By Xiaoya Yuan
When the pandemic shut down New York City, WeChat stepped in to connect struggling restaurants with customers stuck at home.
Can you imagine ordering groceries on WhatsApp, having someone to deliver it to your door, and then paying them in person? Well, that was basically the life of the Chinese population in New York City during the several months of COVID-19 lockdown starting March 2020. Instead of WhatsApp, however, all of this happened on a similar Chinese platform, WeChat.
With the virus being mistakenly associated to their ethnic identity, the Chinese community had experienced racist insults on top of increasing difficulty to survive. Due to shrinking business and fear for the spread of virus, Chinese restaurant and grocery store owners were forced to close their physical storefronts and shift entirely to online operations. Countless WeChat groups were created by these owners overnight to continue their business. Meanwhile, when the few Chinese delivery services that were available suddenly became overbooked, it was WeChat that filled the gap, thus becoming a necessity for Chinese families undergoing quarantine in New York City.
Originally a simple messaging app, WeChat has since then expanded into a multifunctional digital tool popularized by the global Chinese community. During the pandemic lockdown, it was these savvy businesspeople that best knew how to employ WeChat’s functions. Typically, a seller would create a personal memo that included the menu of the day alongside pictures. Depending on stock, the menu would be updated daily. The memo would then be shared with the group members. Any member who would like to place an order could check their items of choice and send it back to the seller with their address attached before receiving a manually input order number.
Once the seller had gathered the day’s orders, a message would be sent to the group with all order numbers and respective totals for each buyer. Order modifications were allowed but required that one reaches out to the seller personally. Everything was based on the communication in a chat window powered by WeChat. On the day of the delivery, the seller delivered the order at an agreed time, which tended to be flexible since so many Chinese households were voluntarily practicing self-quarantine. As the buyers received their order, they would directly pay the delivery person. The rule was cash only.
While there are several Chinese neighborhoods in New York, most WeChat businesses were located in Flushing, Queens. This was partly due to the quantity and variety of businesses in the area, and, of course, the massive Chinese population in the proximity. The sellers and buyers in a group were then first and foremost Flushing residents. Their physical proximity made the deliveries rather easy and efficient. As the group grew bigger, however, the range extended. For some popular businesses, first came the Long Island City buyers, then people living in Mid-town and Greenpoint and, eventually, everywhere in Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Unlike mainstream services that usually had a maximum distance that they could deliver, a Chinese business could never turn down their customers, even ones who were so far away.
Mr. Wang, who asked to only go by his last name, owns a dumpling shop in Flushing and was running his business on his WeChat group, “Northern Homemade Dumplings,” during the lockdown. While before the pandemic, he served freshly boiled dumplings in his restaurant, he now sold frozen dumplings in bags to the house. In the first month on WeChat, he only delivered in his neighborhood, but as his reputation as the “king of dumplings” spread, more demands came from all over the city. He decided to deliver to more areas but, for business efficiency, only on certain days of the week. The first time Wang came back from Brooklyn, he sent a message in Chinese to his WeChat group that said, “My heart was moved by how affable Brooklynites were.” Someone in the group replied, “We Brooklynites are good people.”
It all happened spontaneously, but WeChat was indeed a good choice for operating businesses online. Many mainstream delivery sites were charging a 30% commission fee and more if restaurants didn’t deliver themselves. This means that businesses that were already struggling could make roughly one third less from each order after the platform charge. In order to get by, some businesses raised the price of their delivery orders or opted to use cheaper ingredients; others retreated entirely from third-party platforms, and instead, operated solely on their own websites albeit at the cost of lower patronage.
The success of WeChat during the pandemic can be attributed to the balance between the sellers and customers. Operating on WeChat is free of charge for both parties: businesses are able to earn the full amount while keeping high-quality products low-priced. Furthermore, the online space created by WeChat had enabled a line of direct communication, making the platform more personable. Customers and sellers spoke directly with one another about their questions and needs which reduced misunderstandings and frustrations common in delivery businesses.
Meng Wang, who worked as a manicurist pre-COVID, was a WeChat buyer during the lockdown period. Originally from Liaoning Province, China, Meng now lives in Flushing with her husband and in-laws. Because of the elderly family members, Meng’s family had strictly followed the quarantine guide and remained home for at least four months. Having relied completely on these grocery services, she expressed gratification that her family were able to feed themselves when grocery shopping and delivery were not available elsewhere.
“When my husband and I first proposed to start working again, my in-laws wouldn’t allow it,” said Meng. They eventually agreed because there was really nothing else to do if staying home. Now, Meng partnered with her husband to deliver for Fantuan (meaning “rice ball” in Chinese), an Asian food delivery app. Apart from delivering, Meng also initiated a side business of selling snacks in bulk on WeChat, which made her a seller herself. Though it had attracted very few customers. Meng remained optimistic and was determined to return as a manicurist when it “gets better.”
For Mr. Wang, WeChat gave him an opportunity to continue life during the lockdown. Aside from selling frozen dumplings, he also shopped groceries for his customers for a mere 15% tip. He wouldn’t reveal how exactly the business went compared to pre-COVID, but he was surely keeping up with life.
In a way, WeChat enabled a digital extension of Chinese spirit that was physically distant from the diasporic Chinese community. It gathers Chinese people from different backgrounds in the same online platform to focus on the collective goal of survival.
The massive Chinese user base on WeChat was an important factor at play. Because of the existing users on WeChat, sellers only needed to promote their businesses, and group messaging is a function that worked well for this need. In most cases, a seller’s acquaintances were the first buyers to join a group. Happy with their order, these buyers would invite their own friends to the group, and more friends, and so on. It was all based on word-of mouth advertising, which was also free. Furthermore, group messaging also broke the rule that only friends can message one another. Now strangers could chat together in an online space, which was how WeChat shopping communities were formed. Mr. Wang’s dumpling group, for example, gradually became a Chinese-language community where customers learned from one another about dumpling recipes and talked about their personal lives.
There were all kinds of other WeChat groups. Yunong Jiao, an overseas Chinese student and a home cook, now lives with her three cats in Long Island City. During the lockdown, she was active in a group created solely for the Chinese residents in her building, and another for “shovelers,” a Chinese nickname for cat owners, in her neighborhood. In her building group, there were more than three hundred members. During the lockdown, the main function had been for people to share the most recent COVID-19 news, international regulations that affects their travels and legal status, and COVID-related products. A mother in Yunong’s group once asked for recommendation of indoor fence to keep her kid inside. “People want free-range chicken, not children,” Yunong joked. In her other group, it was more common for members to share photos of their cats as a way to relieve stress.
Meanwhile, these groups were also a platform to share grocery delivery information and sometimes to “split an order.” Members in the group compared the groceries they purchased to find the cheapest, best-quality choices. For those families that didn’t consume enough food to meet the order minimum, like Yunongunong who lived alone, you could find group members to combine your checklists in a single order. This helped prevent ordering too much on your own, so the food wouldn’t turn stale and go to waste. Further, you might as well share the fixed delivery fee, which can sometimes be expensive for someone living outside of Flushing.
During the pandemic, many major food websites and writers were advocating for care and support for the restaurants and food businesses. While it is certainly appreciated if one could leave a 50%, sometimes 100% tip, it is questionable whether people who didn’t should be judged morally. Some people simply couldn’t afford it. Food prices were already higher than usual after the lockdown and all the panic shopping. Many lost their job and stable income. Those who didn’t could be paid less or later. For someone like Yunong, who was not eligible for the Economic Impact Payments from the US government and who was not able to go back to China due to travel restriction, there were no other choices but to keep living the New York City life, relying entirely on her savings. Of course, she wouldn’t starve her cats, so finding the best, affordable food and making the most out of it became her motive to keep life going.
In the group Yunong was in, no one was judged. In fact, this might be a win-win situation because the sale was the same for the seller, and they would save so much time from carrying the delivery to each door in a building. In a way, this made more orders and deliveries possible. For Yunong, it had also been a cherished moment when the delivery arrived. She would put on her mask and go to her upstairs neighbor. The few minutes they spent together to sort out and pick up the grocery items was the only human interaction Yunong could afford during self-quarantine.
It has now been almost a year since the first major COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. As states and cities reopen and vaccines are distributed throughout the country, life seems to have returned to a new normal. The demand for delivery services on WeChat has dropped, and hence the gradual disappearance of WeChat groups that once helped the Chinese businesses and families to stay together. But the digital food community is not just an ephemera; it will always be there for the Chinese in time of emergency.
Xiaoya Yuan is a first-year MA student in Food Studies, and her main interest is in food, media and diaspora.