Hmongtown Marketplace
Hmongtown Marketplace is an indoor-outdoor marketplace focused on Hmong American products and culture in the Frogtown neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hmongtown was the first Hmong-owned and operated marketplace in the United States and is today noted for its cuisine and produce.
Locally it is variously referred to as the Hmong Farmers Market or Hmong Flea Market, or simply "Hmongtown" to emphasize its role as a cultural hub like a Chinatown, not just a retail location.
Description
Two buildings in north Frogtown at 217 Como Ave contain more than 200 vendors who sell traditional food, clothing, and home goods especially from Hmong and Hmong American culture, including from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. The market is designed to simulate open-air markets in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Vientiane, Laos. Produce vendors sell culturally specific fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other edible plants. Hot and ready-made food vendors sell a variety of dishes such as roast meats, boba tea, papaya salad, and bánh mì. Home goods include green market, electronics, religious supplies, and garden tools. A bank branch staffed by Hmong-speaking employees was added in 2024.In the summer the market nearly doubles in size with an outdoor market in the surrounding paved lot that brings the number of vendors up to 300 or more. The outdoor market is sometimes referred to as the Hmongtown Farmers Market and sells produce as well as meat, clothing and textiles, herbal medicine, live potted plants, and home products.
The large size and foot traffic have led to the nickname "Hmong Mall of America". 600 people work inside, as many as 20,000 customers have been noted during events, and there is capacity for more than 300 stalls. The interior footpath complexity due to the many stalls has been described as "labyrinthine" and "byzantine". Because of the wide variety of products and services offered at Hmongtown, it is referred to as many different kinds of markets, such as a mall, a supermarket, a flea market, a farmers market, a marketplace, and a food hall. Locally it is variously referred to as the Hmong Farmers Market or Hmong Flea Market, or simply "Hmongtown" to emphasize its role as a cultural hub like a Chinatown, not just a retail location.
Name
The idea of a "Hmongtown", so named as a Chinatown, has been documented in the Hmong American community for some time. In the 1997 book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which documents one Hmong refugee family's difficulty with the United States' healthcare system in the decade after Hmong began seeking refuge in the United States, author Anne Fadiman details a Hmong community leader in Merced, California named Blia Yao Moua who at one point pursued a Hmong American-oriented housing complex he called "Hmongtown" which would be designed to remind demoralized refugees of Laos. Hmong American poet Bryan Thao Worra describes Fresno as a Hmong American city alongside other ethnicities, and entitles the poem Hmongtown.Hmongtown founder Toua Xiong said in 2000, four years before Hmongtown was realized, that the goal of his neighborhood business ventures were to "turn Frogtown into Hmongtown". His marketplace concept was opened as International Marketplace in 2004, and renamed Hmongtown Marketplace in 2009. Xiong has since encouraged leaving "Marketplace" out of the name to emphasize Hmongtown as "ot just a bazaar but a community unto itself."
History
Hmongtown was the first Hmong-owned and operated marketplace in the United States. The market was founded as International Marketplace in 2004 by Saint Paul, Minnesota entrepreneurs and real estate developers Toua Xiong and Nou Xiong. Hmong people were persecuted in their homelands following the Laotian Civil War known as the Secret War and the Xiongs wanted a place for first generation immigrants such as themselves to gather as though they were at home. The marketplace originally had many video stores that sold footage of and movies set in Laos and Thailand as part of that nostalgia. Hmongtown serves a similar role to the Minnesota Hmong community as Hmong villages and ethnic Hmong marketplaces in countries of origin such as Vietnam and Laos, which are cultural and social hubs.Toua Xiong spent his childhood in Laos before his family escaped to a refugee camp. He, a younger brother, and his parents joined his teenage brothers in an American-run refugee camp when he was twelve. In 1986 at seventeen years old, he and his wife Nou Vang immigrated to St. Paul, Minnesota and settled in Frogtown. In three years he gained college degrees in business and accounting. He has a master's degree in accounting.
Foodsmart
Prior to opening Hmongtown, the Xiongs owned and operated the Asian grocery store Foodsmart, part of the Unidale Mall strip mall on University Avenue in Frogtown, with a second location in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Opened around 1996 with business loans, the grocery hosted an 80 stall farmers market in its parking lot, a ready-made hot food Thai and Hmong restaurant and buffet, an event hall, and a Hmong sausage processing facility which sold 700 pounds of sausage daily. Toua's goal was to "turn Frogtown into Hmongtown".Foodsmart was involved in community initiatives: hosting the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans get-out-the-vote events and community engagement about the Metro Transit light rail Central Corridor construction in 2007. Representatives from Foodsmart served on the Central Corridor Business Advisory Council. It hosted fundraisers for local Hmong institutions such as the Hmong Cultural Center Museum, which was founded during a meeting at Foodsmart.
The New York Times recommended Foodsmart's daily Hmong food buffet in 2002. Star Tribune recommended the Thai and Hmong food in 2001. Toua Xiong received a minority business leader award for Foodsmart from Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal in 2002.
The Xiongs moved on to develop the multi-vendor International Marketplace with a goal to provide Hmong with more economic opportunity.
International Marketplace
The 6-acre Hmongtown site was previously John Martin Lumber Company, and then Shaw Stewart Lumber Company at 217 Como Avenue in Saint Paul, north of the Saint Paul Capitol building. The two original buildings remain as the East Building and West Building. Toua Xiong didn't realize the obstacles to redeveloping the property for grocery and retail when he rented it from the lumber company, having only recently become a business owner and an English speaker. Renovations to meet regulations included a sprinkler system, more toilets, exhaust fans in restaurant spaces, and an upgraded larger sewer pipe to connect to the municipal system. Despite setbacks, he opened International Marketplace in 2004. It was one of the biggest Hmong-owned businesses in Minnesota.On March 13, 2009 the Xiongs bought the property from the lumber company and renamed it Hmongtown Marketplace.
Impact
Soliel Ho for the upper Midwestern food magazine Heavy Table connects Hmongtown to wider Hmong American history and calls the marketplace "a manifestation of the Hmong community’s resilience in the face of persecution and displacement". Finance & Commerce dubbed Hmongtown a pioneer in the Asian-themed mall concept in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.Hmongtown aimed to provide a social and economic hub to newly-immigrated Hmong. It has been credited with creating hundreds of jobs and other entrepreneurial opportunities for much of the Minnesota Hmong diaspora. Most of the vendors speak only a Hmong dialect and not English, which Toua Xiong says has allowed them to maintain employment and start a business while still acclimating to America. Leases for stalls at the market filled quickly after launch, and the market has remained mostly or fully leased since then.
In 2010 Toua Xiong was awarded the Immigrant of Distinction award for his work at Hmongtown from the Minnesota-Dakotas chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Hmongtown was featured in an Emmy Award-winning episode of CNN's United Shades of America with owner Toua Xiong and local Hmong American chef Yia Vang in 2019. Andrew Zimmern featured papaya salad, fried intestines, and bitter bamboo soup from Hmongtown on Bizarre Foods America in 2012, and the popular Hmong sausage with purple sticky rice meal on Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations in 2016.
Culture
Hmong are the largest Asian diaspora in Minnesota, and Minnesota has the second-largest Hmong population in the United States. Hmongtown is a staple of local Hmong life and creates a sense of community and belonging. Less than four miles away is a similar Hmong American marketplace called Hmong Village. The markets and surrounding Asian businesses are in the Little Mekong Cultural District, a business district with a high concentration of Asian businesses and cultural sites. A University of Minnesota study reported that marketplaces are part of the Hmong community's cultural capital which provide a range of unique economic and social benefits: marketplaces "not only provide cultural, socially familiar, and communal spaces for Hmong, but also economic opportunities for small-scale Hmong entrepreneurs."While the focus is Hmong culture, the marketplace contains shops and stalls with proprietors and products from any of the cultures that can be found in the surrounding neighborhood Frogtown, which in the 20th century became the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in Saint Paul. Nepali, African American, and Mexican vendors have been noted. More than half of Hmongtown's visitors are white. Owner Toua Xiong aims for the market to be welcoming to those new to Hmong culture.
Art and crafts
Vendors at Hmongtown sell traditional Hmong textile art such as kawm and forms of Paj Ntaub such as batik dyed cloth and story cloth, which depicts scenes from Hmong life and history. Basketry includes Blue Hmong baby carriers. Embroidery thread, coins, beads, metals, and other materials for making Hmong textiles are available from multiple vendors. Some textiles are made by relatives abroad in countries such as Laos where labor is cheaper, and are later sold by family at Hmongtown. As with the worldwide Hmong diaspora, cheaper traditional clothing using polyester is machine-made in China and imported for sale. More expensive handmade textile art includes hemp skirts, batik, story cloth, and Paj Ntaub. There has been a decline in handmade textiles at Hmongtown, especially handwoven hemp and batik dyed cloth.Hmongtown provides a place to perpetuate Hmong culture such as textile art. A participant in a study on Hmong youth recalled how spending time at her mother's Hmongtown stall encouraged her to become a Hmong Paj Ntaub embroiderer: "Over winter break, my mom had a stall at Hmongtown Market so I went with her to help her. I was tired of not doing anything so I started embroidering again. That’s when I realized that if I did not continue to embroider then I would not know how to embroider in the future. And if I had children, they would not know as well, and if my sisters did not know how to embroider, there would be no one who would know."
Ten story cloths by Hmongtown textile artisans Sy Vang Lo and Khang Vang Yang were exhibited at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures and the Northern Illinois University Pick Museum. Vang Lo led the Hmong Folk Art Center in Eagan, Minnesota and the traditional work of her family is included in the Minneapolis Institute of Art collection.
Light boxes of photography from Hmong American artist Pao Houa Her, whose work was selected for the Whitney Biennial, decorate the West Building food court seating area. The exhibit is accompanied by text from Hmong American poet and playwright May Lee-Yang. Her's artwork being displayed simultaneously at the renowned Walker Art Center and Hmongtown was praised by Walker's curatorial fellow in visual arts Matthew Miranda as a "break in the art world decorum" that "subverts the white view in museums."
Other featured artists have included Tetsuya Yamada, HOTTEA, and Ka Oskar Ly.