锦绣中华-Splendid China, 太古广场-Pacific Mall, 城市广场-Market Village
Duelling malls
The massive Pacific Mall has a new competitor across the street. Welcome to Splendid China Tower, which ramps up the Asian influence at Steeles and Kennedy in Markham, writes ANDREA LAU
ANDREA LAU
Special to The Globe and Mail
Painted gods and heroes stare from behind the glass of the curio shop, their porcelain gazes alternately imposing and beneficent. Their faces are straight out of legend: There’s the fearsome red-faced Guan Yu, an ancient warrior deified by folklore and famed for his bladed spear, standing on the same shelf as Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy and compassion worshipped by Buddhists and Taoists alike. The god of longevity, with a twinkle in his eye and a peach in his hand, boasts a long white beard, individual wisps frozen, yet still fluffy.
The detail is amazing, as is the $880 price tag on the back of his head — auspicious, though, as the Chinese equate the number eight with good fortune. The crowd around the cash register, however, is more interested in something being advertised for a dollar. What are they all looking at? Tiger’s-eye prayer beads? Jade pendants? No . . . plastic cellphone charms.
Elsewhere in the mall, business is slow on this bitingly cold weekend. Many vacant and papered-over storefronts await customers with written signs chirping, “Exciting new retail!!! Opening soon!!”
Competition between malls speaks to the growing confidence of the area’s many prosperous Chinese-Canadian suburbanites. Splendid China Tower, the latest Asian condo mall to spring up at Steeles and Kennedy, may aim to become the biggest one in North America, but as yet it is still depending on overflow from Pacific Mall across the street. Over there, intergenerational families and courting couples flock to buy ginseng and abalone and pirated DVDs, to drink bubble tea and eat pastries of red bean and lotus paste, to haunt the arcade and sing karaoke.
“We don’t want to compare,” says Paul Jone, the owner of Visar Realty Inc. Brokerage, which is marketing Splendid China. He explains that the neighbouring malls will work together in bringing increased prosperity to this span of the Markham border. “We will be complementary to each other, not competition. But Splendid China is different — it has a more cultural perception in terms of the design and the theme.”
Amy Chan, who runs Easy Win, the convenience store right at the entrance to the mall, points out that the proximity to a GO train station makes the shopping easily accessible to those who don’t live in the area. She observes that 90 per cent of the clientele are Chinese, speculating that two-thirds are immigrants from Hong Kong and mainland China.
Ms. Chan has also noticed that visitors gravitate toward the stage in the centre of the mall, with the giant television screens overhanging it.
Sudden electronic music blares from the stage. Lissome models shuffle across the platform, rehearsing for a fashion show, and strobe lights swivel overhead. One girl steps off the stage and meets her boyfriend, who proffers a bottle of green tea.
Their hair — hers streaked straw blond, his manipulated by product into something deserving of an anime character — mark them as one of the self-identified “fob” couples that populate high schools of the Toronto suburban jungle. They are Asian teenagers, most of them immigrants, who have appropriated the derogatory term, absorbed the “fresh off the boat” insult and turned it into a subculture, melding Cantonese with English and indulging in Japanese-imported brands of decorative toys.
Clearly, Mr. Jone is not alone in succeeding in his goal to “beautify and modernize,” as he puts it, the landscape of Chinese-Canadian culture.
Jessica Wong, 21, who frequents the mall, counts a number of fobs among her close friends from the clique-driven days of high school. She self-identifies as a fob only when she listens to Cantopop music, observing that fobs rarely socialize outside of their circles. “They don’t necessarily want to fit into Canadian culture,” she says. “Fob culture arises ’cause there’s no pressure to fit in like Asians that live in the States.”
Splendid China promises to be a future locus of much fob culture. The retail condominium built from the shell of a Canadian Tire store, while not quite a tower yet, has lofty ambitions. On the ground floor, restaurant Hi Shanghai takes a page from the stylebook of Spring Rolls, with glass columns in the foyer housing elegant sprigs of flowers; meanwhile, empty fast-food stalls upstairs eerily resemble half-constructed model kitchens.
Eventually, if all goes to plan, a Jade and Jewellery Market and auction platform will add colour to these clean, minimal halls. A third floor will be home to the Festival Palace (a 35,000-square-foot banquet hall) and multiple ballrooms. An indoor garage with more than 2,000 parking spaces will welcome future patrons and connect to the main mall via a glass overpass. There will be a rooftop garden, a waterfall and a hotel.
“This mall has a lot of potential,” says Dan Ngo, who owns Update TV & Stereo. His business is based in Chinatown, but he chose to open a branch in Splendid China, betting that “in the future it’ll be prosperous.”
Not to be outdone, Pacific Mall and its sister complex Market Village announced last June their plans to expand their combined retail space to one million square feet, including a luxury hotel. The Asian theme will bring the tourists, Mr. Jone says, and “the non-Chinese shopper would be attracted by the culture.”
The goal of these cultural centres of consumerism is to bring diversity and more shopping choices to the local community in Markham. True, there is no shortage of fashion and beauty retail stores, fast-food outlets, and cellphone carriers, but the herbalists selling seeds and spores, the feng shui consultant and the traditional grand-opening potted plants wreathed in red ribbon are reminders that Splendid China is not the Eaton Centre.
