Joseph Hou concentrated on his computer screen as if it held the meaning of life. Eyes close to the blue-white light, he scanned words and played keys to the familiar tune of someone too busy to chat. A film crew had just called in an order: food for 75 people – stat!

Hou’s office by the front door of his Szechuan 132 restaurant seems not the best place to work.

Customers, vendors, employees, everyone who walks in pass by his desk. The parade could distract the most focused small-business owner, but Hou doesn’t mind.

“You can put me in a jungle, and I’ll get along with the  chimpanzees,” Hou said with his always-ready smile. When he entered the restaurant business more than three decades, Hou said, “I figured out something: I like to talk to people.”

Observers might say that affinity for one and all has bestowed Hou this month with 25 years of success at Szechuan 132. Statistics show most restaurants close in their first year or soon after.

“I am very lucky,” Hou said. “I enjoy what I do. I think that’s called success.”

Paying it forward
When Hou and his wife, Sally, celebrated Szechuan 132’s silver anniversary on Oct. 8, they didn’t just set a $25 dinner special. Hou felt so blessed that he wanted to give back.

Szechuan 132 staff, Hou included, prepared egg rolls, fried rice and other Chinese specialties and headed to Wilmington’s Good Shepherd Center soup kitchen to feed the hungry.

Contributions won’t stop there. Each month for the next year, Szechuan 132 will partner with a charity to feed the less fortunate.

Hou’s plan characterizes his reputation for generosity.

Film crews call Hou for more than meals. When legislation threatens to change the North Carolina film industry’s tax incentives, Hou gets hundreds of petition signatures in a single day.

He is a translator when police or restaurant inspectors need help communicating with Asians who don’t speak English. Hou is a Sister Cities Association of Wilmington ambassador, coordinating activities, transportation and translation when visitors from sibling Dangdong, China come to the Port City. He did the same for 86 Chinese Special Olympics athletes in Wilmington during the 1999 World Games in Raleigh/Durham, as well as a single Chinese artist who arrived with the No Boundaries International Art Colony.

“When duty calls,” Hou said, “I’m there.”  

Always the good life
Hou’s work and life ethics date back to his childhood, not in China but in India.

There, he came to understand the importance of family, community and compassion for outsiders. As Hou likes to put it, “I’m Chinese, I was born in Calcutta and I’m Catholic.”

The unlikely amalgamation was stirred by Hou’s parents’ dreams. As young farmers, Hou’s mother and father left their Hakka village home in Canton, China, during World War II bleakness, Hou said. The couple felt they could prosper under India’s British rule. Plus, Calcutta, now referred to as Kolkata, entertained a large Chinese community.

“I’ve never been to China. I don’t know what China is like, but over there [Calcutta], it looked just like China,” Hou said.

Unable to speak either English or local Indian languages, the couple opened a dry cleaning store in their Chinese community. Later, they repaired shoes. That led to a family tannery Hou’s relatives still operate in India.

The work was hard. Every family member helped when Mom and Dad brought shoes home to fix at night. When the 1977 hit movie Saturday Night Fever wowed audiences, Hou saw it over and over again to duplicate the color of actor John Travolta’s shoes in the opening scene, so as to meet public demand for similar pairs.

“When you see that there is no food on the table, you’ve got to work to get it. The love of the family is important, whether rich or poor,” Hou said.

Despite difficulties, the Hous were “very happy” and thrived, Hou said. Hou, his two brothers and three sisters attended Catholic school, where they learned English.

Hou became known not by his Chinese name, Hsiang Hua Hou, but as Joseph Hou, as each student was given a saint name, Hou said. St. Joseph was the husband of Mary and earthly father of Jesus Christ. Among Catholics, Joseph is regarded as the patron saint of workers.

Hou kept the name and Catholicism despite his Buddhist roots. Still, he often quotes the Chinese wisdom partially guiding his life philosophy.

At a New York City-based uncle’s urging, Hou made the difficult decision around 1980 to leave the family tannery business for America. He told his father that if in two years Hou was not successful, he would return to India.

“If you don’t go and branch out and find who you are, you will never be who you are,” Hou said.

Without cooking or dining room experience, Hou worked at a cousin’s Asian restaurant. Two years later, Hou launched his own restaurant.

Hou prospered, but he felt New York City was too big, too concrete and steel, for his kids. A friend suggested Wilmington. Hou visited, loved the people, shoreline and vast natural areas.

Sight unseen, Hou’s wife agreed to the move. “I feel like my wife is a lot of this. She had so much trust and belief in me,” Hou said.

Making a name
Soon after arriving, the couple opened their first restaurant, outgrew it and moved into the current Szechuan 132, named for College Road’s state road number, N.C. 132.

Around the time they arrived in the late 1980s, Wilmington’s film industry was popping, but celebrities and production crews had few fine dining choices. The Hous provided authentic Chinese fare and formal service unlike most other places in Wilmington. Word of mouth spread. Soon, Hou was speaking Chinese with actor Alan Alda, serving Kiefer Sutherland and charming many more stars with his infectious spirit.

Szechuan 132 still flourishes despite hundreds of restaurants, many Asian, that opened all around. Hou maintains the restaurant’s top position with his passion for creativity, cooking, community and customer service, although Hou insisted his achievement is mostly good fortune.

He gives workers leeway, acting as a nudger toward wise directions. He was pleasantly surprised by one evening’s classic egg drop soup garnished unexpectedly with sweet, red gogi berries. The menu lists various surprising selections among traditional Chinese dishes, for instance rosemary-seasoned leg of lamb, rabbit in wild cherry brandy sauce and Hou’s “Chinto Box,” a Chinese take on the Japanese Bento Box.

Hou mans all restaurant stations as needed, washing dishes, tending bar or shaking woks. He fills spare time with volunteerism, recently helping entrepreneur friends with his other love, graphic arts. He also enjoys family time with his two adult sons and adult daughter, who, Hou noted, loves to bake.

With her off to law school, Hou must make his own peanut butter cookies. No quick batches come from the oven. The ever-curious, hardly still Hou joyfully tests dozens of flours and formulas in search of the perfect peanut butter cookie. Hou laughed at the memory and quoted Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

“I’m very happy” Hou said. “I want to keep working.”