My family owned a Chinese takeout restaurant. Here are 9 things we wished customers knew to avoid being offensive or inconsiderate.

• Food writer Su-Jit Lin grew up working in her parents' American Chinese kitchen. 
• It's become a point of pride — but she also remembers the racism and aggressions her parents faced.
• "There are countless nuances that make this type of work hard on the mind and spirit," she writes.

I've spent more than a dozen years as a food writer, and I've written quite a bit about where I learned the most about food: in my parents' American Chinese restaurant kitchen. It's become a point of pride — it's given me street cred, you might say, in that my professional experience in this industry stems back to when I was old enough to coherently say "Thank you" to our customers as I dropped fortune cookies off at their tables.