The menu featured 10 dishes for $9 each – dishes that Andrew Leung, owner of Gain Wah, claims would cost double at other restaurants. Crab meat fried rice, barbecue pork with rice, tofu grandma on rice and steamed chicken on rice are just some of the quality options. About three dozen low-income people lived in the SRO rooms above the restaurant in Chinatown, near Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Gain Wah had a voucher system for people in need of a meal, and Leung said sometimes if people came with no money, he would make sure they had food. “If they’re hungry, I don’t like to see people go hungry,” he said. But decades of reliable service – delivered only since the start of the pandemic – came to a halt last Friday, after a fire spread to one of the upstairs rooms, causing significant damage to the restaurant. Fire crews attend to a building fire above Gain Wah on Keefer Street near Main Street in Vancouver on Friday, September 9. (Shawn Foss/CBC) “She’s in terrible shape, the worst I’ve ever seen,” Leung said. “I’m completely shocked.” The dining room is filled with a pungent smell—perhaps some spoiled food mixed with the moisture from the extinguishing effort. A week after the disaster, the dehumidifiers are humming, the lights won’t come on, and there’s a mess of fallen ceiling panels, smashed and mashed into chairs, tables, appliances, and the floor. Andrew Leung, owner of Gain Wah, stands amid the chaos in the dining room of the fire-damaged restaurant. According to Leung, 65, who is considering retirement, the sudden break from business forced by the fire was actually a welcome respite after years of hard work. (Rafferty Baker/CBC) For Leung, who has owned Gain Wah since 1989 and has been working there even longer, the forced closure was actually a welcome break. The pandemic forced him to cut staff to just three people, including himself, and he was working six 13-hour weeks. “I’m going to take it easy after working so hard for so many years,” Leung said, adding that he enjoyed spending a little more time with Odie, his 15-year-old poodle. But for Tracy Li, who has been a server at Gain Wah since 1993, the closing was not so relaxing. “Everything stops, everything stops,” Lee said. “I’m not interested in doing anything else now, I just stay home and sleep.” Tracy Li, who has worked at Gain Wah since 1993, says it’s been her only job and her whole life. (Rafferty Baker/CBC) Li said she misses the regular customers and just wants the restaurant to get back to normal. “I look around here, and I’m so sad, so sad,” he said, gesturing toward the damaged dining room.
community support
Nicolas Yung is the SRO Coordinator with the Youth Collaborative for China. It works to build community solidarity between the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown. For Yung, Gain Wah was more than just a place to eat. “It’s a place where people process trauma and gain energy to continue living,” she said. “I’d work late and still come here. I’d see other people who don’t have family or who’ve been through trauma and need company.” Nicolas Yung is the SRO Coordinator with the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown. He and the team have organized a fundraiser for the restaurant, which had raised $25,000 from donors within a week of the Gain Wah fire. (Rafferty Baker/CBC) And Yung has seen firsthand how Leung and the restaurant help her neighbors. “I’ve seen staff help substance abusers or homeless people in many different ways,” she said. Yung and his team started an online fundraising campaign to support the restaurant and its staff. In one week, they’ve already managed to raise $25,000 of their $30,000 goal. There is a second fundraiser underway to help displaced SRO residents upstairs.
The future of the restaurant is uncertain
Leung is waiting to hear from the insurance company about what will happen to the restaurant next, but one option is retirement. “I’m already 65, so we’ll see,” he said. “I’m a laid-back guy. I’ll live with it.” Leung said that if he retires, he hopes someone else will take over the restaurant and be able to reopen it — and he said he’ll try to help, but he doesn’t know what will happen. For Lee, 60, permanent closure would be an unwelcome outcome of the disaster. Tracy Lee hopes the restaurant can reopen so she can work for a few more years before retiring. (Rafferty Baker/CBC) She said she won’t be ready to retire for another five years and hopes to eventually be able to continue serving her favorite dish, barbecue pork with ginger onion and chili oil sauce on rice. “This is my only job,” Lee said. “This is my whole life.”
