This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Fourth in a seven-part series
Today: Great China Market
Where: 722 S. State St., Salt Lake City.
Language: Chinese
Hours: Wednesdays-Mondays, 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.
Some items on the shelves: Chinese medicines; sweet osmanthus sauce; dry squid, octopus and fish; frozen dumplings, spring rolls and pot stickers; frozen fish balls or fish paste; rice crackers; sesame cookies; seasoned seaweed; rice dispenser; bamboo steamer
Thursday: Tongan Church
Eric Cheng remembers growing up in Taiwan, sitting around a wooden kitchen table with his friends and siblings and munching on his favorite snack - butter coconut cookies.
Today, decades later in Utah, the 49-year-old still enjoys his flaky, finger-long treats, many times with a glass of soy milk, as he sits in front of his TV in his Cottonwood Heights home.
But one of the few places Cheng can get them is at Great China Market, just south of downtown Salt Lake City on State Street. When he visits the small grocery store, he rarely leaves without buying a 99-cent reminder of his homeland.
"When you eat things from here, you're eating with your memory," he says. "It reminds you of your childhood."
Like Cheng, many customers head to China Market because it's a place where they can find the foods they crave, the items they need to cook their speciality dishes and the equipment they use in their kitchens.
It's also a place where they can read the store's signs and food packages in Chinese and chat with strangers and friends in their native language.
Slightly more than 4,000 Salt Lake County residents - or less than 1 percent of the population - speak Chinese at home, according to 2000 census data compiled by the Modern Language Association.
For many of them, China Market a place where they feel at home, says Duanru Jia, who lives in Taiwan and stays in Salt Lake City a few months a year.
"We come here to see our people and to speak our language," the 80-year-old said through a translator as he looked for a Chinese brand of green tea at the store.
In three county ZIP codes, in areas around the University of Utah, Chinese is the No. 3 language spoken at the home after English and Spanish. In ZIP code 84112, a tiny area between the city's downtown and the university, Chinese is the No. 2 language after English.
Min Zhou, a 35-year-old geophysics doctoral student at the University of Utah, moved from China to Salt Lake City alone six years ago. China Market is a popular shop within the university's Chinese community and he often runs into friends shopping here, he says. He's been coming to the store about once a week since he moved here.
"I can get everything Chinese made . . .. You can't find this at Wal-Mart or Smith's," Zhou says, with rice cooking wine and a frozen duck in his shopping cart. "Here, we know where things [are] and we can shop fast."
Chun-Yue Tan, a 22-year-old computer programmer, drives about 30 minutes from South Jordan to China Market once a month to get groceries, including one of her favorite snacks - salted duck eggs.
Tan, who moved from Malaysia to Utah about four years ago for college, says the store is one of the few public places where she feels comfortable speaking Chinese and no one will stare at her for doing so. Actually, she says it's the opposite here.
"If you speak English, people will look at you like - what?" she says. "Here, everyone's Chinese."
Lian Zhou, Zhou's mother from China who's visiting Utah for a few months, says she sometimes feels out of place around the city.
"I feel like a foreigner. I can only speak Chinese," she says through a translator. "I feel alone because I don't have friends here and I can't speak with Americans."
The 60-year-old says she likes shopping at stores such as Costco, but she enjoys China Market more because she can ask the manager for help in Chinese, meet other women like her and get a 5-pound bag of dried mushrooms.
"This is where I can buy whatever I want, whatever I need," she says walking out of the crowded shop.
At China Market, about 95 percent of its customers are of Chinese descent and most of them speak the language, says Eugene Han, the store's owner.
The small store, which opened about 12 years ago, sits in a strip mall next to Burt's Tiki Lounge, a live-music bar, and Big Deluxe Tattoo, at 722 S. State Street.
Inside, the store has a strong aroma of seafood and spices. There's a community board covered with handwritten signs by people looking for baby-sitters to restaurant cooks. Big, white freezers with hand-made signs in Chinese on them, saying what's inside, line the walls. Many products are labeled with prices written in black marker.
Most of the food products here are imported from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and California and can't be found in regular U.S. grocery stores, Han says. China Market's six aisles, only wide enough for a small grocery cart, are filled with boxes of dried squid, soybean products and sesame cookies to rice dispensers and bamboo steamers. In the freezers, there are fish balls, dumplings and pig's blood.
Han, 42, moved from China to the United States nine years ago and speaks little English. He says he bought the store in 2001 because he used to manage a small business in China and was looking for a job to support his wife and daughter here. Now, he and his wife, Jessie, run the shop more than 10 hours a day, six days a week.
"I'm happy and enjoy doing this," he says through a translator. "I feel lucky and honored that I can serve the Chinese community here."
For Cheng, China Market gives him a chance to maintain his culture and pass it on.
Cheng, an engineer who moved from Taiwan to Salt Lake City almost 20 years ago, says he and his family speak Chinese at home. He often tells his two teenage sons about the products he buys at China Market and how they're used in their homeland. Cheng also says he loves to sit around the kitchen table eating butter coconut cookies with his sons as he shares stories with them about growing up in Taiwan.
"It's important you know your culture," he says. "You need to know your origin."
Thursday
St. Patrick's Catholic Church is the only Salt Lake County parish that has services in Tongan. Here, people say they prefer to pray and sing to "Otua" in Tongan because they can feel it deep in their soul.
Friday
Even though they moved here from Europe decades ago, some Utahns still prefer to speak their native language, German. Vosen's Bread Paradise is one of a handful of places in the state where they can speak in German and find bauernbrot and bienenstich.
Saturday
Not all people who speak Spanish are Mexican or eat tacos, say customers at El Arepazo. At this South American eatery, people say they feel at home here speaking with strangers in Spanish and eating arepas and teque os, favorite foods from their homeland.