#027 The Resilient Spirit of Nahji Chu - Nahji Chu. eussen - Health Life & Style

From Refugee to Restaurateur: The Resilient Spirit of Nahji ChuNahji Chu was born in 1970 in Luang Prabang, Laos, into a family whose history was shaped by hardship, migration, and resilience. Her grandparents came from Vietnam and China, and her grandmother, a strong and entrepreneurial woman, made her living selling food in Hanoi during the 1930s. That resourcefulness eventually took the family to Laos, where she cooked for the royal family. It was there that Chu’s parents were born, and later, she too.In 1975, political upheaval changed the course of her life. The communist uprising forced her family to flee. At just five years old, she endured escape, imprisonment, and time in refugee camps before arriving in Sydney in 1978. Their first home was East Hills Hostel, after which her parents were placed on a chicken farm in Cessnock. Life was difficult, marked by cultural isolation and racism, yet her mother instilled a lesson that stayed with Chu forever: as long as they could feed people, they would survive.That philosophy guided her path. In Melbourne, she watched her aunt sell pho to Chinese doctors from a rented house, an improvised venture that became her first true exposure to the Australian hospitality industry.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.