The folks at Pearl River Mart have created a collection of branded merch from Chinatown stalwarts — Hop Kee, Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, Xi’An Famous Foods, and of course Pearl River itself — to benefit Chinatown businesses and non profits. Called the Chinatown Collection, there will also be contributions from comic book artist Jerry Ma and filmmaker Ursula Liang, among others.

The merch is available on the Pearl River site here. Ninety percent of proceeds will go mostly to the businesses, but some will go to Pearl River for their share of production costs. The remaining 10 percent will help fund Chinatown initiatives that were founded during the pandemic and are still trying to help patrol the streets, feed the elderly and build outdoor structures for businesses.

“So many groups popped up during the pandemic — which really speaks to the neighborliness and increasing activism of Chinatown,” said Joanne Kwong, president of Pearl River. “These are in addition to the many official non profits in the neighborhood, like Hamilton Madison House, MOCA, Chinese Planning Council, Charles B Wang Community Health Clinic etc. Since the new ones are not registered 501(c)(3)s and there are so many good causes, our plan was to pool the money and every time we reach, say, $500 or $1000, distribute it and highlight the good work of that group.”

The businesses and restaurants of Chinatown have been suffering from the pandemic like everyone, but they had an unfortunate head start when reports of a deadly virus first emerged out of China in January.