T&T Supermarket is more than just a grocery store — it helped me learn the language I resisted as a kid

This First Person column is written by Bill Chow, a second-generation Canadian who is a teacher in Mississauga, Ont. It was originally published in August 2023. May is Asian Heritage Month. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

"Nǐ hǎo, qǐng wèn nǐ men de dòu bàn jiàng zài nǎ lǐ? 你好,請問你們的豆瓣醬在哪裡?" asked a customer in Mandarin.

"Sorry, I do not speak Mandarin, but I would be more than happy to help you with whatever you are looking for," I replied in English. 

The woman said she was looking for fermented chili bean paste in English. 

Unfortunately, I still didn't know what that was, so I asked her for the Cantonese name of the product.

When I still didn't understand what she was asking for, the woman raised her voice and yelled at me in English.  

"What kind of f---ed up Chinese are you? I said it in Mandarin, English and Cantonese and you still do not know what I am looking for?" After venting at me, she stormed off in a huff into the other aisles of the store.   

The customer's frustration was nothing new to me. As a second-generation Chinese Canadian, I've felt the pressure to speak, read and write Chinese fluently my whole life. Growing up, my command of the Chinese language had often been described by family and friends as being at a "baby level" or what I would like to call the "Swiss cheese" level — with large numbers of empty holes. 

However, I wanted to move past the Swiss cheese level of Cantonese. 

I was born in Sarnia, Ont. My parents were from the Guangdong province of China but grew up in Hong Kong. They spoke fluent Cantonese and wanted me to stay connected to my culture but there were few Chinese speakers in our small city. 

So, when I turned five, I started going to Saturday Chinese school, but nothing clicked with me. After eight years of this additional schooling, I convinced my mom to let me drop out. She relented but said, "Son, there will be a day you will regret not learning Chinese."

She was right. Every time I went back to Hong Kong to meet family, I realized the gaping holes left in my life from not speaking the language.

Sixteen years had passed since that conversation when one day, I came across a T&T Supermarket job fair and it seemed like a sign.

It was 2008 and I was working full-time as a secondary school teacher in the Toronto area, but I decided to apply. I got an interview right on the spot and they gave me the opportunity that I was looking for — a part-time job working in a Chinese-speaking environment.  

T&T was like school for me. I asked questions and spoke Cantonese as much as I could. However, through the process I also picked up Mandarin along the way.

I was surrounded by Chinese food and music. Even the constant change in store decorations that marked different Chinese holidays on the calendar made me feel more connected to my roots.

However, it was not always an enjoyable experience. Some of my colleagues made it known they didn't like working with a "CBC" a.k.a. a Canadian-born Chinese like myself. They would say unwelcoming comments like "there are jobs out there that only require you to serve customers in English." At lunchtime, most of the staff said I couldn't sit with them even though there were empty chairs at their tables. 

I'm not sure if they resented my fluency in English or perhaps they thought I was taking away one of the handful of jobs available to newly arrived Chinese immigrants. But whatever the reason, I ended up eating many a lunch in the locker room or outside on the curb in the parking lot. It reminded me of my childhood. As a kid, I felt like the Chinese lunches I brought to school made me an outsider in the mostly white school in Sarnia. Here at T&T, I was among other Chinese people and somehow I still was not Chinese enough.

Whenever I felt sad or upset, I tried to remind myself why I was working this job — I wanted to learn Cantonese. 

Every shift of work brought me a new word. A new phrase. A new sentence. A new proverb. Sometimes, a new swear word. I wrote down every word I learned in a book I called my "T&T Bible." Every night after work, I reviewed the contents of what I wrote over and over and over again until it stuck in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

By the time T&T laid me off from my job in 2017, I felt that I had developed the foundation needed to learn the language on my own. In those nine years, I went from speaking kindergarten-level Cantonese to Grade 3-level Cantonese and Mandarin. Now it may not seem like a lot, but for me, it was enough.     

These days, I use apps, the internet, books, dictionaries, Google Translate and Chinese drama series from mainland China and Taiwan to continue to learn and expand my understanding of the Chinese language. I hope one day to be able to fully comprehend a Chinese-language newspaper. 

As I work toward that goal, I relish in smaller victories. Today, I can buy groceries and baked goods in Cantonese or Mandarin in Toronto. When I travel in China, I can understand the conversation and reply back in Mandarin. I talk to my dentist in Cantonese. My bank offers service in Chinese, and I take the opportunity to practice and say thank you. I say mmm goi 唔該 in Cantonese or xiè xiè 謝謝 in Mandarin, because whether they know or not, even the people who give me a sideways look are helping me master the language.

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