Shopping Around for the Right Ingredients 65-year-old Yuk Por Wong has been in Britain since 1957, but a visit to a shop or a doctor is still a real challenge, and he could only speak to our reporter through an interpreter. Throughout his 43 years here, he has worked as a cook in a Chinese restaurant in Oxford, from 9.30 a.m. until midnight, with an hour or two off during the afternoon. The language spoken in the kitchen was Cantonese. He never had time to mix with neighbours and learn their language. But now he's retired, it's time to learn the language that his three grand-daughters and one grandson seem to speak so fluently. Perhaps then they'll be more receptive to his efforts to teach them the language of their ancestors. For a man whose profession is food, he's strangely tentative in the vegetable section of the local supermarket, but that's where his teacher, Marion Owen, insists on taking him, along with the rest of her small class of elderly Chinese people. She gives them a shopping list on a sheet of paper with two columns. It's not a normal shopping list. Beside the word 'potato' is a rough drawing of a potato, and there are two columns, one for price per kilo, the other for price per item. Their job is to fill in the price in the correct column. Marion Owen is an ESOL teacher - a teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages. She teaches what she calls survival English, and once a week she teaches it at the Chinese Community Centre near Oxford's city centre. Mr Wong is learning for the first time how to read simple English. 'Now I can read and understand what the labels say,' he said, standing proudly beside a stack of bananas whose price he had just correctly noted on his shopping list. 'Before I came here, I felt alone, cut off.' Teaching elderly Chinese to speak English is just one of many services provided to the Chinese community at the Oxfordshire Chinese Community and Advice Centre. The centre provides help and advice on all survival matters - much like a Citizens Advice Bureau, but you won't find fluent Cantonese spoken in most CABs. Young mothers, whose husbands work in Chinese restaurants and have to work the same sort of hours as Mr Wong, might be isolated and unable to learn new skills without the centre. NAME: Oxfordshire Chinese Community and Advice Centre BRIEF: To provide advice, information and support for the Chinese community TARGET GROUP: The elderly, young mothers and workers FOCUS: To provide Citizens survival English classes GRANT: Major MANAGED BY: Basic Skills Agency

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