Wing Moy has worked at Moy Grocery in Charleston, Miss., since 1964. They still carry many daily items and have a small meat market in the back.

The Corner (Chinese)

GroceryDuring the first half of the 20th century, the independent corner grocery was the main store for people’s daily items, and in the Delta, the corner grocery was almost always Chinese. Groceries like Shing Lou and Lucky Chow have largely disappeared with the advent of the super market. Those that remain tell a story of immigration and acclamation.

WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY NATALIE DICKSONREPORTING FROM CHARLESTON, CLARKSDALE AND GREENVILLE

CHINESE GROCERIES, 5

Wing Moy sits in his store just off the square in Charleston, Miss. He’s worked in Moy Grocery since 1964, and his father before him, since 1928. There used to be four Chinese-owned groceries in town, Moy said. But now, his is the last one. In a region that was once cov-ered with Chinese groceries, his store sits as one of the few still remaining in the Mississippi Delta. It stands as a legacy to a business once dominated by the thou-sands of Chinese immigrants that came throughout the 1900s. Now few and far between, the stores that still exist have either evolved with the times or hang on by the wills of their owners.

A Part of the Community The long, narrow space of Moy Grocery has a few aisles of basic grocery and daily items. Outdated cans of foam lotion and one pair of white, garden gloves, among other items, line a wall. Only a couple people come through on a given evening, picking up snack items and cold cuts. The grocery used to have a full meat market, produce and more groceries. But with the advent of the supermarket and the shrinking town, business has been terrible recently. “Just to make the bottom line, that’s good,” Moy said. But at 82 years old, business is not the reason Moy continues to open the store almost every morning at 5. “I keep it open for some old

customers. I take care of them,” Moy said. “We’ve been friends a long time.” Moy and his late wife had an opportunity five years ago to leave the grocery business, but they chose to stay in order to keep seeing their customers. The Moy family’s place in the Charleston community goes back to the first half of the 20th century, he said, when Moy’s father moved in 1928 from Indiana to help his uncle run the grocery in the little town. Moy grew up in Hong Kong, but moved to Mississippi with his wife in 1964 to help with the store. Over the years, the Moys established themselves within the Charleston community. Eleanor Worsham grew up in Charleston and now works at The China Cabinet store right down the street from Moy Grocery. She knew both Wing and his father and remembers going to the store for steaks. “They had the best cuts of meat you ever put in your mouth,” she said. However, what she remembers the most is how the Moys treated others. Her son was about the same age as one of the younger Moys’s sons. The boys went to the same school but never asked to carpool lest they incon-venienced anyone. The grandfather Moy would always drop off and pick up his grandson at school. But just one time, Moy asked Worsham to pick up the boy. “I was just so honored he would ask me to do that,” she said.

When she dropped off the boy at the store, Mrs. Moy was standing outside waiting with a box of ice cream sand-wiches for her. “They always wanted to do something for you; they never wanted you to do,” Worsham said. Justin Mixon, another resident of Charleston, remembers stopping in the store for candy and a Coke. During the holiday seasons, customers could also get Chinese cookies. For 10 years, Mrs. Moy had the tradition of giving Chinese cookies to customers and friends, Moy said. Around the holidays, she would carry a tin of Hong Kong cookies she had bought from a Chinese market. Each time a regular customer visited the store, she’d give them one. She would also go around personally to visit sick friends or local businesses with the cookie wafers in tow, Moy said. “People called his wife the ‘Cookie Lady,’” Mixon said. Despite the foreign backgrounds of both the cookies and the Moys, both were accepted as just a part of the com-munity, he said. “You wouldn’t ever think of hav-ing them there. I guess it wasn’t com-mon (to have Chinese), but they were so much a part of the community,” Mixon said. “We didn’t view them as a different group.”

Joe Gow Nue Co. #2, Nelson St., Greenville, c. 1940. The #2 store was the larger of the two, located in the main black business district. Courtesy of John Jung, from Dick Ming

The Chinese cookies Mrs. Winan Moy would buy from Chinese markets and give out to customers and friends.

If you talk with the older Delta Chinese, most will remember the Joe Gow Nue stores of Greenville. Located on Washington and Nelson streets, both #1 and #2 served Greenville and the larger Delta Chinese communities by offering Chinese gro-cery products, herbs and art objects. The stores are an example of the classic tale of how the Chinese helped one another in the Delta. Traveling up the Mississippi Riv-er in 1883, Joe Gow Nue stopped in Hol-landale. He later moved to Greenville and opened up Joe Gow Nue #1 on Washing-ton St. In 1910, he sold the store to three brothers who were from the same village as he, Wang Sek in China’s Guangdong Province. Two of the brothers retired to China and left the store to Joe Guay. The grocery prospered so much that Guay expanded the business to a second store on Nelson St. He brought his son, Joe

Ting, and cousins over to help with the stores. Joe Ting took #2 over in 1937 and was a prominent member of the Delta Chinese community. He helped the Chi-nese with life insurance, visa papers, and plane tickets. He was also instrumental in encouraging the Chinese to attend

Greenville’s First Baptist Church and in helping raise funds for the Cleveland Chinese School.

The Joe Gow Nue stores of Greenville

Source: John Jung’s “Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton”

The Min Sang Grocery and Market in Greenville. Courtesy of John Jung.

Two men inside store, location unknown. Courtesy of Delta State University Ar-chives.

The Original Chinese Groceries The Chinese in the Mississippi Delta did not originally plan on becom-ing decade-long parts of the community, though. According to James Loewen’s book, “Mississippi Chinese,” when the first Chinese came to the Delta in the 1870s, they were sojourners. They came to make money and send it home to China. Eventually, they would establish their own business, occasionally visiting their homes in China to marry and start their own families. The goal was never to become American. “(The first Chinese immigrants’) families and their orientation remained in China,” Loewen wrote. “Eventually he planned to return to China, to retire in the bosom of his family and friends, as a rather wealthy man, and to be buried in Chinese soil.”

Furthermore, the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, severely limited Chinese immigration. It was extremely difficult for Chinese men to bring over wives and children or to leave the country with any hope of returning, Loewen wrote. Slowly but surely, though, the Chinese of the Delta had families in Mississippi, either by marrying Chinese from other parts of the country, or oc-casionally marrying blacks or by manag-ing to bring their Chinese bride over. The sojourner mindset eventually faded away, Loewen wrote. The grocery business also proved to be very successful for the Chinese immigrant. In a racially stratified society, the Chinese came in as a third race. And as a group that at least initially did not care to fit in with the white society, they were willing to serve the blacks – some-thing most whites would not do, Loewen wrote. “Instead, (segregation) has cre-ated a profitable niche for the Chinese which neither blacks nor whites could take advantage of,” he wrote. Chinese usually set up shop in the black parts of town. Once they raised enough money, they would send for their sons or brothers or uncles to help with the store and eventually help them set up their own grocery, he wrote. According to John Jung’s book, “Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton,” ev-ery town in the Delta, both in Mississippi and Arkansas, had a Chinese grocery eventually. Towns as small as Boyle and Tutwiler, both of which now have less than 2,000 people, once supported six Chinese groceries in the 1940s. Other cities in the Delta, like Clarksdale and Greenville, boasted even more. In 1960, Clarksdale had at least 14 Chinese groceries, and Greenville had over 40, according to the city directories.

Changing with the Times Now, there are only three grocer-ies in Clarksdale, and Greenville has fewer than 10. Of those that survive, some have evolved to compete against much larger supermarkets. According to local Chinese, Wong’s Food Land in Clarksdale began

as any other Chinese-owned grocery. Owner, Frank Wong, had a grocery on 6th Street. “But as the big markets came in, most small corner groceries went out of business,” said Kim Wong, former grocery owner and long-time resident of Clarksdale. Frank Wong saw his little gro-cery couldn’t make it against the Jitney Jungles and Krogers that were moving in, so he bought a large building on An-derson Boulevard over 30 years ago and built Wong’s Food Land, Wong said. Today, Wong’s operates as an independent super market, with aisles of produce, fruit, packaged foods and daily items. Tony and Monica Li, a middle-aged couple from Hong Kong, have owned and operated the store since 1995. It’s a quaint grocery with clean, polished floors and retro-style signs advertising the meat market and produce sections. It has all the trappings of a modern market with checkout lines and shopping carts. Clarksdale now has a Wal-Mart and Kroger, but Wong’s Foodland has kept up its business, even in the econom-ic recession. “I think we can still keep up with (the other stores),” Mrs. Li said. “We did not lay off, not cut hours (in the reces-sion).”

A New Niche While Wong’s Food Land has changed according to the times, a few have kept their original design but suc-ceed in serving a new role in the commu-nity. On Main Street in the tiny town of Louise, is Lee Hong Grocery. It’s one of the only stores that is still open in the town of less than 300 people. There used to be another Chinese grocery in town, but that’s been long gone, said Stan Lee, one of the current owners of the grocery.He and his brother, Tim, began operating Lee Hong after their father, Hoover Lee, retired about 15 years ago. The little store is stuffed with shelving and boxes stacked into the

CHINESE GROCERIES, 6

The aisles at Wong’s Foodland in Clarksdale are clean and fully stocked.

Tony and Monica Li in their Clarksdale store.

doorway. Like most other small grocer-ies, the store used to carry an ample selection of produce and meat, Lee said. The shop has changed, though. “Our business is like a conve-nience store now,” he said. Most of the customers stop in to buy small snacks, beers and cigarettes. On a Thursday afternoon in November, just one of several customers bought grocery items. They used to have regulars who filled up baskets of food; now Lee Hong has become the after-thought of super markets. “Sometimes we hear, ‘Put that back, we’re going to go to the super mar-ket,’” Hoover Lee said. Yet Lee Hong still fills a special niche in Louise. The nearest fully stocked gro-cery store is a good 20 minutes away, and there are no other stores in town for people in the surrounding communities to shop for small items, Stan Lee said.

Taking a Gamble Larger towns, like Greenville, have still managed to support a few small corner groceries. The Friendly Market in Green-ville has been open since 1975 under the Kwan family. The squat, beleaguered-looking building sits on the corner of S. Theobald and Purcell streets in one of the poorest areas of town. There are no shiny floors or nicely arranged produce, just a few sparsely filled shelves and coolers of drinks. Despite its modest appearance, the store has produced enough revenue to send the Kwan’s two sons to the local private school. However, the past five years have been particularly tough. Corner groceries provided a variety of services to the com-munity in the past that they no longer can, said Tim Kwan, the father. All stores used to sell on credit, only a few do now. Stores used to cash checks, but no longer. With every service they do pro-vide, they take a risk, he said. “This is just like gambling,” he said. “You place your bet and sometimes you’ll lose or make a gain.” CHINESE GROCERIES, 7

Stan Lee checks out a customer at Lee Hong Grocery. Customers these days usually only stop in for snacks and drinks.

The Kwan family: Tim and Cecilia and their two sons, Ryan (in red) and Sean (in blue).

When he decides to trust some-one with credit, he takes a chance on them coming back and paying their bill. Even when he opens his doors every morning at 8, he takes a chance. Shoplifting isn’t uncommon, nor is armed robbery, he said. Three of Kwan’s relatives – his father, an uncle and a cousin – have been killed while watch-ing their stores, he said. It helps that the family lives in the back of the store. With only a few steps, the family can watch over the store at all times. Most Chinese grocers lived the same way, in a separate but connect-ed area either behind or above the store. The store is an ever-present part of the Kwan’s household. Mrs. Kwan usually operates the cash register and escapes back to the house during slow times to prepare meals in the kitchen. When the boys are home, they take turns staying in the house and helping in the store. It’s a complete family affair, and there is a sense of heavy responsibility to work for the store, even for the boys. Ryan Kwan is the oldest of the two and is now a junior at Delta State University in Cleveland. Almost every weekend, he comes home to help with the store. He’s been working since he was 10 years old, he said, and has never

# of Chinese groceries in Cleveland 1955 - 1991

Year #* 1955 15 1962 20 1972 15 1981 10 1991 1 Source: Cleveland city directories*Numbers are approximate

received a paycheck. He gives them up to help pay the bills. After high school, he initially wanted to go to Mississippi State Uni-versity in Starkville, which is 2 ½ hours away compared to the 45 minutes Delta State is from Greenville. He wanted to be close to home if anything happened at the store, namely, an armed robbery. “I didn’t want to make that mis-take of losing my parents,” he said. After he graduates, he hopes to find a job other than with the grocery, but he is willing to come back and help his parents if they need him. The father does not want his boys to follow him in the grocery, though. There’s not much of a future in it, and it’s too dangerous, he said. The Friendly Market has supported the fam-ily and the boys’ schooling and served the community, but he doesn’t see a future in the grocery store business for the Chinese anymore. “I don’t think after this genera-tion,” he said “There won’t be anyone who wants to run a store.”

People in the neighborhood often hang out at the groceries. This man almost daily sits at the Friendly Market in Greenville.