Thank You and Happy New Year!
Today is the Lantern Festival, the last day of the 15-day Lunar New Year season. As this festive time of reflection and renewal comes to a close, we can't help but marvel at how many new years we’ve celebrated since our founding almost 54 years ago.
A young local activist at the time, Mr. Chen and a few friends pooled their meager funds to open a “friendship store” in 1971. Their purpose was dual and a touch subversive: first, to provide nostalgic comfort items to homesick neighbors in Chinatown, and second, to showcase practical, fun, and beautiful Chinese goods for all New Yorkers to admire, bring into their homes, and eventually love as their own. This type of hyperlocal cultural exchange, they hoped, would break down barriers and allow neighbors of all backgrounds to interact and have something in common.
Over the next five decades, this simple idea unexpectedly grew into something much more. Artists and designers came to find inspiration in the aisles of traditional clothing, handmade paper, and ceramics. Students and young transplants came to decorate first apartments with affordable dishware and unique home accessories. Kids came for the sweets, plushies, and faux weaponry. New Yorkers from all walks of life came just to hang out, earning us some unusual accolades over the years, like “the best place in NYC to cry” or “the best place in New York to bring your mom.”
We love when customers tell us they've been with us since the "original" store. Some may not know we've actually had six flagships, from Catherine Street to Elizabeth to Canal, to three spots on lower Broadway. We love all our customers but reserve special honor for the OGs who remember us from the Catherine, Elizabeth, or Canal Street locations!
In addition to physically moving, our journey as a family business has required us to evolve with the times and our customers' needs. We’ve built out a robust e-commerce site over the years and interacted with many of you on social media. We’ve experimented with smaller, cozier stores, including a dynamic outpost in Chelsea Market and Pearl River Mart Foods, also in Chelsea Market. We built a beautiful museum store with the Museum of Chinese in America in 2019-20 and a fun Flushing outpost in Tangram Mall in 2023-24.
We're most proud of how our staff has evolved. Today we're multi-generational, multi-racial, and multilingual, though the vast majority of us still identify as no-nonsense New Yorkers. Some have greeted you all for decades; others are brand new and keep the rest of us on our toes. We all have an area of the stores that makes us happy.
As Lunar New Year season comes to a close, we want to express our gratitude to you, our customers who have cheered us on over the years, weathering all the changes and challenges we've faced, who even in the darkest times stop by to pick up a few items and chat with Mr. and Mrs. Chen. Please know that YOU are keeping a small business, vibrant neighborhood, and loving community of people alive and well.
If you feel so moved, we’d love to hear from you! We invite you to email us and share a memory, let us know what you’d like to see on the shelves, or just give us feedback on your most recent visit or purchase. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us, and all the best wishes to you and yours for a happy, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Snake.
Joanne Kwong, Mr. & Mrs. Chen, and all of us at Pearl River Mart