Jin Xia, 68 years old this year, is the owner of Nanping Snack Bar in Xita Street of Shenyang.

In the mid-1990s, She had been working in restaurants in South Korea, and often went to Sungnyemun Gate in Seoul to watch people sell bungeo-ppang (a fish-shaped pastry). She found that it was very popular in Seoul and the process of making it was not difficult.

At the beginning of 2000, Jin Xia planned to set up a snack bar in Xita Street of Shenyang. At first, she just sold gimbap, bungeo-ppang, and tteokbokki (spicy stir-fried rice cakes). As for bungeo-ppang, the sales were low, and people didn’t know it. Only a few South Koreans came to buy it, but when they bought it, they bought a lot, often 10 or 20 at a time. Among them were many international students, some of them were from Liaoning University and Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Sometimes they found it and said, “Oh, there is a snack bar selling bungeo-ppang!” It seemed that the taste of bungeo-ppang could remind them of life in South Korea.

Nowadays, both South Korean and Chinese customers come to the Nanping Snack Bar to eat bungeo-ppang. Sometimes the parents wouldn’t want to come, but their children would pull them into the snack bar. Therefore, the number of guests gradually increased. Tourists from other places always said to Jin Xia, “I saw it on the Internet.”

Now in Xita Street, especially from last year, there has been many people selling bungeo-ppang. Some of them used to work in Jin Xia’ s Nanping Snack Bar as servers. So bungeo-ppang got popular quickly in recent years.