Wallace Lai, 34, was born in Hong Kong. He attended boarding school and university in the UK, studying civil engineering, then moved back to Hong Kong to work at a graphic design company. He moved to New York in 2004, and opened Hong Kong Station, a build-your-own noodle soup restaurant in Chinatown in April, 2005.

“When I first got here, I think the food is really bad compared to Hong Kong. In China, if you’re rich, you don’t come to the U.S. A lot of people here are from the villages, they don’t know what good food is. A 2-3 star restaurant in Hong Kong is a 4-5 star restaurant here.”

Lai renovated the interior with a designer’s eye, installing track lighting and expensive tiling, but kept prices low: $1 for noodles, $1 for additional toppings like vegetables, squid, or beef. “Everything sold like crazy,” he says. He opened a second branch a year later, then a third in 2007. In 2009, construction on a new hotel next door to his Hester Street branch weakened the foundation of his building; the city later ordered the building demolished. Lai still operates one Hong Kong Station on Division Street, in a Fujianese area of Chinatown, and one on Bayard, which attracts mostly Cantonese and tourists.

“I look at their dress, I know which part of China they’re from. A lot of Fujianese guys have tattoos. The girls love bling, they’ve got white skin, they wear high heels. They work hard but they’re young, they can spend money. Some of them, maybe they have no bank account, maybe they have no social security number, they come in with rolls of money. When they feel happy, they eat.

For normal people, they rest on the weekends. But for restaurant workers, weekends are the busiest. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday nights they go out. A lot of people come from out-of-state for banquets. Say you work in Maryland, you take the bus to Chinatown in New York, and then go back to work after.”

To an outsider, Chinatown’s streets feel crowded, but Lai and other restaurant workers notice who’s missing. “Things have changed a lot around here. There’s a lot less people than three years ago. Now it’s a recession, people change their habits. Chinese people always save money, now they want to save even more. After 6pm or 7pm, it’s very quiet.

It’s getting harder and harder to run a business. A lot of people are unemployed, what do they do? They chip in to open restaurants together. There are so many new restaurants all the time, it’s hard to get loyal customers. Landlords won’t give you a long-term lease, they don’t trust you’ll make it. Before you could get a ten- to fifteen-year lease, and people would say ‘That’s it? Only ten years?!’ I got an eight-year lease and they said ‘That’s it?!’ Now, all you get is five-year or less.

My landlord is an old guy, very old style. He owns several buildings. He loves to save money. But the second generation is different. They don’t understand market value. They’ll increase the rent a lot, if you can’t afford it they’ll keep [the storefront] empty. They don’t need the money, they don’t want the headache. A lot of them work only Monday through Friday. After a few months, they go to the Bahamas, they go to China.

Right now, my life is career first. Maybe one day I’ll live somewhere else, close to nature. But right now it’s money first. Nothing luxury. I go to the gym and I work. That’s it. When I open my eye in the morning, I’m working. When I close my eye at night, I’m working. In five years, I want to open a Hong Kong Station franchise. Then I can take it easy a little bit. If you can survive right now, you’ll be great afterwards.”