Their grandfather and father, Orville and Delmar, opened their first restaurant in 1946 in Bettendorf. In 1949, Riefe's moved into an existing drive-in restaurant. In 1961, a new building was constructed at the site to offer both seated dining and a drive-through window.

Chen also is part of an extended family of relatives in the restaurant business. They have Chinese restaurants throughout the Quad-City region including Bettendorf, Davenport, Rock Island as well as Geneseo, Ill., and Maquoketa, Iowa. The brands include New China, Panda Garden, Great Wall and China Cafe. Chen and Zheng's Fuji LLC owns Great Wall in Davenport and are working on the new Sakura Express and now Fuji.

Chen immigrated to the United States almost seven years ago, becoming a U.S. citizen a couple years ago. She first lived in New Jersey and New York before moving to the Quad-Cities, where her cousin Eric Chen had opened a Panda Garden in Bettendorf.

At one point, the extended family was operating restaurants in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Kansas, West Virginia and Ohio, but they since have sold those, she said.

Chen said her customers thought the Great Wall restaurant was moving to Riefe's. "But we like it here and are going to stay here too," she said.

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