Fung Shing opens for Christmas [1]
Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 16:52. Updated on Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - 16:36.
Rising from the ashes, a new Fung Shing Supermarket was opened for business at Fasi mo e Afi on Wednesday December 19.
Yu Wei, the manager, said that they were very happy with the completion of the supermarket before Christmas.
"We are very excited to be back in business again, and it is to welcome Christmas."
The company is constructing a $3 million 1600 square meters double storey building with the supermarket on the ground floor. Yu Wei expects that the construction of the second storey will be completed by the end of February 2008.
"We have put all our efforts into this and we are very happy," said Yu while pointing to his mother and younger sister Michelle on the cash registers serving customers.
The building will also accommodate a restaurant, a karaoke bar and a photo shop. The rest of the building will be rented out as office space for interested businesses.
The construction is taking place on the site of the former Fung Shing Business Centre that was burned to the ground on November 16, 2006.
Yu Wei said that the rebuilding of the China Town Hotel and other destroyed branches of the family business remains on hold. "We are just taking things, one step at a step."
Exceptional
The Fung Shing Supermarket is the first of all the businesses in Nuku'alofa were gutted by fire to have been rebuilt and opened for business.
This is an exceptional come back by the Tongan-Chinese family business owned by Raymond and Ellen Yu, who suffered massive losses during the riots of 16/11. Their newly renovated China Town Hotel, the Fung Shing Photo Shop and their Business Centre at Fasi, were all looted and then torched, while their family home was looted. At the time Yu Wei estimated the family losses amounted to $11.7 million pa'anga.