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Korean stores boom in Futian
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Song Yingwen
HUAFA Road South in Futian District has never been a hot destination in this shopping-mad city, but it has taken on a unique character, as Korean restaurants and grocery stores have sprouted up to cater to the many Koreans living in SZ.
“Whenever we want to ease our homesickness by having a big meal of Korean dishes, this is the first place that jumps into our mind,” Kim, a Korean working in a trading company in SZ, told Shenzhen Daily. And according to clerks at the groceries, Korean housewives in SZ often come by taxi to purchase their housewares and daily necessities.
It's not a long street, but it is home to six Korean restaurants, two grocery stores selling Korean products and one Korean coffee shop, almost half the Korean establishments in SZ. Interestingly, most of them have opened in the past four months or so, some having moved from other parts of the city.
“This place has become known among Koreans as the centre of Korean restaurants, so we decided to open our grocery store here. We are doing well, as lots of Koreans come by,”one of the grocery store staffers said.
Like their owners, these grocery stores and restaurants could pass for Chinese, at least on the outside. But walking into the stores seems almost like stepping into Seoul.
All the goods, from cosmetics to kitchen utilities, are imported from Korea, prices and menus are marked in Korean, customers are greeted in Korean and you can pay your bill either in Korean won or renminbi. In some stores and restaurants, not a single Chinese word can be found.
“Since most of our customers are Korean and few local people visit our store, we find it unnecessary to put up signs in Chinese,”a young lady who works in a grocery store said.
But Chinese people can still order food or purchase snacks, since all the clerks speak fluent Chinese as well as Korean. “We are Korean-Chinese. Most of us spent our days in Northeast China before coming to SZ. Korean is our language of daily use as much as Chinese,” one of the clerks told me.
Owners of the stores, who hail from either Korea or Northeast China, said they were attracted to Shenzhen for its dynamic economy. “More and more Korean people are doing business here and we provide services to these people to meet their daily needs,” Piao, one of the owners said.
This little corner of Korea seems set to expand, with a hairdresser's and another grocery store expected to open in the next month. “Huafa Road South will become a street for Korean stores in less than a half year,” the owners predicted.
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