An old-school Chinatown market tried hanging on. Assaults, raids, gentrification proved too much

Los Angeles Times

a day ago

Yue Wa is one of the last remaining markets in Chinatown, a place where the neighborhood's most vulnerable residents could find affordable groceries. For the past 18 years, customers chatted while they hand-picked their produce in front of the store, the small market providing a dwindling sense of community.
By next month, Yue Wa will be gone, the business proving unsustainable in a fast-changing neighborhood that has historically been a crucial hub for Chinese and other Asian immigrants.
But after a slew of burglaries, the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent ICE raids and the shifting demographics of the neighborhood, owner Amy Tran is making the difficult decision to close the store in September.
On Tuesday afternoon, Tran stood in the shade of the store's entrance, helping a customer put some garlic bulbs in a plastic bag.
Every day at 1 p.m., Tran arrives at the narrow storefront near the corner of North Broadway and Ord Street. She spends her mornings scouring the produce warehouses in nearby downtown for the oranges, mangoes, mushrooms, yams, garlic and greens her customers rely on to meet their daily grocery needs.
'I don't feel ready to let go of the store, but there's not much I can do to bring more people in,' she said. 'Business was booming and a lot of people used to come around, but now there is no foot traffic and a lot of people have moved away from Chinatown.'
Tran has watched the neighborhood change from a bustling historic enclave where many Asian immigrants live and work, to what is starting to feel like 'a ghost town.' Chinatown is where she settled after immigrating from Vietnam in the '90s. Her son was born at the pink hospital on Hill Street. With no formal education, she worked in restaurants in the area before taking over the Yue Wa Chinese herbal supplement and tea shop in 2007.
'She noticed that a lot of locals were always asking her for ingredients like sweet potatoes and taro, so she started selling fruits and expanded to vegetables,' said Derek Luu, Tran's son. Luu went to school in the area and spent many childhood afternoons in the back of the market. 'She realized all of her customers were looking for fresh stuff, so she started going to the produce warehouse district to get produce for them.'
What started as a small row of groceries in front of the store quickly grew to include snacking fruits like apples, oranges and berries, and anything the primarily Asian clientele might need for cooking. There was always a steady supply of bitter melon, eggplant, gai lan and bok choy.
'Most of the old folks didn't want to walk all the way into the store, so she found that most of her business was happening on the sidewalk,' Luu said. 'She sort of started the trend in Chinatown of putting the produce out on the street.'
The need for fresh produce and other market goods grew over the years as the existing stores in the area started to close, and Chinatown was left without a real nexus for its Asian ethnic communities. Ai Goa and G&G, two long-standing full-service grocery stores, closed in 2019. Other shops in the area attempted to fill the void, with the bookstore next to Yue Wa selling a selection of produce and Banh Mi My Dung, a sandwich shop around the corner, following suit.
When she's not at the market, Luu said his mom spends the majority of her time hunting for deals for her customers at the produce warehouses in downtown Los Angeles.
'Because the population that I serve is mainly elderly and low-income, the pricing, if I ever raise, they won't be able to afford it,' Tran said. 'So I want to be one of the stores in Chinatown to be able to provide fresh fruit and produce for the elderly.'
With nearly 30% of Chinatown's residents living below the poverty line, many without the means to travel outside the area to a grocery store, the need for fresh, affordable food is as dire as ever.
At Yue Wa, Tran displays her produce in the boxes they arrive in, with no prices listed for the various goods. She hands her customers, mostly the neighborhood's elderly Asian and Latino residents, a plastic bag, then a discourse ensues regarding the prices.
'The grandmas and aunties ask how much,' Luu said. 'Can I get a discount?'
It's a way of doing business that's quickly disappearing, with younger shoppers used to mainstream stores and clearly labeled prices.
'There is a culture of bargaining that's baked into Chinatown, but the younger people don't do it because it's too awkward,' Luu said. 'I recognize that my mom's store is a bit old-school.'
The shop experienced a decade of sustainable profits before starting to feel the effects of the changing demographics of the neighborhood.
'Even with the low prices, business was good until around 2016, when I started seeing all the art galleries and trendier restaurants coming to the neighborhood,' Luu said. 'We started noticing our community members leaving.'
Tran also contemplated leaving and setting up shop somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, but the ties to her Chinatown community were too strong. And her decision to close the shop goes far beyond the gentrification of Chinatown and the surrounding areas.
'We've been getting hit from all sides,' Luu said.
Luu left UCLA during the pandemic in 2020 to help his mom at the store. He was worried about the rise in Asian hate he was seeing all over the country. His mom complained of the people who came by to repeatedly harass her at the market.
The family was struggling to break even and Tran's husband, Hugh Luu, needed to look for work outside the store. He found a job at one of produce warehouses downtown, working shifts that started at 3 a.m.
'I didn't want to hear a story of my mom getting punched,' Derek said. 'But even when I was there, it didn't stop people from taking our stuff and throwing it onto the street and calling out racial slurs.'
Most recently, the family credits the ICE raids with stoking fear into an already diminished immigrant community in Chinatown.
'When my mom goes to buy produce, she's noticing half the workers are gone or the shops are closed,' Derek said. 'These raids are kind of mysterious to the Chinatown community and people here don't want to risk being arrested or abducted, so a lot of the foot traffic has died down.'
But it was a series of robberies at both the store and later at the family's home in the San Gabriel Valley that prompted Tran to make the difficult decision to close.
Derek recently posted a video about the store's impending closure on social media, including video footage of a robber assaulting his mother and stealing her purse from the back of the store.
He estimates that the family has lost more than $100,000 over the last decade or so, with people repeatedly stealing products and both small and large amounts of cash from the store. Derek and Tran have filed multiple police reports, but robberies continue.
'The burglaries happen throughout Chinatown all the time, but they are very underreported,' Derek said. 'We are not the only business this is happening to. I don't know if it's a mistrust of the police or the Asian mentality of not wanting to be known as the person who gets robbed.'
'I also don't know about making a police report when someone steals $5 or $10,' Tran said. 'It just feels helpless.'
The family took increased safety measures at the store and installed window reinforcements and a new security system with cameras at home. There was a break-in at their home in September and another earlier this summer. On June 11, Derek's sister Tiffany was assaulted during a robbery at the family's home.
Tran's medical bills from an ongoing battle with diabetes and cataracts and the costs of the increased security measures were the last straw for the family and the market. Derek set up a GoFundMe page to help cover some of the bills, but the shop is scheduled to close by the end of September.
'A lot of times when people see businesses go, it's sort of seen as this thing is just gone,' Derek said. 'The fact that this was here is a testament to something. My mom put in a really good 18 years keeping this community fed and in touch with their heritage. That's something.'