Zulin Yang, the general manager of LiMing’s Global Mart in Durham, shows the different kinds of fish to his customers. (Staff photo by Mengqi Jiang)
Every morning around 9 a.m., Zulin Yang, the general manager of the LiMing’s Global Mart, starts working in the store, hoping his efforts and enthusiasm will attract more customers to LiMing.
“Need any help?” are the first words a customer hears as she walks into LiMing’s Global Mart.
“I usually work 13 hours on weekdays and 14 hours on weekends,” he says.
Yang says his work includes rearranging goods on shelves, checking food quality and answering customers’ questions.
“A manager needs to be familiar with each part of the operation of the mart: replenishment of the goods, food quality checking, pricing and most importantly, keeping connections with customers,” he says.
LiMing’s Global Mart, located at 3400 Westgate Drive in Durham, opened in February 2011.
Yang says students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University constitute a major part of their customers.
Tao Tang, a first-year doctoral student in Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke, says he shops LiMing once a week.
Zulin Yang, the general manager of LiMing’s Global Mart, is rearranging apples in the fruit shelf. (Staff photo by Mengqi Jiang)
“I cook Chinese dishes at home,” Tang says. “Some ingredients and sauces are only available in LiMing, not at Kroger or Whole Foods.”
He says LiMing improves his quality of life by allowing him to have tastier dishes at home.
“I want customers to feel at home when they do shopping at LiMing,” Yang says.
He says the mart offers customized fish, seafood and meat in addition to fresh groceries.
“We can have meat mashed, chop ribs into pieces and process fish as customers like,” Yang says.
Chapel Hill resident Leslie Williams says the selection of fish at LiMing is better than anywhere else.
“I came for fish today because I am making a French fish soup,” she says.
Williams says she loves LiMing and it exposes her to other cuisines, cultures and cooking methods.
“It’s like getting to go to another country,” she says. “Imagine that it must be the same for people who come from another country and go to American grocery stores.”
Yang says most of the customers are Asians but there is a trend in which more Caucasians, African-Americans and Latinos like to do shopping at LiMing’s Global Mart as well.
Durham residents Frank Fletcher and Mary Tchamkina recently moved from New York City to Durham last August. They now visit LiMing weekly. Tchamkina says she cooks Asian food more often than her friends do.
Fletcher says he goes to LiMing because he can purchase products, such as miso, different dressings and peanut oil, that he can’t get anywhere else.
Tchamkina has a different reason for her love for LiMing.
She says she can get products that are similar to those found in New York’s Chinatown.
“We’ve been also enjoying the bakery,” she says. “That’s something we miss from New York.”
Yang says the happiest moment is hearing compliments about the freshness of the food and the helpfulness of the employees. He says he also likes to make friends with customers.
But customers are not always friendly and nice, he says.
“It is inevitable to deal with fastidious and irresponsible customers and thieves as well,” he says. “What you can do is reason with them with patience.”
He says it is worth dedicating time and energy to making LiMing better because his enthusiasm wins him his fiancée.
“The biggest reward of working at LiMing is that I got a chance to meet her,” Yang says. “Now she is my fiancée.”
For more information, visit LiMing’s Global Mart’s website or call (919) 401-5212. LiMing’s Global Mart is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.
Some interviews were conducted in Chinese. Direct quotes were translated from Chinese to English.
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