J-MART: A PARADISE FOR

CHINESE FOOD ENTHUSIASTS

May 27th, 2018

         If every place has a taste, then the J-Mart supermarket at New World Mall in Flushing would taste like a mixture of fresh scallion, Chongqing hot pot sauce, Peking roast duck, and mandarin tangerines. As the largest Asian indoor supermarket in New York, the J-Mart, with more than 30,500 square feet, welcomes more than one million customers from the nearby Chinese community, and Chinese food enthusiasts ever since it was opened in 2011.

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       Susan Lee has worked at the meat counter at the corner of the J-Mart for two years. She used to sell Luzhu (a type of sauce stewed meat) in Virginia, but the Chinese community there was small and misunderstood. "People asked me if I sold and ate mice!" Mrs. Lee raised her voice, "of course not! So my husband and I decided to move to a larger Chinese community where nobody asks stupid questions like this. Flushing is the best choice."

       Bo Yu and Josie Qiao are coming to New York for their honeymoon. They are from Wuhan, China, and it is their first time to America. Qiao said, "We're not good at English, but we can speak our mother tongue here. The shop assistant at the J-Mart can even understand my Wuhan dialect." The couple rents an Airbnb in Flushing and buys cooking ingredients at the J-Mart. Yu is talking to his wife about their dinner plan: "I'll cook pickled cucumber with pork. You wanna make lotus stew?" Qiao refused with a laugh, "You cook, and all I do is eat!"

  If there is something to complain about, Jianli Hou, a Flushing resident who works at the vegetable counter said, "I don't like evening work times." The busiest time of the day is 6:30 p.m.; whereas the slowest time, is around 3:30 p.m.

The J-Mart is doubtlessly a paradise for Chinese food enthusiasts. It is the only place that sells sweetened garlic, Shandong jujube, and many other Chinese foods and snacks on the East Coast of America. Sarah Cheung is a rising sophomore at NYU Liberal Studies program. Every Saturday, she takes a train from Penn Station to Flushing Main Street and shops at the J-Mart. "I buy tons of Chinese snacks here, and the 'thirteen spices' instant fish tofu is my favorite." She held a pack of fish tofu next to her face and added, "I went to many Asian supermarkets in New York, but found this flavor of 'thirteen spices' fish tofu only at the J-Mart."

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