Lungdam Market
An Asian grocery store close to campus
Store manager Lia Lian pulls a pack of noodles off the shelf at Lungdam Market in Bowling Green. Lian immigrated to the U.S. from Myanmar, originally settling in Illinois. From there, she moved to Bowling Green in 2017. “There’s a lot of Burmese people here,” she says. “It’s diverse.”
May 15, 2023
Lia Lian owns and runs Lungdam Market, an Asian grocery store close to the WKU campus.
The Lian family are immigrants from Burma. Lungdam Market has only been open for a year, but was previously located in a smaller shop on Pedigo Way in Bowling Green.
When the Lian family initially moved to the U.S, Lia, who was 12 at the time, could speak very little English.
“I knew ‘how are you’ and like ‘what’s your name’ […] just the basics,” Lia said.
The Lian family lived in Wheaton, Illinois, when they first immigrated to America.
Since then, the Lian family has grown and progressed within the Bowling Green community. The family previously owned a store in Indiana, but moved their business to Bowling Green so that the family could all be closer together.
“Because we had a shop in Indiana, and our family was kind of apart, my brother who kind of does everything said we needed to open a new one,” Lia said. “We reunited the family by being in one place.”
Lia acknowledged the influx of people moving to Bowling Green both from out of state and out of the country.
“We are so diverse. There are many more people coming in here since when I came here in 2016,” Lia said about Bowling Green’s influx of immigrants and refugees.
She believes that having diverse businesses and people benefits the community of Bowling Green.
“It [businesses] brings in money, two, it introduces people to diversity, especially since we are so close to the school [WKU],” Lia said.
News reporter Bailey Reed can be reached at [email protected].
