As Asians Flock to Northern Virginia, Laws and Palates Collide

By THEO EMERY
Published: April 19, 2012

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — In the rear of the Great Wall supermarket here, customers linger over razor clams, frozen conch and baby smelt arrayed at the fish counter. Crabs clamber over the ice. Below, sea bass circle in glass tanks. A girl in a stroller, eye level with a school of tilapia, giggles in delight.

But other tanks are empty. The bullfrogs, turtles and eels that Northern Virginia’s booming Asian population used to buy at the counter and take home to cook are nowhere to be found, seized last year by state agents who leveled criminal charges against two managers of the store accusing them of illegally selling wildlife.

The case, which is scheduled to go to trial in June, has put culinary traditions of Asian immigrants into conflict with state laws, illustrating what some see as a cultural fault line in the changing population of Northern Virginia.

Lawyers for the store managers say that the law governing sales of live fish and other animals has not been updated to reflect advances in aquaculture, and that it is tilted against immigrants with unfamiliar cuisines and customs. In a court filing, they argue that the case “seems to be about the tyranny of the majority.”

It is clear that Kai Wei Jin, one of the managers charged, is unhappy about being in the middle of a criminal case. Mr. Jin, 25, fiddled uncomfortably with his phone during an interview, saying he just wanted to satisfy his customers.

“We’re not trying to break the law,” he said. “We just want to do business, and just support the culture.”

Lee Walker, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said that the laws were necessary to protect wildlife, and that charges were leveled only after a warning went unheeded.

“We really try to educate folks about the regulations before we ever try to bring charges,” he said. “In this case, every attempt was made to educate about what’s legal. And, unfortunately, action was not taken.”

The market, one of 11 in the Great Wall chain, based in New York, is among many businesses that have opened to cater to the Asian population of Northern Virginia. In 1980, Asians and Pacific Islanders made up 3.2 percent of the population of the four Virginia counties closest to Washington, according to census data. That doubled in 10 years, to 6.6 percent. And in 2010, Asians were 13.6 percent of the four-county area.

In Fairfax County, where Great Wall opened in 2005, 17.5 percent of the population is Asian. Most of those residents are Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean workers attracted by high-tech jobs, said Qian Cai, director of the demographics and work force group at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

Dr. Cai herself has shopped at Great Wall, and she said she had wondered whether non-Asian customers might find its fish counter offensive.

“When an immigrant community grows to such a big scale, and with a supermarket of that scale as well, it’s unavoidable, I think, that things like that would happen,” she said.

The case arose early last year after what prosecutors called a “concerned citizen” made a report of illegal sales. Officials went to the store several times and bought red-eared slider turtles and largemouth bass, which they said was labeled “mainland rockfish.” They returned last April, seizing turtles, eels, bullfrogs and crayfish, and delivered a warning, prosecutors said.

When officials returned and found largemouth bass still for sale, they said, they sought charges against the managers. Both were indicted on four felony counts, but the prosecutor later agreed to reduce the charges to misdemeanors, which carry potential penalties of jail time and fines of up to $2,500.

Some of the species fall under a broad category of wildlife that cannot be bought or sold, while sales of largemouth bass are forbidden because it is a native game fish. Crayfish can be sold, but the store lacked permits, according to prosecutors’ court filings.

Lawyers for the store managers say that categorizing the fish and other creatures as wildlife does not make sense, because they were farm-raised for eating. Receipts filed with court motions show, for example, that some of the turtles were raised in Oklahoma. The bullfrogs were shipped from the Dominican Republic. The bass and some eels came from a Pennsylvania fish farm.

A Great Wall store in neighboring Maryland makes for a study in contrast. The fish counter there has many of the creatures that have vanished from the Virginia store. Turtles labeled “farm-raised” paddle in one tank, selling for $9.99 per pound. At the counter, mesh bags bulge with live bullfrogs for $5.99 a pound.

John C. Carter, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said his client was a reluctant culture warrior who would be happiest if a judge dismissed the charges. If the charges stand, they intend to challenge the law at trial.

The state does not track how often it has brought charges in similar circumstances, but Mr. Walker estimated the number to be about a dozen in the last five years. Such cases tend to end with a guilty plea and a fine.

Accusations of cultural insensitivity often arise when states try to enforce laws on live-animal sales, making officials reluctant to clamp down on violators, said Patrick Kwan, the New York state director of the Humane Society of the United States.

“It’s brought up as a defense, but it really has no legitimacy, because that’s not what this is about,” he said. “People are not enforcing the law out of racial or cultural insensitivity — they’re enforcing the law.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/us...s-collide.html