For almost 40 years, Yeung and Anna Seto have been cooking and serving up classic Chinese-American fare out of their Greenwood restaurant, China Blossom.
Located along the bustling U.S. 82 highway, the restaurant has served as a Greenwood mainstay for Delta residents looking to get their fix of cream cheese wontons, teriyaki sticks, pepper steak, sesame chicken, shrimp and cabbage, and other beloved entrees.
The China Blossom known today was not always a Greenwood fixture. The Setos first operated their restaurant out of a mall in Jackson in 1977.
Anna and Yeung Seto had opened the restaurant with Yeung’s brother, Bob Seto.
Once the lease ran up for the Jackson location, Anna said they began searching for a new location for their restaurant.
“We were looking for a small town. We liked a small town,” Anna said, adding that what they also desired was for their restaurant to be located in a stand-alone building rather than in a mall.
China Blossom moved to its current location in 1982, and by 1984 Anna and Yeung Seto became the sole proprietors of the restaurant after Bob Seto moved away.
“We really love this location, on Highway 82,” Anna said.
The China Blossom restaurant has been in Greenwood along U.S. 82 for almost 40 years. (By Johnny Jennings)
Alice Harper — one of the Seto’s three adult children, who also include Angela and Stanley — said her mom “just liked the small town, and she wanted easy access for people who were traveling on the highway.”
The name of the restaurant is in reference to a budding flower that is ready to bloom.
“The flower starts with a little bud, and it grows and grows. The business grows and grows like a flower,” Anna explained.
In that manner, China Blossom has prospered in the decades since it started out, Alice said.
That prosperity has continued even amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
When the pandemic emerged in March of last year, the restaurant initially closed for a period of time.
“We closed six weeks because we didn’t know. It was just all up in the air,” Alice said. “And then everybody was asking when we were going to open, when we’re going to open. That’s when we decided to install that drive-through.”
The drive-through window has served the restaurant well, especially considering that China Blossom has still not reopened its dining room.
The Setos are both from China. Anna is from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, while Yeung is from Canton, located northwest of Hong Kong on mainland China.
Yeung studied at a culinary school in Hong Kong in 1968, where he learned to cook, and moved to the United States in 1971. He went back to Hong Kong in 1972 to marry Anna, and she came to the U.S. in 1973.
The couple first moved to Memphis, where Yeung cooked for one of his cousin’s restaurants, and then relocated to Jackson.
The cultural change from China to the U.S. was initially jarring.
“Totally different,” was how Anna put it. She did not speak English at the time, and they lacked a car, so it was hard to get to places.
The Setos have since found their footing in the Delta, where they’ve decided to stay.
“The business, at the start, was very, very hard but just like a flower, it blooms and blooms. I’m happy. I’m happy we stayed,” Anna said.
Alice said that she and her siblings “all chip in when we need to,” to help out at the restaurant.
The Setos, now in their 70s, have scaled back their work at the restaurant for the most part. Anna still cooks from time to time and manages the employees while Yeung cooks very little these days.
One of China Blossom’s popular entrees is the pepper steak. (By Johnny Jennings)
Asked to reflect on his career from studying cooking in Hong Kong to co-running and owning his own restaurant in Greenwood, Yeung offered three simple words: “I feel good. I feel good.”
“I have felt like he’s had a good career out of it,” Alice said, adding that the restaurant has been good for her parents, “and Greenwood has been good to them.”
- This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by The Greenwood Commonwealth.
