“Where they come from is [colloquially] called the village of Chus and the village of Chois. They are ancestral and both their families have been there for a very long time, so each place was named after their family surnames,” Chu, 39, explains. “My mother is from a village near Sha Tin called Siu Lek Yuen, while my dad’s village is called Kai Kok Shui Ha, between Sheung Shui and Fanling.

“They both came from very poor families, and unlike today, where it’s much easier to get around, dad’s village was very remote back then and there was very little work.

“Most of his family emigrated to the UK, but dad knew someone who lived in Dublin, so he emigrated here instead. He worked as a kitchen porter in a restaurant to start with.

“My mum would sell flowers after school for extra money and was a very hard worker. Her brother had lived in Ireland and it encouraged her to make the move here.”

“Mum still lives here in Dublin. After their divorce, dad moved back to the village in the New Territories where he was born, but my mum went back every year to Hong Kong. Even while she was building the business and had four restaurants with 100 staff, she always went back to see my grandmother,” Chu says.

Chinese are the largest ethnic minority in Ireland, numbering about 60,000. The earliest arrivals, from the 1950s, came from Hong Kong and many went into the restaurant business. Like many Chinese families growing up in the country during the 1970s and ’80s, life was tough for the Chus.

“At one stage there were nine of us living in a three-bedroom house, because my aunt and her kids also lived with us as we were not well off. My parents were always working and trying to put food on the table,” Chu says.

“What they both instilled in me was their work ethic. Like many children of immigrants, when you see your parents working two jobs to get you through school and college, you want to do your best for them. Both mum and dad came over with nothing, but my mum ended up running four successful restaurant businesses, so I took a lot of inspiration from her.”

Chu studied history and politics at University College, Dublin, where she ran debating competitions and the Philosophy Society. She then completed a legal diploma and barrister-at-law degree at King’s Inn.

“From 15 years old or so, I’d been going back regularly to Hong Kong to see the family, but going to that village outside Guilin was a unique experience. It really was isolated. Living in rural China was very different, but the people were so kind and friendly,” Chu says.

“It also gave me a lot of perspective because the children I taught there were very impoverished. They were so delighted when they saw I had brought them pencils and erasers to use.

“Up until then, I had been working two jobs a day, like my mother had, just to get through law school. Thanks to that experience, suddenly I could see there was more to life.”

Her time in Guilin and regular trips back to Hong Kong also gave her a good perspective on the unique relationship between China and the former British colony. Never has that relationship been as strained as now, with last year’s anti-government protests in the city and the new national security law.

Chu hopes that both factions can reach some kind of middle ground, and thinks it is as much a generational problem as a political one.

“Like a lot of people, I can’t help but feel a little apprehensive. Quite rightly, the younger generation in Hong Kong are standing up for their democratic rights. Equally, the older generation are tired of the uproar and just want peace and quiet, while China does not want to lose face,” she says.

“You can only hope that the situation is worked out as diplomatically as possible and a compromise can be found.”

Chu lives in Dublin with her partner, fellow Green party member Patrick Costello, and their two-year-old daughter Alex. She first became involved in politics in 2014, when she ran her partner’s local election campaign.

In 2019, she became the first Green Party councillor to be elected in the local polls for the ward of Pembroke in Dublin, and in the same year she was elected chair of the party – whose founding principles are ecological wisdom, social justice, grass-roots democracy and non-violence.

Subsequent to her council victory and the media attention surrounding it, Chu became a target of racial harassment online, particularly on Twitter.

This was nothing new for her or her family since their arrival in Ireland, but she is determined that the future will be different.

“From the time my mum first came to Ireland, there was racism. Back when I was growing up in Ireland there was racism. Now we both have the one hope that when my daughter Alex grows up she won’t be made to feel different and instead her difference will be celebrated,” she explains.

When Chu’s parents emigrated to Ireland in the ’70s there was a novelty about them, in that there were not many Chinese workers in the country at that time. Since then, however, other Chinese have arrived from Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore, and, more recently, from mainland China. IT, finance, property, construction and retail are just some of the sectors where you’ll find Chinese workers today.

The fact that Chu is Dublin’s first Lord Mayor of Chinese heritage shows how multicultural and progressive Ireland is compared to many other countries, and Chu wants this to continue, especially when it comes to having greater diversity and representation in Irish politics.

“I’m only the ninth woman to be Lord Mayor of Dublin – which is bad enough – and the first woman of colour. Hopefully, it will show other young people of different ethnic backgrounds that you can be whoever you want to be, no matter what your skin colour is,” says Chu.

“The majority of the population in Ireland are open-minded, but there is still a vocal minority here that treat me as Chinese rather than Irish, and have called for me to be deported back to China on social media. But if I’m going to be deported anywhere, it should be back to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin where I was born.”

You can follow Hazel Chu on Twitter @HazeChu or Instagram @LordMayorChu