Time feels summary at F. Suie One Co., one of many oldest Asian vintage shops in the US.
A Cambodian fifteenth century picket Buddha stands close to kitschy Sixties Chinese language alarm clocks with the face of Mao Zedong. A carved stone Rakshasa head from ninth century Indonesia stares right into a room the place a Chinese language ceramic horseman from round 200 B.C. is on show. A Nineteen Thirties rickshaw is parked close to the entrance door on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.
For proprietor Leslee Leong, whose immigrant grandfather established the enterprise in 1888, it all the time appeared as if F. Suie One would, like its wares, stand up to the check of time.
“We had durations of nice feast and durations of nice famine,” Leong stated her mom informed her. “She stated we simply rode by means of all of them. Generally the financial system was good. Generally the financial system went down. … We stored going.”
However that is 2020. And on this pandemic 12 months that has been particularly merciless to small companies, Leong, 75, is considering one thing that all the time appeared unimaginable: the top.
“I attempt not to consider it,” added Joe Schulman, her 78-year-old husband.
Even for a spot as storied as F. Suie One — run by the household that creator Lisa See (Leong’s cousin) chronicled within the 1995 bestselling memoir “On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-12 months Odyssey of a Chinese language-American Household” — this 12 months has been brutal.
“It’s considerably astounding {that a} family-owned enterprise continues to be working anyplace after 132 years,” stated Paul Little, chief government of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. “That may be a tribute to the dedication, arduous work and ingenuity of the household, their experience and the dedication to their clients.”
This 12 months, Leong gave the Huntington Library, Artwork Museum and Botanical Gardens a set of the household’s papers and images, in addition to enterprise data and different supplies from F. Suie One.
“Chinese language American historical past has been uncared for for a really, very very long time,” stated Li Wei Yang, curator of Pacific Rim Collections on the Huntington. He stated strolling into F. Suie One is like “strolling into dwelling historical past, like a museum.”
However today, he stated, it’s troublesome to get folks occupied with Asian antiques. The commerce is now dominated by massive public sale homes.
“Small household shops like this, it’s more durable for them to outlive,” Yang stated. “It might be an amazing loss if F. Suie One have been to shut its doorways sometime.”
Companies all alongside famed Colorado Boulevard, a part of Route 66, have closed in latest months. With coronavirus circumstances and deaths hovering within the midst of the vacation procuring season, nonessential retail shops all through most of California at the moment are restricted to twenty% of capability, and well being officers are pleading with a weary public to remain dwelling.
Little says he worries particularly for domestically owned companies which might be struggling to navigate ever-changing well being restrictions and have used up what little native, state and federal help they obtained because the pandemic stretches into its ninth month. Distraught retailer house owners name him about each week, asking: “What am I imagined to do? How am I supposed to maintain going?”
Deemed nonessential early within the pandemic, F. Suie One closed for a number of weeks this spring earlier than reopening by appointment solely.
A $10,000 catastrophe aid grant for struggling small companies from the town of Pasadena helped buy private protecting gear and to construct the primary web site for the 132-year-old firm, which relied virtually solely on word-of-mouth and individuals who occurred to stroll by.
A 1st or 2nd century Buddha from the Gandhara interval is without doubt one of the oldest items at F. Suie One Co. in Pasadena. The shop was based in 1888 in Sacramento and is without doubt one of the oldest Asian antiques shops in the US.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Occasions)
“Our daughter stated we have been hopelessly outdated,” Leong famous.
However the days and not using a sale stretched into weeks. Even after the shop reopened to in-person procuring, clients have been few.
“As soon as the pandemic began, it was subsequent to no enterprise,” Schulman stated.
Nonetheless, shopping for antiques, Leong stated, is addicting, and “collectors can solely maintain out for therefore lengthy.” Prospects began trickling again in round October, when, the couple stated, folks simply appeared to be bored with staying at dwelling.
As they spoke with the entrance door open to enhance air flow, automobiles rushed by on Colorado Boulevard. Coronavirus numbers could also be skyrocketing, Schulman stated, however you’d by no means realize it by trying outdoors.
“It is a shutdown, proper? After they initially shut down, there was like one automobile passing each three minutes,” he stated. “Now, have a look at the visitors. It was simply fatigue of staying dwelling. Fatigue of not shopping for. We bought some enterprise.”
However it’s a fraction of what it as soon as was. So, Leong and Schulman began placing extra gadgets up for public sale. Some items which were within the household for generations at the moment are on the market.
“It took us 100 years to resolve to promote this,” Leong stated, motioning towards an infinite, intricately carved picket mattress from nineteenth century China. Nevertheless it’s time, she stated, “to be lifelike” in regards to the future.
F. Suie One was began by Leong’s grandfather, Fong See, a Chinese language immigrant who got here to the U.S. at age 14 in 1871. Twelve years later, the U.S. handed the federal Chinese language Exclusion Act of 1882 that barred Chinese language immigration.
In Sacramento, a younger See made a reputation for himself by promoting crotchless underwear constituted of Chinese language silk to brothels.
“He would have fancy underwear made for girls,” Leong stated, laughing. “Very fancy underwear,” she stated, for “fancy white women.”
See ultimately employed Letticie “Ticie” Pruett as a saleswoman. Leong stated her grandmother, a white lady, may discuss to the feminine clients in a means that, “as a Chinese language gentleman, he couldn’t.”
See and Pruett, who every had a pointy thoughts for enterprise, shortly fell in love. However interracial marriage was unlawful in California. So, in 1897, they’d a lawyer draw up a social contract between the 2 to formalize the union.
Pruett inspired her husband to increase the lingerie enterprise and begin promoting antiques. They moved to a burgeoning Los Angeles and arrange store. They ran a number of branches all through the Southland.
Common clients at F. Suie One, Leong stated, included Frank Lloyd Wright, the famed inside designer Tony Duquette, and Hollywood filmmakers who used the shop’s wares to construct film units that appeared like China.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Occasions)
F. Suie One moved to its present location, a two-story constructing with inexperienced awnings on East Colorado Boulevard close to Pasadena Metropolis School, within the early Nineteen Eighties. The rooms are a warren of artwork, furnishings and collectibles; a drafty warehouse within the again is stuffed flooring to ceiling with issues that don’t match up entrance.
Schulman, a author and cinematographer who collected Asian artwork, first walked by means of the entrance door in 1994. Leong — then a single mom of two younger kids who was operating the enterprise alone — promptly pushed him out in the course of the day. She needed to shut the shop so she may choose up her daughter.
Schulman got here again. They hit it off.
“I used to be seeking to purchase antiques …” he stated.
”…of which I used to be not one,” she teased. “He’s going to try to say I used to be an vintage.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
They married in 1999. After describing how they met, they high-fived.
The septuagenarians understand they’re getting older and that their kids, who’ve their very own profitable careers, gained’t be taking on the shop, the place a portray of See, a person who lived to see his one hundredth birthday, nonetheless hangs within the entrance room.
“We don’t have any plans of retiring,” Schulman stated. “We love to do that. However we gained’t reside ceaselessly.”
