The Avocado Lady was closed today. The Avocado Lady, for those of you who don’t live in Shanghai, is the nickname for the woman who runs a little grocery store that’s legendary among Shanghai’s foreigners for stocking hard-to-find global ingredients, and equally impressively, finding anything you ask for.

Urban legend has it that a foreigner wandered into her fruit-and-vegetable shop, which was like every other fruit-and-vegetable shop, and asked if she had avocados at a time when no avocados were to be had in Shanghai. She found ‘em, word spread, she kept finding things, and a legend was born.

But I digress. The Avocado Lady NEVER closes, ever, except for three days during Chinese New Year. So the news, we knew, would not be good.

And it wasn’t.

Turns out that the Avocado Lady’s mother, Madam Jiang, died from complications of a debilitating stroke she’s suffered over the summer.

It was Madam Jiang who started it all: she first came to Shanghai from their hometown in Nantong, laying out her produce on a cloth on the ground at the outdoor market on Wuyuan Lu.

Her daughter, Jiang Qin, joined her in 1990, after graduating from high school. Before she was the Avocado Lady, she was the Egg Lady: they specialized in quail eggs, and sold enough to rent a small space on Wulumuqi, opposite where they are now.

In 1997, they rented half the space they’re in now, an old state-owned shop called Crimson Peak. Until her stroke felled her, Madam Jiang—bent almost horizontal--would walk to the store, and perch on a stool, observing the proceedings, proceedings that she had started with her humble cloth on a Shanghai street.

Rest in peace, Madam Jiang, and thank you.