City's Oldest Dry Foodstuff Store to Close After 61 Years
This entire season has seen a sad deluge of closures all across Beijing as the city performs a "spring cleaning" on areas deemed to have violated municipal rules or to have injured the city's pride. These forced closures and demolitions have greatly impacted the expat community as well as upon the city's historical worth, but they have been rationalized as necessary improvements for city locals as Beijing continues its march towards modernization.
And yet, there's one Beijing closure that wasn't the responsibility of overly enthusiastic city planners. Instead, it was because of a Beijing public that can't maintain its own proud traditions.
A week and a half from now, Beijing's oldest dry foodstuff store will shutter its doors after servicing its community for 61 years. The operators of the Taoyang Road Non-Staple Store say they can no longer compete with big franchise supermarkets and online shopping, and so are forced to go out of business.
Simply described as the polar opposite of a "wet market," the dry foodstuff store is the last of its kind in Beijing. The Taoyang store had helped locals in the Yongdingmen area stay true to their culinary traditions by providing customers its most popular product, an authentically-made salted and fermented soy paste used in homecooked meals throughout the city.
But despite the store's commitment to its locals, the community began to fall apart. Development for a nearby high-speed rail line gutted the Yongdingmen community, forcing many of the store's customers to move away. In the years since then, the foodstuff store became a shadow of its former self as the world lurched forward outside its doors.
And yet, what remained served as a focal point for gossiping and chess-playing locals as well as being a well-preserved snapshot in time. With the exception of reducing the store's space, the building older than China's ubiquitous Little Red Book has never been altered. And even though much of the store's stock has been replaced with cheap bottles of baijiu and erguotou liquor, the store's weighted scale is the still same as when the store first opened in 1956.
Mrs Zhang, 58, started working at the Taoyang foodstuff store in 1996 along with her husband Wang. Zhang takes a modest view about her place in Beijing history, simply saying: "I don't think there's any use in reminiscing."
Zhang expresses surprise that the store was able to last for so long. "This line of business was supposed to have been phased out long ago," said Zhang. "Nowadays, with the internet and smart phones being so advanced, no one would consider opening this kind of store as a way to make money."
But just like the store she managed for over a generation, Zhang herself is a throwback to a simpler time. "We made money to get by, not to get rich. These are two different concepts," said Zhang.
"There are all kinds of lifestyles in the world, but for us, our way wasn't so bad."
Images: QQ.com, Weibo, SXDaily.com.cn, Youth.cn, Cankaoxiaoxi.com
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