ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2004 I was volunteering for the Senior Day Care Center at the Chinese American Cultural Center (CACC). One Friday morning, a female social worker came in and announced that the day's outdoor activity was a trip to Egg Store, a small Mexican grocery store in Bridgeport. Some seniors got very excited, immediately exclaiming, “I want to go. I want to go!” They could not wait to sign up. Why was Egg Store so popular among the Chinese? What made it so special that even Chinese seniors who could barely walk steadily were eager to go there? When I moved in with the Lu family later, I realized that Egg Store functioned as the virtual Chinese community center in Bridgeport. It not only sold fresh Chinese fruits and vegetables at a lower price than ethnic Chinese stores nearby, but provided free Chinese-language newspapers. Inside the store, Chinese of various ages, neighbors, and friends greeted each other in Mandarin or Cantonese, housewives chatted, and children ran around. Parking was always difficult to find at Egg Store, and even people from Chinatown came to shop there. For many Chinese immigrants in Bridgeport, Egg Store had become a natural landmark, a taken-for-granted presence in their daily lives, and a Chinese space.
