biographical/introduction information

 

Hermes: How did you come to Saskatoon?

 

Mrs. Eng: (pointing to another elder) that one is my husband, so… we moved here in ‘77, we moved over together from Montreal.

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When we moved here, at first we opened a restaurant. What’s now Ging Wah, back then we called it Man Wah. Yes, so I ran it for only a year or two, then he went off with some friends and…moved to Second Street and opened this, um, Mai Chuen. And I went back to being a housewife. 

 

description of past and current experiences in Saskatoon and in Saskatoon’s Chinese community

 

speaking specifically to past → current experience learning and later teaching tai chi

 

Mrs. Eng:...Until ‘93, by the river there was a group of…folks from back home, and there was a Master Choi who taught…tai chi…

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This…breathing exercise, I mean lots of exercise. So a group of us, a group of us would go there, every time there were ten to twenty people. There…was…by Broadway Bridge…by the river there, we went there to learn.

 

Hermes: Usually how…often would you mean? I mean, how often would you do it?

 

Mrs. Eng: Like, once a week, I think, I…early in the week…two o’clock, we’d do an hour there..

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Yeah, and Master Choi taught us really patiently, so we learned there for a few years…and then, later on, Master Choi moved to Calgary. Those friends all knew that I…was really interested in tai chi. So they…they asked me to go to th eChinese school…and teach those [kids]. I mean, the parents who dropped their kids off…to study there, they’d do tai chi there too. At that time, there were dozens of people there…learning. 

 

Hermes: So, you were teaching there?

 

Mrs. Eng: I… taught and practised with everyone…and so I taught for another two or three years, and then…this place, this Juniper House…the people there, um, organized a group of seniors to exercise here…So they phoned and asked…and wanted…to bring me here to teach.

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So everyone did it together, and we kept at it for many, many many years…until, um COVID 19…it stopped…and so, [we] switched to online at home…At that time there were still…about ten, eight people taking part…

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I’ve kept doing it until now, every Saturday. Learning online, learning…tai chi…up to now, every Saturday we learn online…there’s tai chi to learn. So, we do some tai chi…do, um, breathing exercises and so on. Lots…I mean lots and lots of kinds of exercise…

 

speaking specifically to what twentieth street looked like back in the day

 

Hermes: Do you have any impressions of this place from before?

 

Mrs. Eng:...back then…there were about forty or fifty of those, um family-style restaurants, on…what’s it, on Twentieth Street there…

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Lots and lots and lots of family-style restaurants. Like, like the McDonald’s kind of thing (inaudible) fries and that. I mean, I mean those family-style ones. 

 

Hermes: What did they mostly sell?

 

Mrs. Eng: Just..fries..fried fish, that sort of thing… They sold pop and so on… A lot of little kids grew up there

 

Hermes:...Were many of them…run by Chinese people?

 

Mrs. Eng: Actually, there were all kinds of people, but [there] were…overseas Chinese, old overseas Chinese…

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They lived…there, um, ate there, slept there… Up before dawn, like that, then exercise…

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So while Man Wah was still open, you’d mostly be living over this way. Lots…now lots of the old overseas Chinese are gone.