Chinese students open businesses

Deft hands slam moist fish heads against chopping boards. Giant, overworked fridges drone. Workers call to one another in rapid-fire Chinese. Amid the chaos, Qun Sun weaves through aisle after narrow aisle of towering shelves.

At Asia Mart in Indianapolis, he picks through racks crammed with freeze-dried seaweed, pickled Chinese mustard leaves and pearl-toned melamine bowls painted to look like fine china. He selects tins of ginger, jasmine and oolong tea leaves, shaking each one close to his right ear.

He’s quite a tea aficionado, he says. He knows which tea sells best. For Sun’s new Chinese restaurant, Lotus Garden, it is critical to choose tea that complements the dishes.

Sun grabs yü yuan, or fish-meat balls, for hot pot — a soup-like dish containing meat and vegetables. Then pastes, powders and oils for dishes with names like chuan pao yao hua — pork kidneys — and hong you chao shou — wontons in chili oil.

He jerks to a halt. “Where’s my list?”

The grocery list — scribbled in Chinese on a crumpled sheet of notepaper — is important but not necessary. After months of making this weekly shopping trip, Sun already knows exactly what he needs and where to find it.

But he still worries. There is a lot at stake. One mistake could put his investment in Lotus Garden, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, at risk.

He finally finds the list under a pack of dried lotus leaves he sifted through a moment before and jams it into his side pocket.

“Sometimes I’m not very careful,” he says. “Now I have to practice not to do it. Every mistake will add to the cost of my restaurant.”

A 21-year-old junior at IU, Sun owns Lotus Garden with three other Chinese students. It is the first restaurant he has ever owned. And it’s only the second job he has had.
As the major shareholder, Sun takes charge of most business planning, people management and other day-to-day duties.

He is part of a growing breed of young Chinese students establishing businesses in Bloomington.

Lotus Garden offers authentic Szechuan food. 3Xs Delivery offers barbecued meat and vegetable kebabs — popular street food in China. MoNo Beauty Shop sells cosmetics imported from Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Someone recently offered to sell Sun Joyce Chinese Restaurant and Karaoke, which is currently being built in downtown Bloomington.

Along with the influx of Chinese nationals pursuing higher education in the United States, the Chinese student population at IU has tripled to more than 3,000 within the last five years.

This has created a greater demand for authentic Chinese food, retail and other services. It has become a viable market that Chinese students themselves, typically in management-related academic tracks, are moving to cater to.

These Chinese student-entrepreneurs all share common motivations to gain experience in real-world business outside the classroom. They also want to achieve some form of independence from their parents’ financial support.

Sun’s primary source of inspiration is his father, a prominent businessman in their hometown of Yantai in northeastern China. The elder Sun owns businesses dealing in food, medicine and coal.

When Sun noticed the opportunity to set up a restaurant because there was “no real Chinese food” in Bloomington, he turned to his father.

The experience of operating a small business would help him understand the process of running a big one, his father said.

Since opening Aug. 1 last year, Sun said Lotus Garden is packed to the brim most nights, especially Fridays. The 14-space parking lot fills fast.

The emerging trend of Chinese-student enterprises contributes to more diverse cultural and business landscapes in Bloomington. But for these young student-entrepreneurs, it is simply a matter of learning how to juggle between roles.

It’s simply about growing up.

***

Mandarin is spoken around corners in IU academic buildings. Along dorm corridors. From the next table in a dining hall.

In fall 2009, there were 1,008 Chinese students enrolled at IU. Two years later, there were 2,289. The number rose to 3,078 in fall 2013. A majority of the foreign students on campus are Chinese.

The same is often true at many other American universities.

The Open Doors 2013 report, released by the Institute of International Education in November, revealed that China, the top place of origin, contributes to almost 30 percent of the international student population in the U.S. — up from 15 percent five years ago.

Mainland Chinese enrollments in American higher education institutions increased by 21.4 percent in the past academic year, to 235,597 students.

For the same year, Indiana is listed as one of three states with the highest rates of growth in international student enrollment — a 10-percent increase.

Chinese student organizations, primarily the IU Chinese Students and Scholars Association, present their culture in highly visible ways on campus, entertaining large crowds during spring and mid-autumn festival celebrations.

Off-campus, Chinese students flock to restaurants for a taste of home. 
 
“Of course more Chinese students make a difference,” said Kathy Tzeng, a long-time Bloomington resident.

Tzeng opened Lantern House in the 1970s, which she says was the second Chinese restaurant in town. She is now one of five owners of Mei Wei, or “delicious flavor,” a Chinese restaurant that opened in February last year.

The Bloomington restaurant scene has evolved over the past 40 years, she said. These days, people can afford to eat out at restaurants more frequently. The increase in wealth typically means Chinese students are dining out more and ordering more expensive dishes.

Lotus Garden is one of 21 known Chinese restaurants in Bloomington, and the only one run by students.

When designing the menu, Sun placed emphasis on catering to Chinese students’ tastes, choosing to include more atypical dishes like “bullfrog with Sichuan peppercorn,” “Thai-style pig ears” and “lamb testicles with cumin.”

Sun searched the Chinese immigrant community to find a chef, placing ads in national Chinese-language publication “World Journal.”

Early last year, Hao Yu boarded a Greyhound in Flushing, N.Y., for Bloomington. He was selected as Lotus Garden chef from eight other applicants.

Yu received about $4,500 along with a 10-percent share of profits at Lotus Garden. Sun provided housing for Yu and his kitchen aides.

After less than a year, however, Yu chose to leave. His last day was March 26. Sun said the split was amicable.

Yu has been replaced with two chefs. Like Yu, they are from China and were previously based in New York City. Like him, they make above-market wages.

Choosing to pay his chefs higher wages makes good business sense, Sun said. It serves as an incentive, enabling them to develop a sense of ownership and loyalty to Lotus Garden.

“If (other restaurants) want to hire my chef, if they want to pay more salary to hire him — if he goes to their restaurant, we will close,” Sun said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

***

To strangers, Sun introduces himself as “Blake.” To his friends and others in the Bloomington Chinese community, he is addressed affectionately — sometimes teasingly — as Sun lao ban, or Boss Sun.

As a freshman in 2011, Sun got a job working at Wright Food Court. He worked hard and enjoyed the experience, he said, but it didn’t satisfy him for long. The following year, Sun decided to open a restaurant.

Sun wasn’t able to take the mandatory Integrative Core component of the Kelley School of Business curriculum because he spent the summer working to launch Lotus Garden. Unwilling to delay his graduation date, he decided to transfer to a management track in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

“I didn’t want to wait half a year — what a waste,” he said. “The tuition can’t buy the experience I have here.”

Though supportive of his dreams, Sun’s family feared he was taking on too much.
Now, nine months after opening Lotus Garden, Sun says he has finally proven himself. He is able to cover all his expenses, from tuition fees to trips abroad during school breaks.

Sun admits he is not doing as well in school as he used to, but it is a sacrifice he said he is willing to make.

He developed a strong sense of independence growing up. From the age of 11 through 18, he attended boarding school, returning home on occasion.

His upbringing, Sun said, has taught him not to fear difficulties and to find solutions to problems despite the circumstances.

Sun invested about $50,000 in Lotus Garden, almost twice the amount each of his co-owners contributed. Eighty percent came from regular allowance provided by his father. The rest were loans from two of his roommates.

He spent almost $100,000 remodeling, replacing equipment and fixing plumbing in the building — a property along North Walnut Street that used to house Korean eatery Shin’s Family Restaurant. He pays about $4,000 a month in rent.

The goals he set when starting out were easy to achieve, Sun said. Such success has spurred him on to take more risks in his business and prove naysayers wrong.

“In the past, I’m like a child in the family,” he said. “So they tell me what should I do, what shouldn’t I do. And educate me — a lot. I want them know I do the right thing now. And now I see — I think they are proud of me.”

***

Chinese students are not too fond of American food, said 3Xs owner and IU sophomore Xiong Xiong.

“We miss Chinese food a lot,” she said. “That’s why we start food businesses.”

3Xs is named for the three female delivery business partners — Xiong, Rui Xu and Xianglin Wu. Two male co-owners handle grilling of the meat and vegetable kebabs, made with ingredients from Kroger on a grill bought from Walmart.

Unlike many other Chinese parents, Xiong said, hers encourage pursuit of other interests beyond her studies.

Xiong, like Sun, is a SPEA management major. Like Sun and Yuan, her entrepreneurial endeavors are part of self-improvement efforts.

“I realized how hard it is to earn money,” she said. “It’s an experience I can look back on and tell my grandkids how, when I was in university, I had a business.”

MoNo Beauty Shop sells cosmetics through a registered vendor account with e-marketplace AliExpress.

Due to MoNo’s success, owners Mei Yuan and Huan Zhang have a team of ambassadors representing the business in other American colleges. They plan to expand to an online store soon.

There isn’t a formal estimate of the total number of Chinese student-owned businesses in Bloomington. No one keeps track, or is able to, since businesses are either listed under other names for legal reasons, or not registered at all.

For unregistered businesses, transactions are made over the phone or online, usually through Chinese social media platforms like Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat.

Other Internet-based businesses include the popular dai gou — “purchase on behalf” — system, where Chinese students take orders for goods in the U.S., which they bring to clients during visits home.

Due to high tariffs and unavailability of certain products in China, this is an easy and lucrative enterprise.

These business-savvy student-entrepreneurs have the advantage of growing up in a China that has opened its doors to foreign influence, said Dan Li, associate professor of international business at the business school.

The country underwent drastic changes following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. China’s rapid development since then has played a big part in shaping the younger generation’s mindset, she said.

“They have all kinds of resources,” Li said. “They’re sensitive to business opportunities. They’ve seen more successes in China than failures. They have everything any entrepreneur could dream about.”

Yajing Chen, a graduate assistant with the IU Office of International Services, said difficulty in finding a job in the U.S. due to immigration regulations pushes international students to seek opportunities for business experience in other ways.

An overseas experience never means only an academic one — running a business is part of the learning process.

While there are more business opportunities in China, there is a more structured, but open, business environment in America’s more mature market, Li said.

“The issue is uncertainty in China,” she said. “In the U.S., rules and regulations are written out. In China, there are many hidden rules. Things are ruled by who has the power at the moment. Compared to the risks in China, people choose to migrate their wealth abroad.”

Sun said Lotus Garden has enabled him to foster many new relationships within a diverse community.

Frequent customer Larry Singell, executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has begun to develop a close friendship with Sun, rooted in shared knowledge of Chinese language and culture.

Singell said he is impressed by Sun’s maturity and business acumen.

“A good part of learning in college is what’s called collateral learning,” he said. “Students who demonstrate these kinds of skills — willing to take a risk, observe and find a need, then be able to provide and serve that need — they’re going to be quite successful later in life.”

***

Weekly grocery days are always the same for Sun. A full day of traveling, shopping, and bargaining in Indianapolis and a night of waiting tables back at the restaurant.

Sun typically works four days a week. Lotus Garden, with its stained glass lamps, floor-to-ceiling tinted windows and traditional Chinese paintings stuck haphazardly onto scarlet, plum and olive-colored walls, has become an important training ground for him.

It is where he faces constant challenges and works to achieve his goals.

At 21, Sun is at least 15 years younger than a handful of his employees.

“Maybe they think I’m just a child,” he said. “But yeah, I am the boss. I’m learning how to manage, to explore what’s the way I should use.”

In February, Sun and his partners put the restaurant on the market for more than twice their initial investment. They received offers from several Chinese students, but Sun ultimately decided to keep the business.

Lotus Garden is a responsibility he is not yet willing to shed. Motivated by past successes, he believes there’s still more he can do.

He wants to construct a mini garden, featuring a lotus pond, in the vacant lot beside the restaurant.

Sun will graduate in May 2015. Even if he goes to a different city for graduate school, returns to China or starts new ventures, Sun plans to keep Lotus Garden, preserving it for a steady flow of income.

He offers an ancient Chinese proverb — qi hu nan xia. Once you’ve mounted the tiger, it is unwise to get down. There is nothing to do but ride on.

“Just like I have started and I run it, I must keep it going, going further,” he said.

Even Sun’s greatest mentor, his father, has begun to see the change in him. Now Sun is able to hold his own in father-son conversations — voicing his own opinions and partaking in a mutual exchange of ideas.

“From a boy to a man — I need to think about myself, about my life,” Sun said. “I’m not a child anymore.”