We interviewed Youtube star Randy Lau about cooking, his dad and his heritage
It’s really brought his family closer together!
Video Transcript
RANDY LAU: My dad is also like this incredible chef. He has 50 years of experience cooking Chinese food. And I just grew up spoiled by all this really good food. I have so many memories like, eating it and enjoying it. And it just brings up so much nostalgia. And so my dad and I have a language barrier here. So we-- like I can't communicate I can communicate logistically with him and enough to like film our YouTube videos, but having deeper conversations is sometimes kind of tough. So but, I never doubted that he loved me because his love language is food.
And Made With Lau is a family recipe channel and blog covering my dad's Chinese recipes and sharing our family stories and celebrating our Chinese heritage. I never actually imagined that I would start a YouTube channel. But in 2020, it was like the height of the pandemic and we were-- our business just got shut down.
We were living off of savings and unemployment. My wife was six months pregnant. It was just a really uncertain time. But I think that uncertainty gave me the space to reevaluate what I wanted to do with my life. And going back to those like reconnecting with my dad and learning more about my culture and thinking about what kind of legacy I wanted to leave for my-- and what kind of helping my parents just like kind of enshrine their legacy.
I just thought a lot about what I wanted to pass down to my kids. Working on Made With Lao has really helped me keep in my sense of what it means to be Chinese and Chinese-American. I learned in the process of creating these videos, it's like, I get to have these conversations with my parents that I otherwise wouldn't have had, as easily at least. Like learning about their story, learning about Chinese tradition and learning more about the cuisine. It just gives me a lot more pride to be Chinese and Chinese-American. I personally feel like we've become a lot closer.
Like I asked my parents that, and they were like, yeah, we are already close. But for me, I think it just gives us, it gives our family a lot of excitement to rally behind, oh, will [INAUDIBLE] get home this week? Or like, how can we make our videos better? Like, oh, we got this comment. It's just like so much to celebrate with each other. And we just have a lot of exciting things to talk about.
And I think just going on this-- creating this venture, it's a big adventure. So I feel like it's just-- it's cool that I get to work with my parents. I do get, like, more-- I think any kid like your parents just have like these certain buttons that they press that just like instantly irritate you. So I do get more irritable sometimes.
But I think like, that aside, I think it's just like, it's just really special getting to spend this time with my parents. Because I'm not getting any younger. They're not getting any younger. It's just really cool to have this special experience with them.
Like they're becoming like internet celebrities in like a certain corner of the internet. And just giving them the chance to be recognized for how awesome they are and how all the work they put in to raise us. And it's just really special to like-- I don't know for me it's just like, thank you for doing everything that you've done and letting the world see how incredible you are is really special to me.
