At Hong Kong’s Tam Jai noodle joint, waitresses are the stars
These ‘Tam Jai jeh jehs’ are not only the backbone of the beloved chain, they’ve even modelled for a fashion show with the Hong Kong Design Institute
On my fortnightly visit to my local TamJai Yunnan Mixian (colloquially known as Tam Jai) in Shek Tong Tsui, Hong Kong, I peered up from my steaming bowl of 10-mild-spicy coriander and century-egg soup noodles with parboiled beef and fishcake slices, to see that every employee in the shop was female.
Tam Jai, which operates 95 locations across the city, alongside another 94 under sister brand TamJai SamGor, has long been as well known for its corps of Tam Jai jeh jehs – the waitresses who make up the bulk of its workforce – as it is for the fine-grained spice levels of its broths and cornucopia of toppings.
Who is the prototypical Tam Jai jeh jeh? In Hong Kong popular culture, she is a middle-aged woman from a third-tier city in Guangdong province, her speech inflected with a heavy rural accent that has become a meme unto itself. She is hardworking yet motherly, doling out bowl after large submarine-yellow bowl of slippery white noodles in firetruck-red broth.
Indeed, during my lunch, the wholly female team of that particular branch could be seen carrying out duties from manning the till and serving food and drinks, to lifting heavy boxes of goods and keeping the open kitchen running on full steam.
Their graft and lilting speech has inspired homages from netizens, from a board game where players must assume the role of a jeh jeh in being the fastest to assemble a bowl of mixian, to a skit by satirical platform TVMost titled The Rap of Tam Jai, where a new trainee is schooled, Rocky Balboa-style, in the linguistic loopholes of the Tam Jai dialect.
But could these Tam Jai aunties qualify as a symbol of female labour empowerment? I think they could, and that would stand in contrast to an incident in September, when mainland import Yuan Ji Yun Jiao posted a recruitment notice prioritising female candidates from Guangdong. Circulated widely on social media, the advert was lambasted, ultimately leading the Equal Opportunities Commission to review whether the business had breached discrimination laws.
