Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
October 20, 2025
October 20, 2025 | Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896

Vanishing markets, Xiao Mai Pu, the keepers of my hometown

By ANGEL WANG | October 20, 2025

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COURTESY OF ANGEL WANG

Wang reflects on the significance of Xiao Mai Pu in her hometown of Tangshan, China.

Scattered amongst the alleys of my hometown’s characteristic brick houses are its numerous hole-in-the-wall convenience stores. Finding them requires a good eye and a lot of patience. With their rusted storefronts and yellowing strip curtains, they’re often built as extensions of family homes, and even referring to them as “stores'' is rather generous. Instead, we affectionately call them “Xiao Mai Pu,” which translates to “small concession stand.” Every summer, during my annual visit, my cousin and I look for them, wandering through the neighborhood until the telltale smell of roller-grilled sausage and cigarette smoke fills the air. 

This Xiao Mai Pu is almost identical to every other we’ve come across. Pushing aside the plastic curtains, we are greeted by a wall stacked with instant ramen and shelves of home supplies, candies and stationery. The ceiling fans creak precariously above as the hum of freezers drowns out the Chinese period drama playing on some box TV set — one my cousin says she’s already watched twice. As we enter, we politely greet the old lady behind the checkout counter, calling her “Nai Nai” (Grandma). Her permed hair, streaked white, is slightly frizzy in the midsummer heat. As her jade bangle clatters against the counter, she rings up her regulars, asking about their adult children: Have they come to visit after moving out? Did they get the promotion? Do they have their own children yet?

I step up to the counter to order some roller sausages, so I don’t end up shopping on an empty stomach. As she hands them to me in a paper bag, she hollers at her husband, who is sneaking a smoke in the back room, telling him to fix the wobbling ceiling fan.

I beeline for the aisle of fluorescent candies above the meat freezer. Meanwhile, my cousin fishes for sketchbooks under the racks of cleaning supplies for her art class, wiping their dusty covers with her shirt before checking if the pages are clean. Soon we fill our baskets with Garden Lucky candies, dried squid, Wang Wang rice crackers, melon popsicles and candy sodas.

During our excursions over the years, we never seemed to visit the same Xiao Mai Pu twice. Each time, we inevitably get lost as we navigated the labyrinth of alleys lined by identical brick-laid homes. I argue with my cousin about which passage or side street we must have missed, but to no avail. Eventually, none of it matters as we stumble into a new store, which always happens to have a grandma at the counter selling the same candies, the same roller-grilled sausages. Everything is always alarmingly cheap, and most of the clientele are repeat customers: older folks who come to buy groceries, home supplies, snacks and sodas for their grandchildren. You hear about the problem of senior loneliness around the world, but I never got the sense that the elders of Jinchuanyuan were lonely: they were always coming along to chat and congregate at these Xiao Mai Pu, gossiping and gnawing on dried yams, reading the newspaper and occasionally playing games in the back room. I remember a bald, red-faced uncle who would come every night in his blue mechanic’s uniform, offering to fix clogged pipes for the monsoon season before joining the beer-bellied group at the mahjong table. 

For many years, these old townsfolk at the Xiao Mai Pu were like keepers of a secret place that represented the heart of Jinchuanyuan to me. Even as I sat on the periphery of all this commotion, I would think about my worries that carried over from the school year that even the candy sodas couldn’t wash away — how so many friends were moving away and how even the ones that stayed always seemed to be finding new interests and forming new friend groups without me. At the centre of all this hubbub would be the grandmas behind the till, knowing everyone and their gossip. They showed me what it looked like for people to really care about each other and maintain their relationships and, suddenly, I wouldn’t worry as much anymore.

I don’t remember exactly when we stopped going to these Xiao Mai Pu. These past few summers, my cousin and I have been shopping at commercial malls with the same supermarket and hotpot chains and overpriced claw machine arcades. Slowly, but noticeably, clusters of crude concrete buildings are carving into Jinchuanyuan’s sleepy, amorphous borders: the apartment blocks and cranes that cut into the horizon, the self-checkout stores, the elevated train tracks, the Wi-Fi towers that press into the neat corners of grain fields. But I still think about the grandmas behind the till of the Xiao Mai Pu, with their perms and their Chinese dramas droning in the background of mahjong games, the pitter-patter of the plastic strip curtains, the sausages tumbling on the roller grill.

Angel Wang is a freshman from Vancouver, Canada studying Writing Seminars.


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