When it opened in 2019, Traditional Guilin Noodles in Monterey Park was the culmination of Rui Ping Wu’s dream: A cozy location in the heart of the city, right next door to the beloved Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where large and loyal groups of avid dancers were a built-in clientele for a savory menu that put its own spin on Guilin noodles and other traditional Chinese dishes.
All this in a San Gabriel Valley city that draws customers from around Southern California for some of the best Asian fare around.
Flashforward four years, and Rui Ping and her son Zhen – and their modestly numbered team – have ridden a rollercoaster ride to this week, when they received a $5,000 check, courtesy of the California Restaurant Foundation’s Restaurants Care Resilience Fund, a statewide fund supported by SoCalGas and other utility companies. It offers grants to help qualifying independent small businesses pay for equipment and technology upgrades, unforeseen hardships, and to retain employees in hard times.
In the scheme of things, a $5,000 grant may not seem like a ton of money, but in Monterey Park you’ll find businesses such as the Wu family’s still struggling to emerge from two major shocks: the pandemic and the mass shooting.
Here, every bit counts, as Zhen and his mother said this week. It means the ability to pay utility bills going into a hot summer. It’s the ability to keep a team member employed. It’s the ability to survive another month.
“She doesn’t speak English, but she wants to thank everybody,” said Zhen Wu, a soft-spoken aerospace engineer turned business owner with his mother, who quietly worked the counter as he spoke to a handful of local media in the business’ outdoor patio this week.
The check presentation, which drew representatives from SoCalGas, the foundation and city officials, was a glimpse yet again of a Monterey Park business community still emerging from the economic toll of the mass shooting on Jan. 21, and the…
Read the full article here
