Those who yearn to immerse themselves in Asian shopping culture have come to a city with a rich, vibrant commercial life. Every year, thousands of Chinese-speaking immigrants land at Vancouver Inter-national Airport and set up house in the adjacent municipality of Richmond — where half the population is now Asian — and beyond. They buy or build a house (in the case of Richmond, on what was once farmland and remains an earthquake-prone jelly of alluvial silt), pick up a Japanese car or two, and head out to one of the several buckets at the end of the North American rainbow — the shopping mall.
Those living in Richmond don’t have to go far. Strip malls are sited all over what is actually Lulu Island, many with signs in bold Chinese characters. Mall heaven is located in the city’s commercial heart — roughly bounded by No. 3 Road and Alderbridge Way (north of Lansdowne Park Shopping Centre), Hazeibridge Way, and Capstan Way.
Over six or seven city-sized blocks you’ll find a network of malls that keep morphing into more malls. The whole area has become one sprawling mecca that hints at both sweatshop-dominated Guangzhou (from which many immigrants have come) and a ground-level version of Tokyo’s hyper-commercial Shinjuku district.
These malls — including Yaohan Centre, President Plaza, Aber¬deen Centre (really a service center for the Asian arts — dance, musical, and martial), Parker Place, Central Square, and Empire Square — are similar in character. Within, individual merchants sell dried everything; most shipable edibles are also available at the huge T&T supermarket in President Plaza, and the Osaka supermarket in the Yaohan Centre. Most include a food court that dishes out regional Chinese and (ever-popular) Japanese, Thai, Korean, and Indian foods. In Aberdeen Centre, you’ll find a traditional Chinese tea counter. Across the way in President Plaza, a bakery sells delicacies such as egg-yolk-with-lotus-seed puffs and chestnut tarts. There are stalls devoted to Japanese junk food, and Chinese herbal medicine shops to repair your stomach. Sandwiched into and between the malls are mostly new and fashionable restaurants serving more upscale Asian fare.
Innumerable hole-in-the-wall clothing stores lean to cheap, fashion-of-the-minute apparel popular with Japanese and Hong Kong teen¬agers. Shoes run to outrageously chunky and pointy black ankle boots; women’s items include pigskin purses and glittery sweaters with pseudo-fur collars. A few outlets stock higher-end clothes by names such as Gianfranco Ferre and Versace.
Here you’ll also find Chinese-language videos, books, and magazines; imported watches, gems, and jewelry; lower-end electronic equip¬ment and gadgets; even Asian-style photo machines that churn out sentimental prints. Add the wonderful smells and lively crush of an almost exclusively Chinese-speaking crowd and the malls deliver a near-overseas experience.
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