[HN Gopher] The Lure of H Mart, Where the Shelves Can Seem as Wi...
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The Lure of H Mart, Where the Shelves Can Seem as Wide as Asia
Author : jbredeche
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-05-12 17:48 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This article is intriguing to me, because I live near an H
| Mart... had never been in it, and had no idea what it was. I
| assumed it was just like... a generic off brand grocery store.
|
| I learned something new today!
| taurath wrote:
| I buy all my produce and a lot of meat at asian grocery stores.
| Way better selection of greens, cuts of meat, etc, and tends to
| be cheaper especially for produce.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| You should go checkout one!
| v77 wrote:
| Reading this yesterday I was impressed a grocery chain managed to
| get a pure propo piece into the NY Times. Well done, H Mart PR.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| They plugged some ATL chefs in there so I'll allow it.
| mlex wrote:
| Love H Mart and highly suggest 99 Ranch as the large Chinese
| equivalent in California.
| prepend wrote:
| HMart has the most fresh produce and it's prices are low because
| it's not organic. I was trying to eat a lot of greens and found
| that most stores have "tourist greens" with small servings in big
| plastic tubs.
|
| Even Whole Foods was hard to buy large amounts of spinach. Their
| green produce is mostly processed and wrapped in plastic and $5
| for what's $.75 per bunch at HMart.
| llsf wrote:
| Talking about plastic... I just ventured for the first time 2
| weeks ago, in an H Mart. The first impression was "what a lot
| of plastic!".
|
| The packaging is innovative, bright and smart. But that is a
| lot of packaging and plastic in general, sometimes for little
| product. We just ate last night one of their ramen, and beside
| the outer plastic wrapping, it had a styrofoam plate inside for
| which the only purpose was to hold two other internal plastic
| bags of noodles, and multiple plastic bags of sauce, all
| individually wrapped.
|
| While the fresh products section was impressive and definitely
| a plus for me. All the other aisles were overwhelmingly full of
| individually wrapped in plastic products, from top to bottom.
| Hopefully we could do better here.
| clairity wrote:
| i end up going too often to the large chain groceries for
| convenience, which contradicts my own principle of supporting
| small-/mid-sized businesses foremost (bad me). but ethnic
| groceries (plus trader joes) are slowly becoming more and more
| of my grocery pie, from korean places like h mart, to jons
| (hispanic/latino), mitsuwa (japanese), india sweets & spices,
| 99 ranch (chinese), bangkok market, and seafood city
| (filipino). i love the great array of ethnic, especially asian,
| groceries available in LA. it's wonderful!
| triceratops wrote:
| How in the heck is Patel Brothers in competition with 99 Ranch or
| H Mart? They're completely different markets.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| So there's some interesting history on the founding of H Mart
| that doesn't exist in English. The founder of H Mart is the child
| of a former secretary of former president Chun Doo-hwan, who is
| believed to have laundered a bunch of money from the Korean
| government. It's widely believed that some of the money was used
| to start H Mart, and my Korean wife is cautious about patronizing
| it because of that.
|
| I wish I could provide English sources, but they only exist in
| Korean.
| rat87 wrote:
| not originally in English but here's a news? story someone
| translated
|
| https://www.bostonkorea.com/news.php?code=en&mode=view&num=1...
| arielweisberg wrote:
| H-Mart is cool. Food court has a lot of interesting inexpensive
| food.
| datameta wrote:
| I visited one with my partner and a few friends - luckily they
| were on a timetable or we would have been lost in there for eons.
| My favorite part of the haul was frozen durian, some great earthy
| oolong, and 8 pommelos.
|
| This article prompted me to discover that there are also several
| H Marts within NYC!
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Also for some reason, they're the only large grocer I can find
| that carries guava.
| datameta wrote:
| The breadth and depth of the fresh produce section definitely
| surprised me.
| notyourday wrote:
| If you are in Brooklyn/Queens, Food Bazaar carries it.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I used to live across the street from a Food Bazaar. Moved
| last year to a different area in Brooklyn and now there's
| no Food Bazaar or H Mart within a reasonable distance of
| me. CTown just doesn't compare.
| leephillips wrote:
| I have a visceral hatred of supermarkets. But H Mart is
| different. I actually like going there. It also seems like a kind
| of logistic miracle. How do they keep such a dizzying variety of
| stuff on the shelves, such a huge selection of fresh produce,
| meat, and fish?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I'm not sure where in the US I'll end up living in these next
| couple years, but it will have to be a place with H Mart nearby.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| HMart's great. Good food court with a variety of cusines. Nice
| prepackaged take home food. Tons of free samples pre-covid. Huge
| section of dumplings. Lots of niche asian things you have trouble
| finding elsewhere, like dashi and what not. Check it out if you
| have one nearby. To those unfamiliar with asian cuisines, try
| grabbing some kimbap (~korean sushi), korean bbq sauce, dashi
| (~umami soup base), hot sesame oil, gochujang paste, a fuck ton
| of noodles, etc.
|
| This article puts a large emphasis on race relations but honestly
| I think the anti-asian voice is very small. Certainly an order of
| magnitude smaller than what arabs a decade prior. Casually
| looking up stats on the FBI hate crime database (2019
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/tables/table...),
| asian hate crimes are an order magnitude less than black/african
| american hate crimes. I've seen stats suggestings a 100%+
| increase in rates for asian americans in the past year, but that
| still puts it at a relatively lower number than other groups.
|
| Idk. As an aggressively liberal asian american living in a
| heavily blue area full of BLM and other progressive movements,
| this one doesn't resonate with me as the cultural emergency it's
| being shaped as. This could be local bias, but I don't believe
| the sentiment towards asians for the median, or even 90th
| percentile individual has changed that much. I don't know if I
| believe the local experience of the median asian has changed all
| that much either.
|
| As a non-chinese, I'm also annoyed at the lack of differentiation
| between Asian and Chinese- and then further from Chinese descent
| vs. CCP supporter. If there is any growing anti asian sentiment,
| it's almost entirely due to the actions of the CCP. If trends
| continue in this direction, I foresee a push to stop using the
| term Asian. Many (most?) Asian cultures consider the CCP to be a
| hostile nation and likely won't tolerate being lumped in with
| them.
| gruez wrote:
| >Casually looking up stats on the FBI hate crime database (2019
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-
| pages/tables/table...), asian hate crimes are an order
| magnitude less than black/african american hate crimes.
|
| Isn't that expected because there's an order of magnitude less
| asians? Not to mention that the people targeted with this wave
| of violence are probably east asians which are a subset of all
| asians.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| This is just spitballing, but I would think the number of
| hate crime committers is far more important than the number
| of potential hate crime victims. There's likely to be far
| more potential victims than actual victims in any given
| locale. Of course there's going to be some confounding
| effects here.
|
| edit: that is, adding one violent white nationalist will
| increase anti asian violence far more than adding one asian
| person.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Isn't that expected because there's an order of magnitude
| less asians?
|
| Per the article, Asian-Americans are 7% of this country. I
| leave as an exercise what an order-of-magnitude would imply
| here.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| An acquaintance of mine mentioned that in college, she was
| involved in a college group that was trying to organize against
| anti-Asian violence, and there ended up being so little of it
| that they had to reorient to being a volunteer organization.
|
| I'm also pretty liberal, but it feels like the NYT has decided
| it's their role to litigate the culture war. I really don't
| love it. Being driven to substack a la Taibbi and Greenwald,
| because it's not like going and reading Breitbart or whatever
| is going to give me better info.
| User23 wrote:
| I lean traditional[1], not Conservative (TM), and I find
| Breitbart just as insufferable as MSNBC or CNN. They're all
| using the same formula of eliciting emotional responses and
| using them to assign and cement opinions to their victims.
|
| I don't agree with their political beliefs, but I find Taibbi
| and Greenwald readable. It's hard to put a finger on what it
| is exactly, but you can tell they have far more intellectual
| respect for their readers than the mainstream propagandists
| do.
|
| [1] Think Chesterton's Fence applied to politics.
| leephillips wrote:
| "Think Chesterton's Fence applied to politics."
|
| I like this. I may have to adapt this somehow. "Where do
| you stand on...." "I'm on the fence--the Chesterton fence."
| [deleted]
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| As another non-Chinese Asian, really? You don't want to be
| lumped in with the Chinese so it's easier to know who the "bad
| ones" are?
|
| I hate this rhetoric. Whenever a hate crime occurs, it's so
| common to hear "they didn't deserve that, they're not even
| Chinese!". As though being Chinese would make it ok.
|
| It's easy to forget that 3 decades ago, people were saying the
| same thing about Japan as they're saying about China now. The
| people who want to hate Asians _will_ find a reason.
| xbar wrote:
| No one deserves racial discrimination or hatred.
|
| Politically, I am sympathetic to anyone would want to put as
| much distance between themselves and the CCP, Chinese or not.
| It is hard to speak about the CCP without saying "the
| Chinese" and immediately sounding racist when the comment has
| nothing to do with race. That is the problem with overloaded
| terms.
|
| Also, no one was saying things about Japan that they are
| saying about the CCP. There was great fear about the economic
| power of Japan. In terms of human rights and influence and
| military and pollution and human rights, the narrative was
| completely different.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| > Politically, I am sympathetic to anyone would want to put
| as much distance between themselves and the CCP, Chinese or
| not.
|
| Okay, but if how close I am to the CCP is seen as a
| function of how I look and where I'm from, then what the
| fuck am I supposed to do? Walk around in white-face with a
| big American flag and tell people I'm from Kansas?
|
| The problem is that people are inferring political beliefs
| from how people look or their race or their nationality.
|
| Regarding Japan, the narrative was different, but the
| sentiments were similar. Vincent Chin was murdered for
| being Japanese (although he was Chinese) and his murderers
| only got a $3000 fine.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| And those assholes can fuck off. But are they really that
| numerous? Are they driving the cultural narrative? I
| think no, and in the areas where this is the case, I
| think it's probably more of a white vs. not white thing
| which is a whole other bag of worms.
| elefanten wrote:
| This is an egregious strawman of gp's comment. Gp plainly
| specified that they mean to distinguish between people of
| Chinese descent and CCP supporters. And there's really no
| other way to play it if you oppose the CCP's behavior and
| vision of international order.
|
| The Japan example is ultimately a bad comparison. On the
| American side, it was much more transitory and contained
| narrative. On the counterparty side, the CCP is being much
| more openly hostile and normalizing atrocious, anachronistic
| state behavior.
|
| Edit to add: Your closing attitude betrays a lot. If you are
| convinced in advance that American society writ large is
| determined to hate Asians, that is what you will contort your
| view to see. Further telling you ignored the data gp
| presented.
| [deleted]
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| > Gp plainly specified that they mean to distinguish
| between people of Chinese descent and CCP supporters.
|
| No, they plainly specified that they wanted to distinguish
| between other Asians and Chinese, and of the Chinese
| between CCP and non-CCP supporters. But in another comment
| they note that the majority of Chinese are CCP supporters
| anyway.
|
| Let me ask, what do you think the end effect of this
| "racial distinguishing" is? What do we do once we've
| identified the "problematic ones"? How would such a system
| be implemented? Anyone could just claim to be non-
| Chinese/CCP supporters. Perhaps, a tattoo?
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Obviously its by not assuming someone is a CCP supporter
| unless they voice this opinion. I did not say anything to
| the effect of harm or violence against people who support
| the CCP. But I think a stronger level of national comfort
| discussing the CCP as a hostile state would be
| beneficial.
|
| My thesis is this: a growing population of Americans
| believe the CCP is hostile. A very small minority of
| Americans are violent and act on appearance alone. A band
| of thugs should not get to set the tone that America is
| becoming racist against Asians. The reality is that a
| nation state is growing in moral and geopolitical
| transgressions, and that is what people are upset about.
|
| You don't need to profile anyone. But if someone says "I
| hate the CCP" and harasses a Korean person. That person
| is awful, but it doesn't make this a collective struggle.
|
| The presence of racists does not define a cultural
| consensus that hatred of asians is growing. If there's a
| 100% in hate crimes against asians, and a 10000% person
| increase in negative feelings towards the CCP, I
| guarantee you, nobody will feel more hostile towards the
| CCP that non-CCP aligned asians.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| It might be interesting to compare the treatment of Italian-
| Americans and German-Americans to Japanese-Americans in WW1
| and WW2. Relatively few Italian and German-Americans were
| interned in comparison. Meanwhile, the hostility towards
| Japanese-Americans spilled over to Chinese-Americans despite
| China being invaded and allied with the US, leading to
| Chinese-Americans having to explicitly distinguish their
| racial identity while out in public as here:
| https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/chinese-americans-during-
| ww...
|
| The fact of the matter is, being a visible ethnic minority
| come with challenges in addition to being just an ethnic
| minority. If you are visually similar to the ethnic target of
| the day, whether or not you actually have links with them,
| you automatically get hit as collateral damage whether you
| like it or not. German and Italian Americans could blend in
| and stay out of the spotlight during the world wars.
| Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian Americans could not and
| still cannot, and their visual appearance forces them to
| share the same spotlight. No matter how varied the Asian
| experience may be, the Pan-Asian identity will continue to
| exist because identity is not just a product what you think
| of yourself, but what others think of you and how they
| interact with you.
| xbar wrote:
| Agree: multiple visually similar ethnic minorities probably
| experience "spillover" racial hatred when any of them is
| does. Internment is a good example.
|
| Disagree: German and Italian Americans experienced (and
| experience) ongoing racial prejudice. Cultural differences
| are very easy to spot and target for discrimination even
| when racial body features are not.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That situation is more complex than you imply. My German
| immigrant ancestors, for example, survived anti-German
| sentiment during and after the war by denying their
| heritage and giving up things like the communal making of
| barrels of sauerkraut, making Lumberger cheese, and of
| course most of all: speaking German. So they survived okay,
| but only with their culture completely assimilated.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| The difference for visible ethnic minorities though is
| that even with your culture completely assimilated, you
| cannot hide your racial appearance and people will still
| treat you based on it. Plenty of Asian-Americans are 2+
| generations in America little to no connection with their
| language and culture, completely assimilated as you say.
| They're still targeted just because of their appearance,
| assimilation does nothing to help protect them. For
| German and Italian Americans, at least assimilation has
| the intended effect.
|
| I suspect there's probably some anger behind assimilating
| and tossing away cultural roots and identity only to find
| out it was absolutely pointless that's helping to drive
| the upsurge in recent Asian-American movements.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| This has to be low IQ bait.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| My German ancestor had a different experience. Perhaps he
| had to do this for a while after first arriving in
| Canada, but by the time I was born he was a part of a
| rich and thriving German community in the town I grew up
| in. I have many good memories of going to events at the
| German club growing up, singing German christmas carols
| in December, all of that stuff.
|
| I guess it depends on the region.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| >As another non-Chinese Asian, really? You don't want to be
| lumped in with the Chinese so it's easier to know who the
| "bad ones" are?
|
| > I hate this rhetoric. Whenever a hate crime occurs, it's so
| common to hear "they didn't deserve that, they're not even
| Chinese!". As though being Chinese would make it ok.
|
| I don't condone hate crimes, and I don't hold any hostility
| to people of Chinese descent. But the CCP is a hostile
| nation, which in my opinion is engaging in liberal cyber
| warfare against western countries, committing genocide within
| its borders, and aggressively expanding its geopolitical
| influence across the globe. I think the CCP is evil. And yes,
| the United States government is full of bad actors as well,
| but I think the CCP is much worse and much more dystopian.
|
| The converse of saying Muslims aren't accountable for the
| acts of Muslim extremists, is saying that supporters of
| Muslim extremists are accountable. Which really shouldn't be
| a controversial statement. You put "bad ones" in quotes to
| imply that there are no bad ones. I don't agree. A difficult
| conversation here is that while the majority of Muslims were
| not violent extremists, the majority of Chinese citizens are
| CCP supporters. It isn't a fringe belief, even among those
| living outside of China.
|
| That doesn't justifying profiling someone based on appearance
| or committing a hate crime either way, but to put it bluntly,
| if someone says they support the CCP, I think they support a
| hostile enemy nation, on some spectrum of
| naivety/indifference to clarity/purpose, not unlike how I
| would respond to hearing someone is in the KKK. Most are
| probably just underinformed or misinformed, but its a
| dangerous state.
|
| Forget brutish idiots who just hate squinty eyes. Yes,
| they're just assholes. Perception of China as an enemy nation
| is growing, and as a reactionary force, many people are
| calling this a racist movement because they want their
| Chinese friends and neighbors to feel comfortable in this
| country. I too have many Chinese friends. But your cultural
| heritage and ethnic origin are distinct from your government
| and geopolitical beliefs. It may require difficult
| conversations, and it may not lead to amicable outcomes, but
| I hope the national dialogue can sort out this nuance.
|
| Chinese culture is awesome.
|
| > It's easy to forget that 3 decades ago, people were saying
| the same thing about Japan as they're saying about China now.
|
| 3 decades ago? Like in the 80s? I know Japan was seen as a
| rising economic power, but I don't think the perception was
| similar to that of China today, which is seen as a potential
| military threat among other things. I'm not especially well
| versed here though.
| throwaway00127 wrote:
| Is this satire? Or is this some copypasta that I haven't been
| exposed to yet?
| jdlyga wrote:
| Most Americans, and Europeans too, really don't know much about
| China. The picture you get painted by only reading news
| articles is not representative of what real life is actually
| like over there. China is not a third world country, and the
| CCP is not a North Korean style military dictatorship. It's
| really just a normal place, and visiting Shanghai or Hangzhou
| just feels like you're in US cities. You don't have to like the
| CCP to enjoy China and respect its people.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > You don't have to like the CCP to enjoy China and respect
| its people.
|
| This is the crux of it though. You don't need to like the CCP
| to enjoy China and its people. But you don't need to dislike
| China and its people in order to consider the CCP a hostile,
| morally evil state.
|
| Rebranding the latter as racism is damaging.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Visiting China's richest cities (like Shanghai or Hangzhou)
| will also give one a biased view of what China is like, just
| less so than being completely uninformed. For the good and
| the bad, Beijing is much more representative, or head out to
| the countryside in the poorer provinces.
| yorwba wrote:
| Even Shanghai has sparsely populated areas mostly used for
| agriculture. Someone just visiting the city is unlikely to
| ever end up there, though.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, but I don't think a 5 star hotel in Zhizhun (where
| Microsoft Shanghai's office is located) is going to give
| you an idea of what real China is like.
| yorwba wrote:
| Do you mean the Zizhu (Zi Zhu ) technology park? I used
| to live in the vicinity and took a lot of long walks, so
| I know there's quite a lot of agricultural land south and
| east of there. If you follow Dongchuan Road to the
| eastern end it already looks pretty rural, and randomly
| taking smaller roads from there in a southeasterly
| direction should lead you to your first rice field soon.
| That's less than 5 km away from the Microsoft campus.
|
| However, I don't expect the kind of person who stays at a
| 5-star hotel to spend much time randomly exploring their
| surroundings.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Your last paragraph I get it but I think that's also a sign of
| racism? Like say I'm Russian because I kinda am, no one holds
| me accountable for Putin's actions. The geopolitical
| positioning of Russia's regime at any given moment doesn't
| affect how safe I feel in my current country, doesn't affect
| how strangers feel about me.
|
| The fact that it does for some chinese-americans and other
| asians.... I'm not sure exactly what it says but there is
| something there and I don't think it's benign.
| numpad0 wrote:
| To me the GP look like just a thinly veiled "F-word
| [nationality] [noun]s can go home but some with [judgmental
| criteria] are good"... Rivalry is strong among East Asian
| countries. It probably isn't causing cognitive dissonance in
| GP for using racist narratives against Asian categories while
| identifying as an Asian.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I don't suppose the irony is lost upon you that you're
| using a stereotype of Asians to justify asserting that I'm
| racist. Consider a good faith interpretation in which I
| don't think anyone needs to good home because I didn't say
| anything like that.
|
| Assuming you're a liberal American, how do you feel about
| conservative media saying the country needs to be protected
| from anti-american sentiment in europe for trump being an
| idiot some time ago? Is it possible you thought "Actually I
| dislike trump too, he's not my president, and I shouldn't
| be held accountable for him?" Do you accept generalizations
| about Americans using subsets that you find abhorrent? Have
| you never said "there's large differences between the red
| and blue states, it's not all like that"?
|
| I certainly said things like that a lot, and at the end of
| the day, I think the crimes against humanity being
| committed by the CCP are worse than those of trump.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Of course, but there needs to be a way to say, for example,
| Russia is a hostile state without being seen as prejudiced
| against people of Russian descent.
|
| If someone says anti-asian ideals are on the rise, I think
| it's important to unpack that to say it is caused primarily
| by the ccp. Many people are anti-ccp but not anti-asian,
| likely including, a majority of non-chinese southeast asians.
| Having that conversation is how you remove vague racist
| sentiments and encourage a focus on actual political
| entities.
|
| Yes, people often fail and just use visual cues. But
| historically there have been differences. E.g. the original
| american views on japan were that of a refined civilization
| and sort of honorary white Asian vs. the chinese, which is
| all sorts of fucked up, but serves to highlight that even
| dumbass racially driven views can have nuance.
| leephillips wrote:
| The idiotic practice of lumping Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian
| people together as "Asians", as if the term had any kind of
| cultural relevance, is mainly a tic of journalists. For the
| most part, normal people don't talk or think this way.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Asia is a big continent, and often Pacific Islanders are also
| thrown in with the jumbo term. Africans probably also feel
| weird when we bucket everyone from their continent under a
| single African label.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| It is in fact "Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage
| Month" in the US right now. So go ahead and celebrate with
| some dumplings and a side of poi?
|
| African as a label becomes even stranger when mixed with
| American. African-American is usually used as a synonym for
| Black American, despite not all Africans being Black. An
| Egyptian-American likely would not be called African-
| American.
|
| We use words weirdly!
| elthran wrote:
| Weirdly for sure - referring to Charlize Theron as
| "African-American" always sound odd, even if it is
| technically correct
| leephillips wrote:
| I'd love to annoy or perplex people by doing this.
| Unfortunately, her name never seems to come up in
| conversation.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| There's always Elon Musk, noted African-American
| businessman.
| leephillips wrote:
| It's worse than that. I've heard black Africans living in
| Africa, who have never been to any country in the
| Americas, referred to as "African American" by people who
| think--well, who knows what they think? Americans are
| insane when it comes to "race".
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| At some point in time, some portion of popular culture
| deemed "black" as a descriptor of people with certain
| skin tones and cultural background in the US was
| derogative and pushed for switching to "African
| American", even though it can cause confusion.
| coldcode wrote:
| Russia is also in Asia, but you rarely hear them called
| Asians. Indians are rarely lumped in either. Lumping
| dissimilar peoples together never made much sense to me -
| even Continents are arbitrary divisions.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There are some Russians that look really Mongolian (and
| probably are close to Mongolian ethnically), and of
| course pass for East Asians. There is a lot of land
| between Novosibirsk and Vladivostok.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Looking at it on a map can be deceiving though. About 80%
| of Russia is in Asia, but about 80% of Russia's
| population lives in European Russia.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, people refer to descendants of East Asia
| (China/Korea/Japan/similar looking) by Asian. In the UK,
| Asian means descendants of South Asia
| (Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Nepali).
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Here's my strange anecdote:
|
| My girlfriend's mom is Cambodian with Chinese ancestry. One
| time she was describing a pickled cabbage preparation from
| her home village, and I responded with "oh, so kind of like
| Korean kimchi?" and her response was "yeah, but Asian-style."
|
| In her mind, "Asia" specifically means China, Vietnam,
| Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Thailand.
| [deleted]
| envy2 wrote:
| I find it rather odd that you can describe yourself as
| "aggressively liberal" and then go on to defend discrimination
| against an entire ethnic group because of one government's
| admittedly problematic actions.
|
| The CCP does not inherently represent Chinese people (either
| from the PRC or certainly ethnic Chinese broadly), any more
| than the Republican Party represented all Americans simply by
| virtue of being in control of Congress and the Presidency.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I find that a bad faith interpretation of the following
| quote:
|
| > As a non-chinese, I'm also annoyed at the lack of
| differentiation between Asian and Chinese- and then further
| from Chinese descent vs. CCP supporter.
|
| But to further exemplify. If objectively evil aliens who
| looked just like white dudes with early male balding
| appeared, and people started attacking bald people. I think
| bald people would be frustrated if the cultural narrative
| asserted on them was "Anti-bald hatred" and that all bald
| entities should work together here, including the evil
| aliens. The problem might just be that a subset of bald
| people are bad, and some assholes are particularly degenerate
| in their willingness to group them together. Bald people
| would reject being called the same as the evil aliens just
| because they're visually similar. They're not the problem and
| they shouldn't have to put up with this.
|
| People hate the aliens, and a subset of people are just
| jerks. Unlike past controversies like anti Muslim and anti
| Black sentiments, anti-CCP isn't unsubstantiated. It's a non
| trivial threat. Some racist, violent thugs shouldn't get to
| control the cultural narrative of what's going on. If I
| oppose X, hell no am I going accept a movement that says that
| both I am equivalent to X, and that opposition to X is
| unfounded.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I have questioned the narrative of rising anti-Asian hate in
| the US ever since I read an HN-linked editorial on the subject
| in a major American newspaper by an Asian-American, and he
| included supposed microaggressions in the count of hateful
| actions against Asians. For example, noticing that someone has
| a relatively uncommon surname in North America (like Nguyen)
| and asking if that someone was related to someone else they
| knew with the same surname, was, according to him,
| microaggressive. This felt like such a reach made in order to
| claim there was an emergency going on.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| It depends on definitions. Hate crimes against asians are
| increasing. They're still relatively rare. Are more people
| becoming anti-asian? Or are the usual suspects just being
| more vocal in the last gasps of trumpism? Are we able to
| differentiate anti-asian hate from hostility towards the CCP?
| hpkuarg wrote:
| I think that counts as a microaggression, in that it's a
| papercut to someone that builds up over time that a member of
| the majority culture would not experience (you wouldn't ask a
| John Smith if they're related to some other Smith). Isn't
| that what microaggressions are? Something that by itself is
| innocuous, but when it's the 20th time in a week you're asked
| the question, it starts being annoying.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Yet people of the dominant race in the USA with an uncommon
| surname get asked the same questions, so viewing this as
| specifically anti-Asian sentiment is, as I said, a reach.
| Annoying behavior is not necessarily intentionally racist
| behavior or to be included in a supposedly rising incidence
| of what is specifically labeled "hate".
| gsjjsjsbsb wrote:
| The point of a microaggression is that it's part of the
| constant pressure of not being part of the "dominant
| race". You can't do a microaggression to a white person
| because there's no hierarchy where you're above them to
| reassert.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| This is false. The white person may be a member of an
| ethnicity seen as non-dominant. For example, his surname
| is unusual because it is typical of Muslim peoples but
| not for historically Christian whites, as for many
| immigrants to the USA from the former Yugoslavia or
| Albania. Yet unless the person asking about the surname
| is intentionally targeting that ethnicity, the behavior
| cannot reasonably be called anti-Muslim racism, let alone
| used as proof of a rising incidence of what is
| specifically termed "hate".
| klmadfejno wrote:
| The problem with Nguyen is that while among white people,
| it's an uncommon name, among other populations it's
| INCREDIBLY COMMON, which isn't common knowledge. I think
| this a pretty negligible example though. Nowhere near as
| egregious as wondering if people are related because
| they're just the same race.
|
| Hierarchy I don't believe is the right term. The
| homogeniety of norms is what matter. White women have
| surely encountered microaggressions. Non-normative white
| men as well. Honestly everybody differs from the norm in
| some way. The magnitude and frequency are what make it
| matter.
|
| Someone thinking your last name implies kinship is
| whatever. Someone thinking you're a secretary because
| you're a black woman when you're the CEO is a big big
| problem.
| floren wrote:
| People mispronounce my last name _constantly_. I don 't
| think I've ever heard anyone say it right the first time,
| and pretty often they say it wrong even after I correct
| them. Should this be considered a microaggression? Not a
| rhetorical question, but an honest inquiry from someone who
| doesn't tend to think in terms of
| aggressions/microaggressions
| yawnxyz wrote:
| The Canadian equivalent is T&T Supermarket and it's just as
| awesome as H Mart.
|
| Though I'm in Atlanta and Buford Highway Farmer's Market is still
| superior...
| lightfooted wrote:
| Yeah love that you mentioned T&T. It's more Chinese rather than
| Korean focused though. I think they really cleaned things up
| when Loblaws bought them. They've got some really nice stores
| (clean, spacious and well-lit) in Markham.
| citrusybread wrote:
| There's also Adonis as the Lebanese equivalent, in ON/QC at
| least.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| There is at least one H mart in Canada: in Vancouver. Great
| place to get cheap food down town.
| refurb wrote:
| "As wide as Asia"? Is that some colloquialism I'm not aware of?
| the_optimist wrote:
| No. Searching for this phrase reveals that it is not used
| outside of this article, except in a literal context (e.g.
| "across Asia"). It is a strange and inept description, and the
| NYT would likely shadow-edit it if someone were to raise the
| question of what Asia has to do with being wide.
| triceratops wrote:
| Asia's pretty wide.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Yes. Now you know
| Perolan wrote:
| Just normal hyperbole. It's a big store with tons of stuff jam
| packed on every shelf
| eplanit wrote:
| My wife and I went to one last week. The seafood and meat
| departments were impressive, and the rice selection is great
| -- but it didn't wow us like this article hypes. We still
| think 99 Ranch is a better Asian grocery store. That was our
| first impression, anyway.
| loudmax wrote:
| The quality of grocery stores can vary within the same
| chain. My wife and I usually shop at the Ranch 99 that's
| local to us, but there's another one about 40 minutes away
| that has a better selection. Or at least, a slightly
| _different_ selection. We also shop at H-Mart, Lotte and
| Great Wall. Each of those tends to have at least a few
| items we like that the others don 't typically stock.
| acwan93 wrote:
| I thought 99 Ranch would be the grocer that "sparked an
| Asian American revolution" as the article suggests. 99
| Ranch started expanding back in the 80s and had a lot of
| what the author mentioned.
| boynamedsue wrote:
| Love HMart for the selection.
|
| Hate HMart for the customer service. Forget about getting help
| with anything while in there.
|
| I routinely experience unhelpful, uncaring employees that make
| shopping at HMart completely frustrating.
| dqv wrote:
| I love their customer service. Not once have I have I been
| asked how I'm doing at check out. I guess some people expect it
| but I find the obligation to have small talk annoying.
| clairity wrote:
| ha, i think that's a weird cultural quirk with asian groceries
| in general. you're expected to know what you want, acquire it
| efficiently, and then get out quickly. that's in contrast to
| other types of asian stores, where the salesfolk follow you
| around and talk up everything you touch as if it were the
| smartest choice you could have possibly made (go you!).
| treyfitty wrote:
| I've been to multiple H Marts, mostly in or near urban areas
| (NYC). I absolutely HATE going to H Mart because it's always
| crowded, and the aisles are too narrow to have someone navigate
| through if there is another person in that same aisle. Is this
| the norm for H Marts elsewhere?
| etrautmann wrote:
| This is true of all grocery stores in NYC..
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| Nah go to the Jersey H-marts if you can, they're pretty big.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The ones out in east Queens and Nassau are wide open
| creaghpatr wrote:
| >From the beginning, it was important to her that the stores were
| clean, modern and easy to navigate, to defy the stereotype of
| Asian groceries as grimy and run-down.
|
| >To be welcoming to non-Koreans, H Mart puts up signs in English.
| At the same time, the younger Mr. Kwon said, "We don't want to be
| the gentrified store." So while some non-Asians recoil from the
| tanks of lobsters, the Kwons are committed to offering live
| seafood.
|
| I grew up in Georgia and H Mart definitely changed the game with
| this strategy. They make it very accessible for someone who is
| unfamiliar with international grocery stores to come in and
| explore without feeling culturally intrusive. I speculate that H
| Mart and their food courts were the gateway drug to Korean food
| becoming a huge cuisine in Metro Atlanta as they were the first
| big brand in the game that I became aware of.
|
| Edit: Also shout-out to Chai Pani, definitely hit that place up
| if you are ever in Decatur.
| dpeck wrote:
| Thumbs up for Chai Pani, I was really sad when they
| discontinued their packaged/frozen food for home a few months
| ago, was great to have their curries in the freezer and ready
| to go in the same amount of time it took to cook some rice.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| The part about live seafood is strange. Major grocery stores
| have live lobsters all the time.
| ska wrote:
| Live fish tanks, less so.
| asiachick wrote:
| How does H-Mart compare to Ranch 99? I've never thought of
| Ranch 99 as a "grimy and run-down". They're huge and clean and
| brightly lit.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| H-Mart is more Korean focused, whereas Ranch 99 is more
| Chinese.
| giaour wrote:
| H-Mart is a bit upmarket from Ranch 99, but I think they both
| have similar welcoming-to-everyone vibes.
| mc32 wrote:
| >"without feeling culturally intrusive"?
|
| What does that mean? When I'm overseas and I go to a "Western"
| supermarket that has western goods/brands that are very
| atypical to that in local supermarkets, the locals that shop
| there I am absolutely sure, don't feel they are being
| "culturally intrusive". The supermarket is there to SELL...
| They don't give a rats ass who comes in to make a purchase and
| I, as a western visitor, also did not see it as "cultural
| intrusion" when locals shop in these western supermarkets. The
| idea never entered my mind.
|
| I like H Mart, by the way and I like the Japanese supers too.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| If you go to an "old-school" Asian grocer, the shelves are
| packed to the rafters, there's essentially no signage in
| English, and you can't help but feel like you're getting in
| the way of the regulars. This feels much less welcoming,
| while an H Mart style place that's laid out and brightly lit
| like a "regular" supermarket is much more conducive to
| exploration.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| " you can't help but feel like you're getting in the way of
| the regulars."
|
| I usually get treated as a funny curiosity in Thai and
| Indian stores. The feeling of being intrusive or in the way
| is self imposed. I don't get annoyed at Asian people in
| Western stores either.
| chestertn wrote:
| It surprises me how lenient the US is about American
| business not providing English signage. Wouldn't this be
| considered a form of discrimination? I'm sure that if a
| German grocery store were to open in Paris with only German
| signage there would be an outrage.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| The long hand of the market takes care of this. If you
| want to hire only people that speak French and hang up
| only signage in French in a city with 99.9% English
| speakers, there are dozens of middle men with their hand
| out eager to help you get set up. Staying open is your
| business not theirs.
| dogsgobork wrote:
| The US doesn't have an official language, nothing
| preventing anyone from running a store using only Lojban
| if they wanted.
| ska wrote:
| > US is about American business not providing English
| signage.
|
| Why would they? English doesn't have a legally protected
| status.
| mc32 wrote:
| I don't know. You're just another shopper to them. The
| shopkeeper wants turnover, no matter who you are. Sure,
| they will look out for shoplifters more than regular
| supermarkets because their margins are even thinner, but if
| you become recognizable (patronizing semi regularly) no one
| will care. They may at first have some slight trepidation
| about returns (you buying something not knowing what it
| is), but if you become even semi regular, you're just
| another shopper.
|
| I fee like this is a bit of weird "Othering" but dressed up
| in some weird sense of correctness.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I fee like this is a bit of weird "Othering" but
| dressed up in some weird sense of correctness._
|
| Respectfully, you may be overthinking it. If you take it
| at face value, this is simply a business designing their
| retail experience with new customers in mind.
|
| This isn't a "political correctness" thing. People new to
| serious comic book stores, stone and gravel retailers,
| etc. can easily feel overwhelmed and a bit lost in the
| same way.
| mc32 wrote:
| I get the H Mart strategy. What I don't quite understand
| is the feeling of "cultural intrusion".
|
| Ok I can feel cramped. Where or how does cultural
| intrusion enter the picture?
|
| Is that like trying to sit with the jocks at the lunch
| table in high school and they look at you weird like
| you're intruding their culture?
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I am an Asian and I feel the cultural intrusion if I go
| to a different kind of Asian store.
|
| They don't look at you weird. You just feel it.
|
| My analogy would be wearing shoes inside a house when
| they typically don't wear.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I don't like the phrase either, but I wonder if it wasn't
| meant to be more benign.. as in, you go to a grocery
| store catering to locals of another culture, and you walk
| up and down the aisle, you don't understand any of the
| packaging, and you can get the sense that if you laugh or
| have a "thats weird food" reaction to any of it, that'd
| be rude, so you hold it in.
|
| I grew up as the child of east European immigrants, and
| growing up we'd always had our own stores to buy food
| from the homeland. They're gone, for the most part, but I
| can walk into most Russian grocery stores and get what I
| want, but I don't understand most of the Russian options.
| Asking about some of the foods can lead to a strained or
| confusing conversation.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| I'm not saying the grocer doesn't want you there -- I'm
| saying you feel like you're _literally_ in the way (as
| in, physically blocking the aisle) if you stand around
| the snack aisle scratching your head, while the regulars
| are making a beeline for the fish sauce and packs of mala
| tofu skin.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| There are still places like that in SF's Chinatown. There's
| enough customer density to support a walk-in market that
| doesn't use shopping carts. SF's Chinatown has twice the
| population density of SF. And a median age of 47, almost 10
| years higher than the rest of SF. So there are still old-
| school Asian grocery stores.
|
| Nijya Market has a number of good Japanese grocery stores
| in the SF bay area. They're rather expensive, like Whole
| Foods. Noted for fresh fish and sushi. Also, they have the
| _good_ Pocky, from Japan, not the made-in-Thailand stuff.
| Their stores are small supermarkets, with carts and
| parking.
|
| SF's Chinatown is stuck in the 1950s. Where are the black-
| glass buildings, the fast forward fashion from Beijing, the
| automated stores, and the latest parts from Shenzhen?
| They're in Cupertino, home of Apple, which is 67% Asian and
| has entire malls of good Asian stores. The big mall across
| the street from the Apple mothership is a good place to
| start.
| injinj wrote:
| I prefer the 1950s style, the produce isn't wrapped to
| death in plastic. My general rule is that the more
| plastic it has, the further away it was produced. The
| small Asian places have their own farm pipeline for the
| specialty vegetables, not industrial scale farms like
| from a Safeway. I cannot resist the allure of Nijiya,
| though, as they will have veggies and fruits that nobody
| else has.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The supermarket is there to SELL... They don't give a rats
| ass ...
|
| Which supermarket are you talking about? And how do you know
| what they think? I think we are applying economic theory, in
| which there arguably shouldn't be prejudice, to reality,
| where there is lots of prejudice:
|
| Businesses have a long history of giving rats asses and much
| more about who their clientele is, demographically,
| ethnically, racially, socially, etc., and IME and in many
| public examples, many still do. I've seen discrimination,
| subtle and overt, against people who are young, old, rich,
| poor, black, brown, fashionable or not, speaking a different
| language, etc. etc. etc.
| mc32 wrote:
| This whole thread, if you read it, is about H Mart and by
| proxy other Asian supermarkets in North America.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| When I said 'what supermarket are you talking about', I
| meant that the GGP was describing someone's thinking -
| what is their name?
|
| Humans are individuals with their own thoughts.
| Attributing thinking to a large mass of people doesn't
| make sense, in my way of thinking.
| tinfoilheadsock wrote:
| Those that have been to a chinese grocery store in California
| know they sell all sorts of exotic delights that could cause
| a newcomer laugh, point, or say "ew" aloud.
| mc32 wrote:
| ?? That's a non-sequitur.
|
| I'm sure if this person feels that just walking in is
| "culturally intrusive", then, if they walked in they'd
| behave like an adult and that would be beside the point?
| fidesomnes wrote:
| It's sjw code for not being happy with who he or she was born
| as.
| [deleted]
| drail99 wrote:
| Was H-mart around before the Buford Highway Farmers market? I
| went there for years before I ever saw an H-Mart and it was
| very inviting, but maybe H-mart was around and I just didn't
| know it.
|
| Also to add, growing up in Georgia I feel like every grocery
| store I went in had a tank of live lobsters. Even Red lobster
| had that, so I don't see why they think non-asian's would
| recoil from that.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Yeah I didn't understand that part, specifically with
| lobsters because every grocery store has lobsters in my
| experience. I think Buford has been around longer but H Mart
| made it into the suburbs/ OTP area.
| [deleted]
| athenot wrote:
| And also the Buford Hwy Farmers market which still manages to
| have an impressive array of Korean, Chinese, Japanese,
| Caribbean, Mexican, Eastern European and even some Western
| European goods.
| blamazon wrote:
| You can buy an entire goat at the Buford Highway farmers
| market. The scale of that place has to be seen to be
| believed.
| ak217 wrote:
| Your Dekalb Farmers Market is still the best :)
| drail99 wrote:
| Meh, YDFM is a little bit more of a farmers market, but
| neither it nor BuHiFM are farmers markets they're both
| grocery stores and YDFM doesn't have anywhere near the
| international selections.
|
| The real, actual farmers market is the Atlanta State
| Farmers market in Forest Park and it's one of the largest
| and most active in the US.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| My guess is the 'Farmers Market' in the names is just
| marketing/branding to get shoppers to associate it with
| fresh produce, like Harry's Farmers Market before they
| turned into Whole Foods.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Is there anything like BuHi Farmers Market anywhere else in
| the US?
|
| I've been to LA, NY, Boston, SF and haven't seen anything
| closely like it. H Mart's probably the closest thing and it
| doesn't compare in any way
| Dowwie wrote:
| I'm very fond of H-Mart. I've been grocery shopping at H-Mart
| stores since I've been within driving distance of them. The
| produce is fresh, affordable, and diverse. The stores are very
| well managed. Of all the stores I've gone to since the pandemic,
| H-Mart has managed crowds and public health the best. They've
| been very responsible.
|
| If you're interested in Korean cooking, I recommend watching
| Maangchi's youtube channel cooking show:
| https://www.youtube.com/user/Maangchi
|
| Maangchi teaches traditional recipes in a clear and concise
| fashion. One of my favorite recipes is Jjolmyeon, which is a
| chewy noodle with spicy sauce that is loaded with vegetables.
| spodek wrote:
| For a somewhat contrarian view, most Americans who shop at these
| places may claim to want authenticity and variety, but probably
| ignore the authenticity and variety of what local farmers grow.
| How many buy radishes, turnips, and cabbage from nearby farms,
| let alone stinging nettles, fiddlehead ferns, or less common
| plants that grow nearby (I'm writing in New York City, not sure
| what grows near you)? The U.S. used to grow thousands of
| varieties of cabbage. Most Americans probably eat two or three a
| year.
|
| Most of the products the article describes, though not all, are
| ultraprocessed and packaged for indefinite shelf life and global
| shipping.
|
| I'm all for variety and experiencing other cultures, so nothing
| against these stores, but I hope people look nearby to find
| healthy, affordable, local basic foods too. Their farmers,
| environment, and taste buds will thank them.
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