( gemma chan, cis-female, she/her) SPOTTED: LORELAI TSENG in new york city! heard the FORTY ONE year old belongs to THE RESERVEas a INSIDER. word on the streets is that they can be DETERMINED & CHARMING, but they can also be UNFEELING & MALICIOUS.
BASICS
FULL NAME: Lorelai Tseng
NICKNAME(S): Lo, Lore, Lai
D.O.B / AGE: November 15, 1983 / 41
GENDER: Cis-female
PRONOUNS: she/her
HEIGHT: 5′9″
SEXUALITY: Bisexual
ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single
HOMETOWN: London, UK
RESIDENCE IN NEW YORK: Since September 1999
OCCUPATION: Restaurateur of Jade Kitchen / Insider in The Reserve
PETS: None
PERSONALITY
LIKES: travel, music, culinary arts, luxury goods (food, jewelry, clothing, drinks), good sex, women doing wrongs, power, money
DISLIKES: men with power, whining, sadness, emotions, feelings, people crying, pathetic losers, idiots, people who have no goals
POSITIVE TRAITS: smart, innovative, charming, goal-oriented, creative, patient when it counts
NEGATIVE TRAITS: cunning, greedy, morally corrupt, conniving, cruel, calculated, bossy, generally not a good person
TLDR;
Lorelai was born in London; father in a jewelry exporting dynasty in China, mother from family that owned Hong Kong's favorite restaurant
Grew up feeling like she was leading 2 different lives at home and at school
She became a restless and wild child and finally was sent off to boarding school in New York at 15 after a spring break yacht incident
She continued to be a wild child throughout her time at prep school and got away with a lot because of looks and charm
Started finding interest in culinary arts after reuniting with long lost cousin
Went to college in New York to become a restaurateur
After graduating stayed in New York, helped open on restaurant successfully before finding herself connected to a gang.
Built trust with Maurice Jow and his gang to start laundering money and become part of the organization and the restaurateur for The Golden Mirage's restaurant
Met Ambrose Jow while learning the inner workings of the gang, there was a bond of sorts formed that continued on and off and ultimately turned into affair
When Ambrose became co-leader of the gang he made it clear that things needed to be cut off which was fine with Lorelai however she refused to sign a NDA
Instead she got a new restaurant that is her dream restaurant. It's a Hong Kong style street food restaurant frequented by celebrities, CEOs of Fortune 500s, and the like
When things seemed to be in need of a revamp, Lorelai approached Lottie with an in and she was happy to leave the other gang behind.
BIOGRAPHY
tw: cheating
Lorelai Tseng was born and raised into the upper-crust elite of London, England. Yet the journey for her to get there started with her parents. Her father grew up in a family made famous through their jewelry exporting and her mother was raised in a family that owned half of Hong Kong’s favorite restaurant. The two were not a clandestine pair, yet somehow they found one another. But they both had bigger dreams in mind. Her father was looking to expand the jewelry business, make it international, and the first overseas headquarter would be in the United Kingdom. After he and his wife and their wife’s father; Lorelai’s gung gung (公公) they settled into a Western culture that they only had dreamed of inhabiting. By the time Lorelai was born, the Tsengs were successfully importing and exporting jewelry from eighty countries.
As she grew up, she started to feel like she had two different lives. The one she had had school with her friends and then the one she had at home. Although her parents had found themselves acclimating to the culture, her gung gung was the one who was around most often to take care of her. He wasn’t so convinced by all these ideals and taught her about the culture, cuisine, language, and history of his home country. Lorelai would go with him every summer of her early years back to Hong Kong and visit with her extended family. There she would learn how to cook, how to speak Cantonese, and see the land where her parents came from. But when she got back to London, the large family felt so far away but her friends helped with filling that void.
The older that Lorelai got, the more influenced she was by her surroundings in London. Instead of going to class, she wanted to go downtown and get the most expensive things, starting new trends, going places that were meant for only the most important of the VIPs. The last straw was when she was fifteen and used her father’s credit card to rent out a luxury yacht for her and her mates spring break for a whole week in Ibiza without his knowledge. Her parents were livid and believed this had a lot to do with the people she surrounded herself with. They let her know that come next fall she would be going to a boarding school in a whole different country. It wasn’t until later that Lorelai realized her parents could only love her under certain conditions.
The Preparatory Academy was a change of scenery but not a change of behavior. Lorelai learned how to manipulate adults to do what she wanted. Having been told she was so mature for her age, she took that to her advantage. The trouble had not been her friends back home. She quickly made a reputation for herself at this new school. She threw pool parties at the school pool after curfew, convinced teachers her trips to Beverly Hills were for educational purposes, and became known for the time she was asked by Marc Jacobs himself to walk in New York Fashion Week while she was wearing a tracksuit. Yet even then Lorelai was bored, all of these things satisfied her for the time being, but something felt missing.
It was her final semester at boarding school and she went into the city, having a particular craving for authentic Chinese, she stopped into Chinatown where she knew it would take her back to what her gung gung would make. That’s when she ran into Daiyu, one of her cousins whom she hadn’t seen since she was a little girl traveling to Hong Kong. Daiyu was working as a line cook there, making minimum wage, barely making enough to pay her rent at a place that was not worth what the super was making her pay. Lorelai and Daiyu were the same age yet living completely different lifestyles. She started going to the restaurant more and more often, not only because she was glad to have some aspect of her extended family and getting to learn about all the cousins and aunts and uncles she’d not seen in about a decade, but because of her love of the cuisine and culture she felt while there.
For the first time Lorelai was thinking about what she wanted her future to hold. She wanted to learn not only how to run a business, but how to run a restaurant. When she told her parents this they were both thrilled to hear she had some ambition as they were starting to worry as to what her future would hold. She had already applied to a few universities back in London and in the US, but ultimately she chose to move to New York, wanting to learn from top restaurateurs in the country. The woman had gone from slacking off to attempting to engage in all her courses to figure out what it meant to be successful. Having her cousin to help fill in the blanks about what life was like for her mother’s side of the family in Hong Kong was helpful, because as she soon realized they were in fact trendsetters in cuisine.
After she graduated from college was when she began traveling, looking for inspiration. She got to go back to Hong Kong and see her family again. She remembered all the food she used to make and worked with her aunties in their restaurant before accepting a job opportunity in New York. She would be the cuisine expert of a new restaurant opening there owned by a famous chef known in Hollywood. It was an exciting new life for Lorelai, although she kept her expensive taste from her youth, it was now her maturity and smarts that she relied on to make an innovative menu that could continue to evolve. But Lorelai had bigger dreams in mind, and the ambition to continue where she knew she already belonged. One of her mentors was the one who first introduced her to Maurice Jow. Lorelai knew what the man was and could see all the inner workings of the society she was stepping into, but it was getting her what she wanted. The life that she knew was hers to take and she was well qualified for and so what if it included being part of an enterprise where she was letting herself see where the money was actually coming from.
She laid down the stepping stones and after three years she was named the restaurateur of the restaurants inside the exclusive hotel. That’s when she met Maurice’s son for the first time, Ambrose. This kid was supposed to be the one who showed her what was what as far as the inner workings of the restaurant vaults. Instead what she did was tell him what she wanted to know and then told him what her plans were for her life. To him; she was powerful. To her; he was a way up. There were a few exchanges made, but then the excitement of it wasn’t as exciting as what she was doing every day both inside the restaurant and inside the vaults of the restaurant. It wasn’t until years down the line Ambrose came around again. This time it just so happened that there was another woman who had a ring on her finger from him. Lorelai always felt morally gray and so when Ambrose came back for more, she couldn’t blame him. She was Lorelai Tseng. There was a comfortability in those two years. Lorelai never would admit there was a feeling of any kind towards him but they were sadistic and wild and riled each other with their mutual intelligence and power.
When Ambrose became the co-leader of the gang even though Lorelai was told that she would no longer be working at the gang's well known hotel it was because they were expanding to another added front. A highly exclusive new restaurant with a fabulous restaurateur. The distance he put in between himself and her was understandable and she did not find any tears to shed. Especially because she was now getting to create a whole new space where she could finally bring the idea she had shared with Ambrose seventeen years later. Hong Kong cuisine made famous by her family now brought to all the connections of the gang. And even though it was another front for her actual position in the organization, it was an amazing establishment with amazing food and Lorelai at the top with the power that she would never give up.
When things began to crumble; Lorelai followed the more competent leader. Finding opportunity as she could with Lottie, she shifted to an insider role sliding into The Reserve easily since she had extensive knowledge on the jewelry industry. She is happy with her position at the moment. She is sitting pretty as she always plans to.
