Asian Corner Mall Defined My Childhood in the South — Now It’s Gone

When I was growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, my family would spend every Sunday at Asian Corner Mall, a shopping center on the northeast side of the city composed mainly of Vietnamese-owned businesses.

In our house, we called the mall “Việt Mỹ,” which directly translates to “Vietnamese America.” The center included two grocery stores, a bánh mì shop, a dim sum restaurant, a nail supply store, and a handful of services nestled in a hollowed-out 1960s strip mall.

The mall was originally called Tryon Mall, named after the street it sits on in an underdeveloped part of the city, and it once housed a now-defunct department store. In 1997, three sisters from Vietnam bought the property, and by the turn of the 21st century, the mall’s two grocery stories were the largest Asian supermarkets in Charlotte.

I grew up around different types of people who reflected both the historical and new South, from white and Black Southerners who had been there for generations to immigrant families just now placing down roots. The Asian Americans I grew up around were mostly Vietnamese, and Asian Corner Mall was a central place where we all crossed paths and built community.

Sunday was my parents’ day off work, so it was our designated family time. I went grocery shopping with my mom, who preferred to go to International Supermarket. She always made sure to ask our family friend who worked there which produce was the freshest. She turned over bunches of cilantro and sifted through bean sprouts as she told me how to find the best ones. 

My dad liked the other grocery store, New Century. The butcher prepared boxes of Peking duck and roast pig for our dinner. While we waited, my dad got me sugarcane juice and pandan Swiss roll cakes. My mom always requested tofu pudding with a sweet ginger syrup on the side. Asian Corner Mall was one of the only places in the city that reminded them of home.  

My parents moved to North Carolina from Vietnam in the 1990s. They met other Vietnamese immigrants at the odd jobs they had. My mom sold Mary Kay products, worked at an electronics store, and helped at a Vietnamese restaurant before becoming a nail technician. My dad worked at a Pepsi factory until he lost his job during the recession.

My dad went into the nail salon business with my mom. But they always saw their old friends and coworkers at Asian Corner Mall. The owner of the bánh mì shop used to work with my dad at Pepsi. While assembling my cold cut sandwich with pickled vegetables on the side, he always asked me how my dad was doing.

My parents’ connections made trips to Asian Corner Mall an all-day affair. A trip to the grocery store included, at minimum, two mini-reunions between my parents and people whom I respectfully called auntie and uncle.

Our Sunday routine started changing when I was in high school. More Asian businesses had opened all over the city, and my parents were excited to shop at new supermarkets and try different restaurants and dessert shops. Our family went to Asian Corner Mall, but now it was monthly instead of weekly.

In 2018, I started college in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a traditional small college town that got its first bubble tea shop that year. There were a handful of Asian restaurants and only one Vietnamese place, which wasn’t worth the 30-minute walk from my dorm room. Whenever I came home for breaks, the strip mall was a comforting fixture. On Sundays, my mom would come back from the shopping center with bánh mì for breakfast. I savored each crunch and all the crumbs, even though I’d never enjoyed them because of the mess. There were always extra sandwiches for me to bring back to school.

At the strip mall, I ran into people from middle and high school, girls from my Buddhist temple, and family friends. Even when I wasn’t home, I would get texts asking if my mom was at the mall: “I just saw her with your sister!”

Eventually, I saw Charlotte changing more and more. Places like the walk-up Dairy Queen that had been in business for 69 years and a dim sum restaurant where we celebrated family birthdays closed permanently. Developers slowly bought out Asian Corner Mall and saw potential in fixing up a seemingly lifeless shopping center close to the city’s center and arts district.  

By the time I graduated from college in 2022, Charlotte was one of the fastest growing American cities. I moved back into my childhood home with a job in local public media that gave me a front row seat to how the city was changing. People were excited about Charlotte. The weather was forgiving, the trees were beautiful, the cost of living was reasonable, and the country’s second-largest banking center had plenty of economic opportunities.

I understood why Charlotte was an attractive place to live and work. But it was strange to think that this new version didn’t include the places I grew up in. Is this how older Charlotteans felt when Tryon Mall became Asian Corner Mall?

At the beginning of 2023, the city shut down the strip mall and International Supermarket for violating the city fire code. My mom and aunt said it was about time, saying the place had been falling apart for a while now. The potholes — quintessential to all my Asian Corner Mall memories — had worsened.

Soon, Asian Corner Mall will become townhomes. The people are still here, just changed — like they did when they started over in a new country and when they left their odd jobs for new careers. My mom still sees our family friend who now works at another supermarket, which mainly sold Hispanic goods but expanded to Vietnamese groceries to fill the hole left by Asian Corner Mall. The bánh mì shop moved across the street. Since New Century was separate from the main strip mall, it and the bakery inside remain, but the butcher’s window is empty, and the sugarcane machine has been cold and unused for years.

I don’t live in Charlotte anymore. I’ve traded it for Chicago, where I live walking distance from Asia on Argyle, a shopping street filled with predominantly Vietnamese businesses. It was important to me to be close to my heritage.

When I get the chance to go home, I plan my stay around Sundays. Our routine is similar, but the places we go are different. My mom tells me there’s a new bánh mì shop that we need to try. I ask for tofu pudding from New Century.