft noodles and steamed dumplings.
“Most of our food is steamed with a little sauce,” she added. “I like my dad’s sauces a lot.”
Yan likes her own won ton innovations. She blends vegetables with the cream cheese in a light wrapper.
“I enjoy making food and I always talk about how we can make it different and better,” she added.
The Szechuan items are mildly spicy. She mentions the sweet kapu sauce dishes and garlic items are “yummy and healthy.”
The Chen’s are also willing, when possible, to make a favorite Chinese item that is not on the menu.
Innovations are a gamble and don’t always work. Yan’s mother, Zheng Xiu Fang, is also a sushi chef. With the growing popularity of the Japanese delicacy in America, they considered offering it here. It didn’t take off and was too expensive to continue, they said.
However, the Chen’s are still looking to introduce new items to the menu.
Chen Yan likes to visit China when she can and will travel somewhere different each time. She experiences the cities, the mountains, the coasts and the countryside. She likes to try all of the great variety of foods that each region has to offer.
Her dream is to design and build a restaurant someday that will in some way reproduce this Chinese experience in the architecture, ambiance and the food.