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Kylie Knott

Vivian Siu could be considered a poster girl for the power of positive thinking.
The Hong Kong native was 16 and living in New York when her mother, her sole carer, died of cervical cancer in 2008.
“After she was diagnosed things happened really quickly – she died within five months,” says Siu, an only child.
“I was underage at the time, so if I had stayed in the States I would have been put into foster care. So I returned to Hong Kong because that was the only other place I had legal residency.


“I came back lost and broke, and did nothing for three years,” she says.
“It was a very dark time of my life – I wasn’t going anywhere.” Home was wherever there was a couch to crash on.












View this post on Instagram























A post shared by Vivian Siu 蕭詠雯 🇭🇰🏳️‍🌈 (@viviansiu28)



Then she got her life together, harnessing her “profound pain” as motivation to complete a university degree – her mother’s dying wish. She graduated with a degree in economics from Columbia University, in New York, in 2017.
The death of a close friend who supported her during her troubled teenage years also became a source of motivation for her.
She recalls: “He died within a month of a cancer diagnosis, when he was just 23.”
Today the high-school dropout is a banker at UBS in Hong Kong, and her list of achievements does not end there.
One thing that helped me [...] escape my depression back then was coin-operated car-racing arcade games; that’s what I did every day
Vivian Siu
In 2023, Siu did something remarkable by becoming the first woman Formula 4 driver to finish the Macau Grand Prix in the event’s 70-year history, and with just six months of driving experience.
She also won the first gold for the Hong Kong China team in motorsports at the inaugural FIA Asia Pacific Motorsport Championship, in Malaysia, in 2023.
Her meteoric rise in the sport has been captured in Zero to Macao, a documentary by award-winning British independent filmmaker Jonathan Finnigan that has had a private screening but is not for public release.

The film depicts the challenges of racing in Macau – one of the world’s toughest street tracks, with nail-biting blind corners. Siu talks about the fears of crashing – and of being crashed into – and her relationship with her estranged father, who died five years ago.
He grew up in Macau and racing there was a way to bring some peace, Siu says.
What makes her story inspiring is not just her rise in the male-dominated world of motorsport, but how she has overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
For many who find themselves at rock bottom, substance abuse is a tempting escape. Siu avoided that toxic trap but admits she had an addiction during her dark times in Hong Kong – to car-racing arcade games.

“One thing that helped me escape reality, or escape my depression back then, was coin-operated car-racing arcade games; that’s what I did every day for a couple years,” she says. “I was playing arcade game Maximum Tune for hours at an arcade in Mong Kok. It is still there.”
Having circumvented the many proverbial roadblocks in her life, a big part of Siu’s mission today is to spend quality time with her 94-year-old grandmother Miu Ngan-lam.
“Our relationship improved after I got my act together, after going back to New York by myself, getting into university – a proper one, that’s when things started to improve.
“Unfortunately, my grandpa died two years ago, so it’s just her alone in Hong Kong and I’m the only relative she really has.”

Siu is keen to see her grandmother, who has been keeping fit by hiking and doing morning exercise “for 60-something years”, try new experiences.
“My grandmother had a tough life and never got to enjoy things because she had so much responsibility with kids and grandpa [...] She left Hong Kong to go to China during World War II and returned to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, so I’m just trying to bring her experiences that she didn’t have the luxury of doing when she was younger.”
Some of those experiences are documented on Siu’s Instagram account. “Grandma’s first outdoor movie night” reads one post. “Grandma is very happy that she made it on not one, but two magazine features at almost 94 years old” reads another.












View this post on Instagram























A post shared by Vivian Siu 蕭詠雯 🇭🇰🏳️‍🌈 (@viviansiu28)



“She worries a bit and didn’t watch me race in the Macau Grand Prix – she was scared,” Siu says. Little wonder: Siu was hitting speeds of 250km/h (155mph).
“In the beginning she wasn’t supportive of me racing, but over time she has seen what I have done and the positives that have stemmed from it, so she became more positive.
“I feel thankful that I have been able to share these special moments with my grandma,” Siu says. “In her time, her generation, she could never have imagined that this was possible.”
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Wellness

From ‘lost and broke’ to a Macau Grand Prix star: Hong Kong’s Vivian Siu on harnessing her pain to drive herself forwards

Vivian Siu at the 2023 Macau Grand Prix, where she became the first woman driver to finish the event in Formula 4. Photo: Vivian Siu

Siu competing in the 2023 Macau Formula 4 Race as part of the 2023 Macau Grand Prix. Photo: Cyrus Chan

Siu with her grandmother Miu Ngan-lam, who the F4 driver is focused on giving experiences “she didn’t have the luxury of doing when she was younger”. Photo: Antony Dickson

Siu with her grandmother at an outdoor cinema in Hong Kong, in 2023. Photo: Vivian Siu

A Texas Chinese family restaurant’s founders pass the torch but still put in a shift: meet Papa and Mama Teng, 85 and 76

Jeng Chi restaurant Co-founders Yuan Hai Teng and his wife Mei Teng talk at their restaurant. Photo: TNS

(From left) Francisco Teng, CEO and co-owner of Jeng Chi, with his family: his mother Mei Teng, his nephew Kai Teng, his father, Yuan Hai Teng, and his wife, Janelle Teng, at the restaurant in Richardson, Texas, which continues to flourish 34 years after it first opened. Photo: TNS

Yuan Hai Teng, 85, co-founder of Jeng Chi restaurant, prepares dough to make buns at the restaurant. Photo: TNS

Jeng Chi is in Richardson, Texas, in the United States. Photo: Google Maps

Dumplings from Jeng Chi. Photo: Instagram/@dallasfoodchick

Jeng Chi co-founder Mei Teng, 76, makes pork steamed dumplings. Photo: TNS

Chicken with garlic sauce from Jeng Chi. Photo: Instagram/@spellstruck_soul

The Jeng Chi restaurant co-founders at their restaurant. Photo: TNS

How a Chinese family faced down racists and bullies to thrive in a US town more than 99% white

The Tus arrive in Vancouver aboard a freighter from Taiwan en route to Oakland in 1956. Photo: The Tu family

The Tus arrive in Vancouver, Canada, aboard a freighter from Taiwan en route to Oakland, California, in 1956. The family moved to San Leandro in 1960 despite the town’s history of racism – and thrived. Photo: The Tu family

Tu Sieu Mei and Joseph Tu Zung, who made the decision to move their family to the United States, around the time of their wedding in April 1944. Photo: The Tu family

A photo of a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924. Photo: East Bay Yesterday

Tu Sieu Mei, who married into the family, was from a once-prosperous family with several successful restaurants in Shanghai’s British Concession. Photo: The Tu family

The Tus came from a wealthy Shanghai family. Their paternal grandfather had been a 1920s industrialist who amassed a fortune in textiles, shipping, electric utilities and banking. Photo: The Tu family

Ann Tu (centre, seated), who was left behind in Shanghai in the rush to flee the Communist takeover in 1949, arriving in the US. Photo: The Tu family

In 1987, some of the family travelled back to Shanghai and Chongming. Pictured here is Sieu Mei at a textile factory set up by the Tu patriarch in the 1930s that was still operating. Photo: The Tu family

Some of the Tu family, on their trip to China, in front of the ferry between Shanghai and Chongming. Photo: The Tu family

(Left to right) Norman, Sieu Mei, and David on Mother’s Day in 2010. Photo: The Tu family

Author Amy Tan birdwatching in Chakana, Ecuador. Tan is a cousin to the Tu siblings. Photo: Instagram/@amytanwriter

How a high-carb, plant-based diet helped obese mother-of-two shed 32kg in 14 months. She’s known as Plantiful Kiki now

Aged 33, Kiki Nelson weighed 88kg, with 43 per cent body fat (left); within 14 months of adopting a plant-based lifestyle, she lost 32kg. Seven years on, she has kept it off and weighs about 53kg (right).
Photo: Kiki Nelson

YouTube influencer Kiki Nelson went from 88kg to 56kg in 14 months on a high-carb, low-fat diet, and has kept the weight off since. Photo: YouTube/@Plantiful Kiki

Filling and nutritious, potatoes are welcome in a low-fat, high carb, plant-based diet. Photo: Shutterstock

Kiki Nelson and her husband both lost weight on a plant-based, high-carb diet. Photo: Kiki Nelson

The cover of one of Kiki Nelson’s cookbooks of plant-based recipes.

Nelson samples her filling and budget-friendly easy ramen noodle soup on one of her many Instagram posts showing what she eats in a day. Photo: instagram.com/plantifulkiki/

On Instagram, Nelson shares an example of the three meals she preps on Sundays to rotate during the week. Photo: instagram.com/plantifulkiki/

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Vivian Siu hit rock bottom after her mother’s death. She ‘wasn’t going anywhere’, but got a degree from Columbia and a banking job. Then she started driving
In 2023, she became the first woman F4 driver to finish the Macau Grand Prix. She opens up about her motivation, and giving her elderly grandma new experiences


Vivian Siu went through a ‘dark time’ after her mother died of cancer. But the Hong Kong native got her life back on track, became a racing-car driver and in 2023 made history at the 2023 Macau Grand Prix.


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