A Chinese restaurant employee speaks exclusively to Global News after a video circulated on social media showing him scooping spilled sauce from the ground into a bucket and then bringing it into the restaurant.
The incident happened on Tuesday night outside the Hong Shing Chinese Restaurant, near Dundas Street West and University Avenue in downtown Toronto.
In Cantonese, the employee in question, Zebin Lin, said in an exclusive interview with Global News “in my heart I wanted to cry,” after he found out that the videos of him had been unknowingly recorded and shared widely.
He says the videos do not tell the whole story. He had just picked up six buckets of sauce from the supply car when he slipped. One bucket fell and spilled.
Lin spoke Cantonese and said there was oncoming traffic approaching, so he tried to clean up the area as fast as he could. He then left an empty bucket outside, but brought the rest of them into the restaurant, where he was told he had to dispose of all the product.
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“When he came in, I said do not worry about it, all these buckets are going away,” said Hong Shing’s owner, Colin Li, adding that quality control is a top priority for the restaurant.
Elisha Pommainville, who was in her vehicle nearby, says she started recording on her phone when she saw an employee take the sauce off the ground with her hands.
“He went to the back to grab the cart with the sauce, and he went, and it fell,” Pommainville told Global News. “At first I was just like that, it’s a shame. But when I saw him start scooping it up. I was like, he doesn’t really do what I think he does.”
The series of videos was first shared on Pommainville’s Snapchat account and then on Instagram.
They show an employee with several buckets on a cart cleaning up sauce and putting it in buckets and then driving the buckets into the restaurant through a back door.
The videos went viral after being shared on an Instagram account with about two million followers.
“I have eaten there. My children have eaten there. Many of my friends eat there. So it was more just to let people know that this is what I saw. This is what happened. It is consciousness. “It was not for impact. It was not for destroying a restaurant,” said Pommainville.
Li says the restaurant, since the videos were circulated, has received community support, but has also received a lot of hate calls and online harassment.
“There are a lot of hate calls coming to the restaurant that say how unhygienic we are, plus a lot of racist comments leading up to it,” Li said.
“I have to keep fighting this tale for over two decades now and say that Chinese restaurants are unhygienic and dirty.
“We work really hard to make sure no one really feels that way, ever since I build my social media to show people that I’m very transparent in my kitchen. I show literally every angle of my kitchen on social media so people can see what comes out and what comes into the restaurant. So that’s why this incident is really hurtful. ”
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Li says neither Pommainville nor the owner of the Instagram account reached out to the restaurant for context before posting the videos. The owner of the Instagram account declined to comment.
Pommainville says she did not feel it was her place to approach the restaurant that night and that she had not anticipated the hateful comments that were the result of the videos.
But she does not regret that she has posted the videos.
“I urge those who still want it … to clearly support the business because the aim of the post was not to get people to boycott it, it was just to let people know that was what I came across that day. That’s what I’ve seen. They can make their own choices. “
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