---
title: "Enduring: Three Ordinary Years of a Supermarket Owner"
description: "Not every fate is turbulent, not every destiny is full of twists and turns; more often, it's about 'enduring' while 'living.' We interviewed a small community supermarket owner and recorded some of his 'ordinary life' over three years. In the autumn of 2019, Boss Jiang 'drank' his father-in-law into becoming an angel investor, securing his first 50,000 yuan in funding, with a one-line business plan: 'For family happiness, I want to open a small supermarket.' He immediately rented a storefront at the south gate of his residential complex and started his business."
author: "指北小付"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2023-02-25"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/enduring-three-ordinary-years-of-a-supermarket-owner-cb1bd71a.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Rb-JUvYza946-t5GJacoPQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%86%AC%E7%9D%80-%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%AA%E8%B6%85%E5%B8%82%E8%80%81%E6%9D%BF%E5%B9%B3%E5%87%A1%E4%B8%89%E5%B9%B4-cb1bd71a.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/enduring-three-ordinary-years-of-a-supermarket-owner-cb1bd71a/"
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---

# Enduring: Three Ordinary Years of a Supermarket Owner

> Not every fate is turbulent, not every destiny is full of twists and turns; more often, it's about 'enduring' while 'living.' We interviewed a small community supermarket owner and recorded some of his 'ordinary life' over three years. In the autumn of 2019, Boss Jiang 'drank' his father-in-law into becoming an angel investor, securing his first 50,000 yuan in funding, with a one-line business plan: 'For family happiness, I want to open a small supermarket.' He immediately rented a storefront at the south gate of his residential complex and started his business.

Not every fate is turbulent, not all destinies are full of twists and turns; more often, it's about 'enduring' while 'living.' We interviewed a small community supermarket owner and recorded some of his 'ordinary life' over three years.

**Angel Investment Won Over Drinks** In the autumn of 2019, Boss Jiang 'drank' his father-in-law into becoming an angel investor, securing his first 50,000 yuan in funding. His business plan was a single sentence: 'For family happiness, I want to open a small supermarket.' He acted immediately, renting a storefront at the south gate of his residential complex and starting his small supermarket business. Though called a supermarket, it also served as a grocery and sundry store. The storefront, converted from a single-story house, was quite crude, selling common fruits, vegetables, seasonings, and meats. Such small family-run shops were once common, but with economic development and upgraded logistics, they have gradually been pushed off the stage of history. Boss Jiang initially worked at a factory, where he met his current wife. After a bumpy courtship, they married. Determined to improve his family's situation, especially after having a child, he was forced to step out of his comfort zone. He got a driver's license and partnered with others to drive a taxi. Over the years, he earned some money, but with the rise of ride-hailing apps and their subsidy wars, private car operations surged, and traditional part-time drivers like Jiang were quickly sidelined. After thinking at home for over a month, he resolved to start a business. The prerequisites were that it must preserve capital and provide steady returns. After much deliberation, a small supermarket seemed most suitable: the couple could take turns managing it, and being inside the residential complex, there would be no shortage of customers. This was the origin of 'South Gate Supermarket.'

The supermarket opened, but while there was no shortage of goods, there was a shortage of customers. The biggest competitor was a breakfast shop a kilometer away. This shop, rated as the best breakfast spot in the nearby streets, had a traffic secret: the elderly men and women who held daily purchasing power would get up early, exercise, eat breakfast there, and conveniently handle most of their daily shopping. Within a few days, Jiang's vegetables wilted, and his cold meats lost their appeal. Frustrated, he realized that self-taught cooking skills couldn't match the traffic of a 10-year-old shop. To attract new customers and keep the supermarket alive, Jiang observed the breakfast shop for several days and brainstormed, spotting an opportunity: since most customers were elderly, he could meet their needs. He decided to use a free model to generate traffic, starting with free delivery—carrying items for the elderly, no matter where they bought them, right to their doorsteps. This meant providing the 'last 200 meters' within the community, free of charge, for any purchases. Whether it was this model that attracted people or the community simply needed a supermarket, the store survived, at least through the first three months.

**The Birth of a Moniker** In early 2020, the 'pandemic' arrived in Jiang's community. The community went from initial chaos to adaptation, and finally to silence along with the entire city. 'Finally, we can take a break,' Jiang and his wife initially thought, like most busy small business owners, not foreseeing what was to come. 'Even the smallest business needs cash flow; staying home means only expenses.' Jiang grew restless. Using his experience, he leveraged his 'temporary resource warehouse' appeal, luring residents from the property management group into his newly created group, named 'South Gate Supermarket: Together Through Hard Times,' and changed his nickname to 'AA, I'm the Group Owner, Eggs and Cigarettes Not Delivered Separately.' Within half a month of creating the group, Jiang was busier than ever, and all his inventory was 'delivered away.' Due to high demand, the delivery system soon became appointment-based. Seizing this opportunity, Jiang transformed from a small supermarket owner into a community celebrity, becoming 'AKA Old Jiang.'

As the pandemic fluctuated, 'AKA Old Jiang's' South Gate Supermarket returned to a lukewarm state when people could move freely again. Jiang was anxious, seeing only scattered income that didn't meet his expectations. 'Many people might have a period of smooth sailing, which can create the illusion that things should only get better. But in reality, not getting something and losing something are different. Compared to those who face total collapse from a single misstep, working hard and ending up with nothing is already fortunate.'

**An E-commerce Dream, Awakened** Starting in 2021, Jiang found more and more places to spend money and less and less time to sleep. But the ceiling of a small supermarket was clear; going further was difficult. Sleepless at night, Jiang scrolled through short videos, from 'chip wars' to 'catching eels.' Sometimes he'd get up in the middle of the night to check the ingredient list of his soy sauce, wondering if he should lead a boycott against 'technology and ruthless additives.' His wife would complain: 'Others make money from short videos; you just waste electricity watching them.' 'As long as you don't lose money, it's not a loss; you have the time.' Acting immediately might be the noblest quality of people like Jiang. Soon, he asked friends and relatives to help him bargain online, bought a phone stand and a ring light, and prepared to start his short-video live-streaming e-commerce venture. At first, Jiang didn't dare to go live; he could only record videos facing the screen, reading scripts while flailing his limbs to boost his confidence, working himself into a 'passionate' frenzy. He planned to start live streaming only when he could face the camera easily, not like now, stuttering, unable to lift his head or look at his hair styled with pomade. Tony, the barber, said when designing this slicked-back look: 'Confidence starts from the head.' 'Right, start from the head; while learning to apply pomade, I also became more natural facing the camera.' Once proficient, Jiang began his live-streaming journey. 'Looking back now, live streaming is quite boring; no one likes to watch ordinary, plain stories.' In his supermarket, Jiang could only talk about the products or describe how delicious the food was, but his adjectives were the kind that get muted on live streams: 'This is f***ing delicious, man, I've eaten this since I was a kid, but I don't have the ability to go from corn to sixpence.' Also, there was no traffic. 'If I had money to boost traffic, wouldn't that prove I already had money?' Now both ends were failing. Although he had a few hundred followers, his live streams never broke a hundred viewers. The 'cold start' viewers came from his vegetable delivery group or a harmony group of friends and relatives, and occasionally Tony was notified to watch. These scattered, favor-based viewers had different schedules: the vegetable group might be watching to learn how to choose laundry detergent; relatives and friends thought, 'We're all family; why not just give us the two-cent discount directly?'; and Tony, after work, would watch when Jiang was almost asleep. While embracing the internet, Jiang's offline business foundation began to shake. Customer dissatisfaction with offline service increased; sometimes he'd have to ask several times for prices before getting an answer, and delivery service slowed down. Even his biggest competitor, the breakfast shop, probably felt 'lonely at the top.' As expected, people like Jiang couldn't make money from short videos. After all, they were too ordinary. Jiang's e-commerce dream died on the eve of the arrival of the 'big brother' (top spender).

**Enduring** 'Now I truly believe that Sima Yi knew Zhuge Liang's empty city strategy, but why did he still choose to retreat?' Although his e-commerce dream was shattered, Jiang, who still watched short videos for 'lifelong learning,' had an epiphany. Because he had lost his opponent. The breakfast shop, which had been both his biggest competitor and his biggest traffic interceptor, had existed since the start of his business but finally closed at the end of 2022. Logically, Jiang should have been happy without a competitor, but after one day of joy, he realized something was wrong. Without the breakfast shop as a gathering point, Jiang's new and old customers were no longer concentrated; the lively groups that had gathered for various reasons seemed to have disappeared. The elderly returning from exercise no longer came from one direction; they no longer converged at the same gate from the same street. 'I used to wish it would close soon, but now I miss the three years of competing with it.' 'Still, embrace the internet,' Jiang said, as he started driving for ride-hailing services. Although dedicated car services offered better income, besides not having time to care for the supermarket, the monthly financial pressure on the family was much greater. 'Making a living is hard,' Jiang said in his unfamiliar Cantonese. He might not have been sad; perhaps he liked the humorous self-deprecation of the phrase as it was performed in various short videos. The ordinary Jiang's three years went from the highlight of 'Delivery Old Jiang' to 'AKA Old Jiang.' He almost became a community-level KOL, but now his identities are: father of his child, husband of the boss lady, and Driver Jiang of the ride-hailing service, as well as the supermarket owner most knowledgeable about ingredient lists on his street.

If you ever catch a ride with Old Jiang, and your phone happens to have a caller ID app, the number you see might still be labeled 'Logistics Express.'


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