Pearl River Mart Continues to Radicalize the New York City Supply Chain
“I always knew Pearl River would somehow save us all.”
Since 1971, Pearl River Mart has strategically sourced products from China—despite government assistance or approval. Collage by Alexandria Misch.
Full disclosure: Joanne Kwong cries a lot.
Typically, the president of Pearl River Mart, daughter-in-law of the original owners and mother of two doesn’t have trouble letting tears out, but the second week of March hit differently. “It was like a sneeze that wouldn’t come out for some reason,” she said. “I had never really felt that kind of shock before–—it was all so shocking.”
With an absence of abundant information on the coronavirus coming from the American federal government, Kwong found herself Googling speeches from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and taking comfort in foreign leaders such as those in Singapore. The international COVID-19 data brought it home for her even before the city decided to shut down non-essential businesses like Pearl River Mart.
On Monday, March 16—the morning after it was announced bars and restaurants would be forced to move to takeout and delivery only––Kwong started making the rounds in person to Pearl River’s three locations—the flagship store in Tribeca and the outposts at Chelsea Market and the Museum of Chinese in America—to lay off a staff of about 40 full- and part-time employees. She told everyone to file for unemployment as soon as possible, laid out the groundwork to fund health insurance and a small amount of salary, and started research on small business loans and grants.
In the beginning, Kwong continued the “snack madness bracket” she started on social media and drove around in her Ford Escape to make contact-free deliveries to staff who wanted to participate in the lightheartedness on lockdown. She mourned the already apparent effects of the economic disaster but felt hopeful about the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. Kwong otherwise sheltered in place with her family on the Upper West Side. But stories of frontline workers in what felt “like a war zone” and nurses pleading to #GetMePPE (Personal Protective Equipment) to guard against coronavirus infection plagued her mind.
As many New Yorkers found themselves experiencing a new phenomenon of American heroism—strict orders to stay home instead of joining the fight like they once did after Hurricane Sandy or the Sept.11 attacks—some turned to the nightly 7 p.m. cheer for healthcare workers or stared at the Empire State Building as the red lights sparkled and beat like a heart for first responders. Meanwhile—weeks before the coordinated claps would begin to reach Chinatown—Ching Yeh Chen, the Pearl River Mart founder who ran the store with her husband for over 40 years before a sixfold rent increase warranted Kwong to step in for an overhaul—checked her inbox to see she received a silver lining: One of her suppliers secured a stash of masks. Chen forwarded the message to her daughter-in-law.
Did Pearl River Mart want masks? Kwong set out to understand the answer.
“I kind of had to earn a PhD in the mask business,” Kwong said, as it turned out her supplier had a stock of KN95s, which the Food and Drug Administration did not initially approve as an alternative to tested-and-certified N95s, despite being almost identical. Eventually, Kwong concluded “it’s better than a maxi pad or a motorcycle helmet” and committed to 500 masks. She then orchestrated a plan with her Upper West Side neighbor, Olivia Ghaw, a doctor in Elmhurst, Queens. At that point, medical suppliers had been sold out of N95 masks for weeks, and Ghaw said she could “walk them right in” the reportedly “apocalyptic” public hospital at the center of the city’s crisis.
Shortly after placing her order, a small wave of panic came over Kwong when a Mount Sinai contact backed out of delivering masks to the hospital because of fear of retribution if caught claiming the large private healthcare provider was not adequately protecting their employees. “That’s when I kind of freaked out,” she said. “I thought, my mother-in-law is going to kill me.” Luckily, Ghaw wasn’t concerned about any possible consequences of bringing in proper PPE to Elmhurst Hospital. Lives were on the line—and even the heroes needed saving this time.
The supplier dropped off the 500 KN95 masks at the Chen’s loft near Chinatown, where Kwong picked them up to facilitate the donation to the Elmhurst ICU and ER. Kwong taped hand-drawn photos from her young sons Milo and Griffin—Pearl River’s “co-heads of the toy-and snack-testing department”—to the box and typed up her own words of encouragement for the healthcare workers. “We look forward to giving you a hug and a big discount when this is all over,” the note read. “As we Chinese say, ‘jia you!’” (which means ‘add oil’ or ‘hang in there!’ You can do it!’)
Kwong told anyone reading the printed piece of paper that Pearl River would keep PPE coming “as long as we can.” While Ghaw carried the cargo across the finish line to her colleagues, Kwong quickly got to work on sourcing and facilitating a Go Fund Me campaign for the next round. Kwong also reached out to elected officials to make sure she was sourcing something that was actually necessary.
”If the New England Patriots are going to bring a million masks, I didn't think my 500 will make a difference,” she said. Kwong talked to Congresswoman Grace Meng, the representative for New York's 6th congressional district, and Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, chair of the New York City Council Committee on Hospitals, who vouched for the necessity and pledged to help distribute the new donations.
Within 24 hours, the fundraiser hit $5,000—and showed no sign of stopping. To keep the momentum going, Kwong boosted the monetary goal and message share after learning of a new mask shipment arriving in mid-April by way of her friend Helen Lee of F&T Group, “a longtime NYC real estate business with deep ties to the Asian American community.” (Lee had ordered 30,000 KN95s before the coronavirus began to shut down construction sites.)
Kwong said a lot of people in the Asian-American community are doing the same thing: tapping their contacts to step up sourcing from places where masks and other PPE are manufactured. “We’re very comfortable in our homes being quarantined, so if there's anything we can do to help on a coordination level, I’m super happy to do it,” she said.
And Kwong is clearly not alone. In the first six days of the new campaign, Pearl River Mart supporters raised over $50,000 toward paying for the next round of PPE, which, adjusting for a fluctuating price due to demand—and including shipping and fees—Kwong expects to pay about $2.50 per mask for the incoming shipment—and aims to raise approximately $75,000-80,000. She credits the success of the Go Fund Me to Pearl River’s name recognition in the neighborhood. (“They know we import from Asia and feel comfortable with us,” she said.) But the support echoed far and wide outside even the five boroughs.
“I always knew Pearl River would somehow save us all,” Samantha Bliss of Mackenzie’s Tattoo in Carmel, NY wrote on Twitter in response to a call for donations by “Vanishing New York” author Jeremiah Moss. “[Pearl River Mart] is doing what no elected leader can seem to do,” author and poet Alicia Mountain tweeted. “I've lost faith in government, but not in [first-generation] Americans.”
“The [lack of adequate] PPE is a failure of the government on a couple of levels—but it is also unprecedented times. Private folks will have to pick up whatever slack with whatever guidance we’re not receiving from the government,” Kwong said. “All of this risk is being carried by all those doctors, people who work at Rikers [Island], the MTA or the FDNY.
“I think this pandemic shows the injustice of this society very much,” Chen said in an interview by phone. “People are asking [Governor Andrew] Cuomo why the most dead from the virus are [Hispanic and black]. These are the people exposed to the frontline—nursing homes, those caring for people with disabilities—all for 15 dollars an hour—nothing more,” she said.
“We're all unemployed, everyone's asking me for money, I was about to ask people for money as a filmmaker just when it all hit,” the actor and advocate Michelle Krusiec said when she shared the Go Fund Me link online. “I'm giving what I can.”
“One point six million people are out of jobs. These are small people,” Chen said. “Those people buying and selling stocks on Wall Street? They don’t care. They have enough for their daily life. They just worry how much they ‘shrink,’” she said. “One point six million jobs,” Mrs. Chen repeated the statistic. “Very unjust.”
As a political activist who moved to the United States from Taiwan in 1975, Chen is no stranger to the strange behaviors of the American government. In fact, 50 years ago, it was not uncommon for the FBI to show up at Pearl River for tea. Then, the 1,500 square foot location on Catherine Street attracted negative attention for sourcing products and promoting philosophies from mainland China before President Nixon opened the country for trade. “The FBI—in Chinese immigrants’ mind—was a kind of mafia you don’t want to touch,” Chen told Canal Street News.
Despite the eerie eye of the feds and pro-Taiwan protestors staging rallies and yelling “down with the communists!” from across the street, Pearl River continued to provide for its 95-percent Chinese immigrant base for over 20 years, until the New York Times printed “The Year of the Rooster Dawns with a Crackle” on the front page of the January 24, 1993 Sunday paper. That’s when, Chen remembers, the demographic shifted at their SoHo location, and the once-radical import store started to appear in the pages of mainstream magazines like Seventeen, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
The writer Naomi Gordon-Loebl said those who grew up in New York understand “how beautiful” it is to see an institution like Pearl River looking out for a city and country that has not always supported Chinese culture or trans-Pacific commerce, as the emporium’s “goddaughter” Michelle Chen points out in essays detailing her father Ming Yi Chen’s prolific journey to sustain a “part fair trade diplomacy, part nationalist enterprise, part Asian bodega and totally New York City” store. (Gordon-Loebl’s accompanying tweet with a photo of the 80-year-old Ming Yi Chen—whose nickname is “the muscle”—carrying a box of masks with one arm received over 4,000 likes and 600 retweets with the simple caption “Pearl River” in all caps with a crying emoji.)
When asked whether Pearl River Mart should be the one to rescue the hospitals when small businesses desperately seek to be bailed out, Kwong responded with a sense of humor surrounding her sense of duty. “The cat’s out of the bag,” she said, meaning there is no turning back. Right now she is focused on onboarding her fellow business owners—from bookstores and bars to dry cleaners and salons—to leverage their customer loyalty and social media channels to support the campaign.
“It has been painful to close our doors, lay off our employees and not know if we will ever see our customers again,” Kwong wrote in an April 10 fundraiser update.
“These worries are for another day though,” she said. “The medical community needs our help, and small business owners know how to get things done.”
In other words—dry eyes, or not—Jia you, New York.
Hang in there. You can do it.
Learn more about and donate to Joanne Kwong’s PPE Go Fund Me campaign at www.gofundme.com/f/pearl-river-mask-drive. You can also shop Pearl River Mart’s online store to support the small business during the coronavirus pandemic at pearlriver.com.
