The Yue Wa market to close in Chinatown, and a food desert

Yue Wa is one of the last remaining markets in Chinatown, a place where the most vulnerable residents of the neighborhood could find affordable edibles. During the last 18 years, customers talked while selecting their products in front of the store, the small market provided an increasing sense of community.

For next month, Yue Wa will have gone, the business proved to be unsustainable in a neighborhood that quickly changes that historically has been a crucial center for Chinese and other Asian immigrants.

But after a series of robberies, the continuous effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the recent ice raids and the changing demography of the neighborhood, the owner Amy Tran is making the difficult decision to close the store in September.

On Tuesday afternoon, Tran stood in the shadow of the store entrance, helping a client to put some garlic bulbs in a plastic bag.

Every day at 1 PM, Tran arrives at the narrow store near the corner of North Broadway and Ord Street. She spends her mornings touring the products of products in the nearby center for oranges, mangoes, mushrooms, yam, garlic and vegetables in which her customers trust to meet their daily needs of grocers.

“I don't feel ready to release the store, but there is not much I can do to attract more people,” he said. “Businesses were booming and many people used to come, but now there is no pedestrian traffic and many people have moved from Chinatown.”

Tran has seen the neighborhood change from a hustle -bustling historical enclave where many Asian immigrants live and work, which begins to feel like “a ghost city.” Chinatown is where he settled after emigrating from Vietnam in the 90s. His son was born at the Pink Hill in Hill Street. Without formal education, he worked in restaurants in the area before taking care of the herbal and Chinese tea supplement Yue Wa in 2007.

“He realized that many locals always asked for ingredients such as sweet potatoes and Taro, so he started selling fruits and expanded to vegetables,” said Derek Luu, son of Tran. Luu went to school in the area and spent many childhood afternoons at the back of the market. “He realized that all his customers were looking for fresh things, so he began to go to the product warehouse district to obtain products for them.”

What began as a small row of groceries in front of the store grew rapidly to include refrigeration fruits such as apples, oranges and berries, and anything that the mainly Asian clientele may need to cook. There was always a constant supply of bitter melon, eggplant, gai Lan and Bok Choy.

The interior of Yue Wa Market, an 18 -year -old store owned by Amy Tran. The store sells fresh products and dry products to an Asian and Latin clientele mostly old.

(Emil Ravelo / for the times)

“Most of the old people did not want to walk to the store, so he discovered that most of their business was happening on the sidewalk,” Luu said. “She began the trend in Chinatown to put the product on the street.”

The need for fresh products and other market goods grew over the years as existing stores in the area began to close, and Chinatown ran out of a true link for its Asian ethnic communities. AI GOA and G&G, two long -standing full -dated service groceries, closed in 2019. Other stores in the area tried to fill the vacuum, with the bookstore next to Yue Wa selling a selection of products and Banh my my my manure, a sandwiches store just around the corner, following the example.

When he is not on the market, Luu said his mother spends most of his time looking for offers for his customers in product stores in downtown Los Angeles.

“Because the population I serve is mainly elderly and low income, the price, if you ever make, they will not be able to pay it,” Tran said. “So I want to be one of the stores in Chinatown to be able to provide fresh fruit and products for the elderly.”

With almost 30% of Chinatown residents who live below the poverty line, many without the means to travel outside the area to a grocery store, the need for fresh and affordable foods is as serious as ever.

In Yue Wa, Tran shows its products in the boxes in which they arrive, without prices that appear in the various goods. She gives her clients, mainly to the greatest Asian and Latin residents of the neighborhood, a plastic bag, then there is a discourse on prices.

“Grandmothers and aunts ask how much Luu said. “Can I get a discount?”

The owner of the Yue Wa market, Amy Tran, discusses the price of vegetables with a customer in the store.

(Emil Ravelo / for the times)

It is a way of doing business that disappears quickly, with younger buyers accustomed to conventional stores and clearly labeled prices.

“There is a culture of negotiation that is baked in Chinatown, but younger people do not do it because it is too uncomfortable,” Luu said. “I recognize that my mother's store is a bit of the old school.”

The store experienced a decade of sustainable profits before beginning to feel the effects of the changing demography of the neighborhood.

“Even with low prices, the businesses were good until around 2016, when I started seeing all the most modern art galleries and restaurants that arrived in the neighborhood,” Luu said. “We began to notice that the members of our community left.”

Tran also contemplated to leave and establish a store somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, but the ties with their neighborhood community in the neighborhood were too strong. And his decision to close the store goes far beyond the Gentrification of Chinatown and the surroundings.

“We have been beaten from all sides,” Luu said.

Luu left UCLA during the pandemic in 2020 to help his mother in the store. I was worried about the increase in Asian hatred he was seeing throughout the country. Her mother complained about the people who came to harass her repeatedly in the market.

The family was struggling to reach the balance point and Tran's husband, Hugh Luu, he needed to look for work outside the store. He found a job in one of the product stores in the city center, work shifts that began at 3 am

Some of the herbal supplements and teas available in the Yue Wa market in Chinatown. Everything in the store is selected by the owner Amy Tran.

(Emil Ravelo / for the times)

“I didn't want to listen to a story that my mother was beaten,” said Derek. “But even when I was there, he did not prevent people from taking our things and throwing them into the street and calling racial insults.”

More recently, the family accredits ice raids for entertaining the fear of an immigrant community already diminished in Chinatown.

“When my mother is going to buy products, note that half of the workers are gone or stores are closed,” said Derek. “These raids are a bit mysterious for the Chinatown community and the people here do not want to risk being arrested or kidnapped, so much of the pedestrian traffic has decreased.”

But it was a series of robberies both in the store and in the family's house in the San Gabriel Valley that led Tran to make the difficult decision to close.

The owner of the Yue Wa market, Amy Tran, has some of the fresh products available in her store.

(Emil Ravelo / for the times)

Derek recently published a video about the imminent closure of the store on social networks, including the video images of a thief assaulting his mother and stealing his bag from the back of the store.

He estimates that the family has lost more than $ 100,000 in the last decade more or less, with people repeatedly stealing products and small and large cash amounts of the store. Derek and Tran have submitted multiple police reports, but the robberies continue.

“The robberies occur throughout the Chinese neighborhood all the time, but they are very informed,” said Derek. “We are not the only matter that is happening. I don't know if it is a distrust of the police or the Asian mentality of not wanting to be known as the person who is stolen.”

“I don't know about making a police report when someone steals $ 5 or $ 10,” Tran said. “It simply feels helpless.”

The family took greater safety measures in the store and installed the reinforcements of the windows and a new security system with cameras at home. There was a robbery at home in September and another earlier this summer. On June 11, Derek's sister, Tiffany, was attacked during a robbery in the family's house.

The medical invoices of Tran of an ongoing battle with diabetes and cataracts and the costs of the greatest security measures were the height for the family and the market. Derek created a Gofundme page to help cover some of the invoices, but the store is scheduled for the end of September.

“Many times, when people see that companies are going, it looks like this is gone,” Derek said. “The fact that this was here is a testimony of something. My mother put about 18 very good years keeping this community fed and in contact with her inheritance. That is something.”