VIDEO: From Nanjing to Arlington Heights, the Story of Szechuan’s Dumpling

The story of Szechuan’s Dumpling, the new Chinese restaurant in Arlington Heights, begins two generations ago in the northern Chinese city of Nanjing.

That’s where the grandparents of Quan Luu, the restaurant’s 32-year-old owner, lived, about 150 miles inland of Shanghai on the Yangtze River. That’s where Luu’s recipes, her grandparents’ recipes, originated, and that’s where her grandparents fled from during the Chinese Civil War.

They fled to Vietnam, specifically Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). This is where Luu’s parents were born, where she was born and where her four siblings, two older sisters and two younger brothers, were born.

Even though they were almost 2,000 miles from home, the family’s traditions, their culture, remained strong. There was a large northern Chinese population in the city, according to Luu, who grew up speaking Mandarin.

Luu went to a university in southern China for college. She wanted to study art and did so at first but her father soon pushed her toward economics in hopes of improving her job prospects.

After college, at age 22, Luu came to America. She stayed with her only relative in the United States, an uncle in New York City, for two months before deciding to move to Boston.

She got on a bus, arrived at South Station and made the short walk to Chinatown, where she picked up a newspaper to look for a job in a restaurant.

“That’s when I knew I wanted to open my own restaurant,” she said recently in Szechuan’s Dumpling’s dining room.

For the next decade, she worked a variety of restaurant jobs, in Chinese restaurants but also in Mexican, Korean and Japanese establishments. She got married, her husband also works in the restaurant industry, and had two kids, a boy who’s now 3 and a daughter who’s 18 months. The family lives in Malden, where Luu’s mother-in-law takes care of the kids when Luu and her husband are working long hours.

When Luu heard Jade Garden was for sale from a friend who knew the owners, she knew it was time. Last week, her restaurant, Szechuan’s Dumpling, opened at 1360 Mass. Ave.

The restaurant features nine types of dumplings, including the pork mini juicy dumplings, a specialty in Nanjing and one of Luu’s favorites on her menu. “Northern Chinese people love dumplings,” Luu said. “They eat dumplings every day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Luu’s restaurant is unapologetically non-Americanized Chinese cuisine. “I want to show American customers real Chinese food,” she said.

Luu said her mother, who plans to move to Malden in the coming months, was proud to know that she is keeping the family’s traditions alive and sharing them with a new audience.