GREEN BAY -On a typical day at Main Oriental Market, customers fill their carts with bags of rice, ramen or grab the lastbag of matcha-flavored Kit Kats andfruit jellies that found their popularity on TikTok.
Refrigerator cases are filled with fresh riceand udonnoodles, smoked meats from a Hmong-owned manufacturer in Wausau, fish imported from Thailand or Vietnam, and other items such as pork blood and sausages.
You may find owner Kao Shoua Yang asking a customer how their children are doing as she rings up their groceries, while her husband Bruce Yang unboxes packages in the refrigerated section.
Since opening the store in 2005, Kao Shoua and Bruce have come to know many of their longtime customers and always introduce themselves to anyone who comes in for the first time. Once newcomers leave, they have already become part of their family.
Main Oriental Market was one of the earliest Asian grocery stores in the area, and over the 16 years the store has become a cultural hub for many Hmong residents in Green Bay.The family has become a bridge for the community, sharing resources and events with their customers, supporting local Hmong businesses, and treating their customers like their own family.
“We had a lot of customers come to our store since we started. They know us and they come back 10 or more years,” Bruce Yang said. “We know each other and often we feel like we’re in the same family.”
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The Hmong Center of Green Bay stopped all of its programming in 2016, so Hmong community members donot have a formal cultural center and often go to their church or clan for support, said Tara Yang, Kao Shoua and Bruce's daughter. For some, the market has become a resource that has helped bridge some of the gaps created when the center closed.
'They do everything'
Located on a busy corner downtown, Main Oriental Market has become a center for Hmong culture, food and community surrounded by other Asian shops as well, including Xiong Oriental Market and Asian Taste Supermarket.
Kao Shoua, with her and Bruce’s savings and help from friends, opened the 1,500-square-foot market in 2005 at the first location, 914 Main St., after Vang’s Oriental Food Store sold it to them. Her family moved the store to its current location at 607 Pine St. in 2012 and took over the building from Pomp’s Tire Service. Tara Yang manages her family’s store.
“My parents are the owners, they're the associates, they work the floor. They do everything,” Tara Yang said.
The Vangs’ grocery was one of the first Hmong stores in town when the Yangs tookover theMain Street location. The Yangs' store is one of the first stops for many newcomers to Green Bay looking for resources in the area, Tara Yang said. Many people from out of towncome to shop at the store, too.
Green Bay resident Jenny Yang is one of the market’s longest customers. She started shopping at Vang's Oriental Food Store and has been going to Main Oriental Market for over 12 years, she said. Now she thinks of Bruce and Kao Shoua like her own parents.
“To just feel like you can just show up without judgment. I mean, that's really I think that's what their store represents — a place where you can go for quality food that allows you to be able to feel acknowledged, to feel appreciated,” Jenny Yang said.
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More than a grocery store
Residents will usually stop by the store to ask for help translating letters, where they can find English language or citizenship classes, or how to get a driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The family also tries to support local Hmong businesses, whether it is by partnering with Hmong manufacturers, selling farmers’ extra produce left over from the farmers market, or selling a local resident's homemade woven baskets at the store.
“It’s the minor stuff. Sometimes I feel bad that sometimes I can’t help them out,” Bruce Yang said.
Bruce speaks Hmong and Lao and tries to make as much time as he can to go with people to their court hearings and help translate if they ask.
“It just makes you feel good to do that for the community. A lot of them, they don’t know where else to go so they come to you. They know you’re going to help them and you just try the best you can,” he said.
The family also informs customers about events or helpful information, Jenny Lang said,such as letting her know about a food drive by a COVID-19 Lao community response team.
“Whether it's your first time walking in the door or if it's like you shop there forever, they treat everybody pretty much the same. Nobody is really favored more than the other. My children love going there because they enjoy their company,” Jenny Yang said. “The first thing they do when they go there is give Tara's parents hugs because they're great people and they care about their customers. They ask how their day is going. They make it personal.”
It’s a feeling shared by many people in the city. When major events happen in the Hmong community, Tara said, herfamily is often quick to learn about it,and many ask for their help when an issue comes up among Hmong community members.
Traditional Hmong funerals and honoring the dead are some of the most important rituals in their culture. When someone dies, Tara’s family tries to donate a 100-pound bag of rice and money for the funeral or to local churches.
A welcoming space
Organizations in the community also come to Tara and her family to help reach out to Hmong community members as an important advocate.
Recently, Tara worked with Brown County Public Health to create educational videos and encourage Hmong residents to get a COVID-19 vaccine, and the Aging & Disability Resource Center asked if her family could hand out surveys to customers to increase program use at the resource center.
She has been working with the Green Bay Police Department to recruit potentialnew officers, she said. Her family has also been speaking out against discrimination against Asian Americansin the area.
Tarahopes she can work with the city to provide more events in the future and unite Green Bay's Hmong residents.
In the meantime, her family hopes their storecontinues to provide a welcoming space for all Green Bay residents.
"We’re just there to try to make a living ... if they needed help, then we would be there to help. If they come to us and make us a resource, we’d be happy to offer them. We don’t refuse," Bruce Yang said.
Contact Benita Mathew at bmathew@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @benita_mathew.
