Wayne
Toishan, China → Estevan, Saskatchewan
• Photos from
Wayne's family
restaurant
We met Wayne by chance.
It was a journey of unexpected encounters, one closed café leading us on an adventure to another. The idea of generations emerged.
With kindness, one of my dad’s friends saw my disappointment that the Oxbow Café was closed and wrote a name on a napkin for me. Estevan was the closest town 45 minutes away, with a nice enough hotel to stay in for a few days. Wayne had owned the Oxbow Café some years ago and hoped for better business in this booming town nearby.
"Most popular is a combo, a Chinese combo. You have shrimp, chicken balls, veggie, fried rice, and ribs. That’s what most people like. Some people like English food too like hamburger with homemade patties, so they go pretty good too."
“When you’re hungry, you learn how to cook”
“When you’re hungry, you learn how to cook”
“You don’t know much English before you come and that’s all you can do. I don’t mind if I get time like 20 years ago, if I got that time and not work in a restaurant or whatever, I can educate myself or work in somewhere else and got experience so I can chose different kind of job, but you know - same when in China, I work in the air conditioning factory.”
We returned for dinner later and the food was delicious, especially the sweet & sour chicken. I remembered why I loved it so much as a kid, the sticky sauce dripping off the battered chicken.
