Browsing Chinatown

St. Paul’s Chinatown isn’t of the polished, touristy variety celebrated by chambers of commerce in other cities. There are no novelty pagodas or souvenir key chains. What exists here is a multi-ethnic community that lives, shops, and eats within its borders. Every shop entrance is a mural of advertisements for practical services: tax preparation, real estate, life insurance, auto repair. Stores stock Thai parrot soap right next to hundred-pound bags of road salt. Try finding that in San Francisco.

From storefronts along Rice Street selling dim sum and Korean-style beef ribs to signs on University Avenue promising, “Men suit, short,” St. Paul’s Chinatown—or, more aptly, Southeast Asia-town—is bustling with color, activity, and commerce. Shoppers admire the Gaudi-esque public art piece Mosaic Chimney by Angela Carlson, in front of Somkeo Sengmavong’s on University, before popping inside for incense, a gold necklace, or lunch at the cafeteria. Around here, if you can’t find the perfect tea and a reasonably priced pot to go with it, you’re just not applying yourself.

The Sunrise Oriental Supermarket, located inside a University Avenue warehouse, is easily identified by its enormous sign proclaiming, “Asian Fabric.” A true community market, Sunrise is all things to all people. It offers a grocery, a pharmacy, a video counter, a portrait studio, an accountant’s office, an arcade, a small café, and a selection of very reasonably priced designer handbags. As advertised, the store is also stocked with a blinding array of fabrics—bolts of teal and red, silk and velvet—embossed, embroidered, and bejeweled. The walls are lined with traditional Hmong formalwear, and the sewing machines are always running.

Nearby sits Hmong ABC, which touts itself as the first and only Hmong bookstore in the world (the Hmong alphabet wasn’t developed until the 1950s, so, culturally speaking, Hmong books are pretty rad) and sells works by both local authors and Hmong writers worldwide. Besides books, the store has a smorgasbord of native crafts. Embroidered bedding is stacked floor to ceiling, along with dolls, jewelry, journals, and baskets from Thailand.

Walking into the simply named Market on nearby Como, it feels as though you’ve left the United States. Teens check out designer clothing, and each other. Children run screaming from one loud electronic toy display to the next. The arcade buzzes and pops. Old men and women socialize over tea, gossiping and discussing politics. Rows of tables are laden with dried mushrooms and fragrant twigs, icons and incense burners, jewelry and clothing. Children’s Mandarin-styled dresses hang next to neon green platform boots, and—as is always the case in these urban bazaars—there is a large table covered with industrial-looking bras and granny underpants. This must have been what New York’s Canal Street was like before it was overrun by fake Rolexes and I ™ New York

T-shirts: frenetic, dirty, and thoroughly amazing.

If you insist on spotless floors and airtight food packages, head to Double Dragon Foods, the Kowalski’s of Asian supermarkets, at the corner of Maryland and Rice. Here you will find moonfish, baby octopus, fresh lobsters, and six types of shrimp. The bok choy and the taro root are neatly stacked, and the baby limes are misted regularly. The housewares department stocks all the usual suspects, along with the not-so-usual red plastic shrines, electric dragon candles, and ginseng soaps.

Perfect places to take your time and browse, to slurp noodles and eavesdrop on conversations you don’t understand, University Avenue and Rice Street are no longer simply routes to somewhere else. The byways are now their own destination.—Sarah Lemanczyk


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