JANVI TOURS

In modern Guangzhou City, chain stores and supermarkets are everywhere. Such as Seven-eleven, Circle K, C-store, etc. But when we look back to our old Canton, deep into the alley of Sai Kwan, those “Sido” we can still see today, were indeed the paradise for everybody’s childhood and teenagehood.

“Sido” is the transliteration of “store” in Cantonese(we will write “sido” as “store” in the rest of the article). In the 1980s, small stores were very commonly seen in HongKong, and because of their British influence, they would call these stores in English instead of Cantonese. Gradually, its name and popularity had been spread to Guangzhou, but Canton people directly transliterated the word “store” into a Cantonese pronunciation, “Sido”. After 40 years, stores had become one of the most important parts of Guangzhou’s custom culture as well as local people’s life.

From the outside, these stores look like mini-supermarkets where people can find almost everything on the shelf, like daily necessaries, snacks, drinks, ice-cream, rice, soy sauce, etc. All the goods are displayed on the shelf orderly, and the storage space is being very well-used that is various but not messy.

They lie in the heart of old Guangzhou, on the alleys and streets with neighborhood people passing by every day. They’re usually quite small that not more than 15m², and all with similar furnish and decorations. The front door is always the most eye-catching spot where the store owners showcase cigarettes on the sidewall. Behind the newspaper-size glass frame, different brands of the cigarette with a variety of colors of packaging create a typical “store look”. Most importantly, there’re always small stools in front of the stores that were never empty. Children, teenagers, or senior citizens like to seat on the stools and chat with friends with a bottle of drink. And that is why these stores are so deep into Guangzhou people’s hearts as there are really beautiful memories within them.