The Asian antique shop was founded in 1888 and hopes to move back in time in 2020

At F. Suie One Co., one of the oldest Asian antique stores in the United States, time feels abstract.

A 15th century Cambodian wooden Buddha stands near the kitschy 1960s Chinese alarm clock with the face of Mao Zedong. A carved Rakshasa stone head from Indonesia from the 9th century stares into a room in which a Chinese ceramic rider from around 200 BC. is on display. A 1930s rickshaw stands near the front door on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

For the owner Leslee Leong, whose grandfather with a migrant background founded the company in 1888, it always seemed as if F. Suie One, like his goods, would stand the test of time.

“We had periods of great festivals and periods of great famine,” said Leong, her mother telling her. “She said we just drove through them all. Sometimes the economy was good. Sometimes the economy went under. … We continued. ”

But that’s 2020. And in this pandemic year that was particularly cruel for small businesses, 75-year-old Leong ponders something that has always seemed unimaginable: the end.

“I’m not trying to think about it,” added Joe Schulman, her 78-year-old husband.

Even for a place as famous as F. Suie One – run by the family that the author Lisa See (Leong’s cousin) recorded in 1995 in the bestselling treatise “On the Goldberg: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of a Sino-American Family” – this one Year was brutal.

“It is somewhat amazing that a family business is still doing somewhere after 132 years,” said Paul Little, executive director of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. “This pays homage to the dedication, hard work and ingenuity of the family, their expertise and dedication to their customers.”

That year, Leong gave a collection of family papers and photographs, business records and other materials from F. Suie One to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

“Sino-American history has been neglected for a very, very long time,” said Li Wei Yang, curator of the Huntington’s Pacific Rim Collections. He said entering F. Suie One was like “entering a living history, like a museum”.

But nowadays it is difficult to get people interested in Asian antiques. The trade is now dominated by large auction houses.

“Small family businesses like this have a harder time surviving,” said Yang. “It would be a huge loss if F. Suie One closed its doors one day.”

Businesses along famous Colorado Boulevard, part of Route 66, have closed in recent months. With coronavirus cases and deaths in the middle of the holiday shopping season, non-essential retail stores are limited to 20% capacity in most parts of California, and health officials are telling a weary public to stay home.

Little says he is primarily concerned about locally owned companies that are struggling to meet ever-changing health restrictions and that have depleted little local, state and federal support they received as the pandemic wore through extends into the ninth month. Distraught shopkeepers call him about every week and ask, “What should I do? How should I go on? ”

F. Suie One, rated non-material at the start of the pandemic, closed for a few weeks this spring before reopening by appointment only.

A US $ 10,000 Small Business Disaster Relief Scholarship from the city of Pasadena helped buy personal protective equipment and build the first website for the 132-year-old company, relying almost entirely on word of mouth and people who happened to walk through it.

“Our daughter said we were hopelessly out of date,” noted Leong.

But the days without a sale stretched out for weeks. Even after the personal purchase store reopened, there were few customers.

“When the pandemic started, it was next to none of our business,” said Schulman.

Still, buying antiques is addicting, Leong said, and “collectors can only last that long”. Customers started trickling in around October when, as the couple said, people just seemed tired of staying home.

As they spoke with the front door open to improve ventilation, cars sped by on Colorado Boulevard. Coronavirus numbers could skyrocket, Schulman said, but you would never know if you looked outside.

“This is a shutdown, isn’t it? When they originally switched off, a car drove by every three minutes, ”he said. “Now look at the traffic. It was just weariness staying home. Fatigue not to buy. We have something Companies.”

But it’s a fraction of what it used to be. So Leong and Schulman started putting more items up for auction. Some pieces that have been in the family for generations are now for sale.

“It took us a hundred years to decide whether to sell,” said Leong, pointing to a huge, intricately carved wooden bed from 19th century China. But it is time to “be realistic” for the future.

F. Suie One was founded by Leong’s grandfather, Fong See, a Chinese immigrant who came to the United States in 1871 at the age of 14. Twelve years later, the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration.

In Sacramento, a young lake made a name for itself by selling crotchless underwear made from Chinese silk to brothels.

“He had fancy underwear for women,” said Leong with a laugh. “Very fancy underwear,” she said, “fancy white ladies.”

Finally, see Letticie “Ticie” Pruett hired as a saleswoman. Leong said her grandmother, a white woman, could talk to customers in ways that as a Chinese gentleman he couldn’t.

See and Pruett, who all had a keen business sense, quickly fell in love. But interracial marriage was illegal in California. In 1897 a lawyer had a social contract drawn up between the two to formalize the union.

Pruett encouraged her husband to expand the lingerie business and sell antiques. They moved to up and coming Los Angeles and started a business. They operated several branches throughout the Southland.

Regular customers at F. Suie One, according to Leong, included Frank Lloyd Wright, famous interior designer Tony Duquette, and Hollywood filmmakers, who used the store’s wares to build movie sets that looked like China.

F. Suie One’s regular customers over the years have included Frank Lloyd Wright, famous interior designer Tony Duquette, and Hollywood filmmakers, who used the store’s wares to build movie sets that looked like China.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

F. Suie One moved to its current location in the early 1980s, a two-story building with green awnings on East Colorado Boulevard near Pasadena City College. The rooms are a jumble of art, furniture, and collectibles. A drafty warehouse in the background is filled from floor to ceiling with things that don’t fit in the front.

Schulman, a writer and cameraman who collected Asian art, walked your front door for the first time in 1994. Leong – then a single mother of two small children who ran the business alone – promptly pushed him out in the middle of the day. She had to close the shop so she could pick up her daughter.

Schulman came back. They understood each other.

“I wanted to buy antiques …” he said.

“… which I wasn’t one of,” she teased. “He’ll try to say I’m an antique.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

They married in 1999. After describing how they met, they were haughty.

The Septuagenarians find that they are getting older and that their children, who have had successful careers of their own, are not going to take over the shop, which still has a painting of See, a man who celebrated his 100th birthday, in the living room.

“We have no plans to retire,” Schulman said. “We love to do that. But we won’t live forever. ”