Chinatown not reflective of Regina’s growing Chinese community

REGINA – The annual Chinese New Year celebration at Ngoy Hoa Asian Foods attracts dozens of people to the store, which is said to be the largest Chinese grocer in Saskatchewan.

“When we opened up we thought ‘this is a big store, we have lots of inventory’, but we’re running out of space again. So now we’re looking to see if we can expand further,” said Ngee Cau, chairman of the Chinese Language School of Regina. His two brothers own Ngoy Hoa.

Cau, along with parents and ten siblings, immigrated to Canada in the 1980s. Every Chinese New Year the family’s forty-odd members reunite to celebrate the upcoming lunar year.

“It’s a quite a change from 1980 when we first arrived. We hardly saw any Asians and now we see a lot of influx of Asians to the Chinese community,” said Cau.

Prior to moving two years ago to its current location on Albert Street, Ngoy Hoa first opened on 11th Avenue in the early 1990s, just after Regina’s Chinatown district was formed.

The Chinese community in Regina is said to be vibrant and growing, but the Chinatown district doesn’t reflect that growth.

“It is shrinking right now,” said Cau of Regina’s Chinatown.

The old Ngoy Hoa store remains empty, along with many other buildings along the strip.

“We came to this new building because we had the ability to expand with it, whereas in Chinatown it’s just a bit condensed,” said Jenna Cau, assistant manager of the store. “The buildings aren’t quite big enough for what we need it to be.”

A handful of Asian shops occupy Regina’s Chinatown including a bakery and a small grocery store with an attached restaurant. Unlike larger municipalities however, community members say Regina remains small enough to not warrant a prominent district.

“In Regina, you can go anywhere within 15 minutes, so you don’t really need to have centralized location for all the Asian stores,” said Ngee Cau.