Even on first impressions, you can instantly tell that hard work runs in the veins of 62-year-old Tan Jau Wey. Despite having passed the mantle of running his 31-year-old Chinese seafood restaurant Green View in Petaling Jaya to his son Tan Jay Wvin, 33, Jau Wey still pops in frequently to check that business is running smoothly. “I live just behind the restaurant and honestly I am not that old too.
I want to know whether the restaurant is running well and I also want to check on the staff. I have been in the business for many years so I know that when the big cat is here, everyone is a bit scared lah,” he says, laughing. In many ways, Jau Wey has been working hard since he was just a kid.
The eldest child of parents who were farmers, Jau Wey and his 10 siblings were taught early on that if they wanted something, they had to go out and get it themselves. He says it was a hard life, but it toughened him up early. “I grew up in Teluk Intan, Perak, in a rural area without running water or electricity.
If I wanted to go to town, I had to take a sampan to get there! That sort of life trains a person to be tough,” he says. From the time he was 10, Jau Wey was already helping his parents with farming, often doing hard, heavy work like tilling the land. At 13, he left school, admitting that this was because he didn’t perform well academically.
Now that he has taken over, Jay Wvin hopes to create a better business organisational model with Green View and Galah Gala so that h.
