Mistress of flavor

African restaurateur brings a slice of Jamaican cuisine to Beijing

Born in Africa, brought up in Europe and living in China, it's obvious that any restaurant you open would sell Jamaican food! Rose Lin Zamoa, the 34-year-old Afro-haired proprietor of the tiny Beijing restaurant in Andingmen called Jamaica Me Crazy, is quite the entrepreneur. The "110 percent African" from Ghana came to the capital from her adopted home in London about five years ago to further her Mandarin studies and is now cooking up a storm.

"I was very interested in languages and I heard at my college in England that there was an enrichment program to study Chinese here," says Rose. "Though I was above the age limit, I managed to get through eventually.

"I studied full time for two-and-a-half years and whilst studying I used to cook on weekends for my classmates (at Beijing International Studies University). Then some of them became so sick and tired of eating just Chinese food that they said they would like to eat my food for lunch and asked if I could make it and sell it to them. Soon people were eating my food in the classroom, which was kind of cool.

"Soon a few other foreign students at the Communication University of China, which was next to my university, also started ordering and that's how it (the catering business) started."

Zamoa says that she had little trouble in adapting to life in Beijing, although her skin color and hairstyle did draw some curious looks and comments initially.

"When I first came here I couldn't get over the fact that people were staring at me and asking me strange questions about my skin and hair.

"But I am used to it now," says the fluent Mandarin speaker.

The Andingmen take-out restaurant, which serves popular Jamaican dishes like jerk chicken, beef patties, ackee and salt fish, curry goat (mutton), yams and plantains as well as English-style pies, is Zamoa's third site in the capital; with the first two experiences leaving a somewhat bitter taste in her mouth.

Her original restaurant, near the airport, was targeted for demolition two months after she moved in ("and I cried for days"). The second, in a store, also went sour.

"This wealthy Chinese lady asked me to work with her because she had a very big furniture store and she wanted me to do food there to provide a better shopping experience for her guests," Zamoa said. "I did that for about six months ... I spent 8,000 pounds ($13,000) renovating it earlier this year and bought a lot of equipment, but just as it was picking up, she just said this is not working ... suddenly the music I had been playing was too loud, there were just so many little complaints and it got really ugly, she cut off my electricity and threw my stuff out."