Bowen Yang was running late. He’s usually very punctual, he claims. But the Saturday Night Live star admits he was busy spending the day trekking around Atlanta — where he was visiting his sister — shopping and running errands at three different Asian supermarkets.
The all-important question: Which Asian supermarket is his favorite? “Obviously, H Mart is king,” Yang says of the beloved Korean-American national grocery chain. However, he’s hesitant to pick just one. Yang cites a Chinese market called Jusgo and “a bunch of Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Malaysian stores around that area [in Atlanta] that are all heavenly, and that did bring me back to childhood.”
Many Asian-Americans and children of immigrants can relate: Being able to connect to culture, even in the smallest of ways, like via a supermarket, can help one stay grounded. After all, food is a reminder of family, history, and home. “I hadn’t been to a store like that in a year or so, and God, the sensual memory of it all,” Yang says. “It is so powerful that it’s emotional. You feel like you’re connected to it.”
As for Bowen’s origins, he was born in Australia to two very science-inclined parents from China; his mother was an ob-gyn and his father is
