In a Montenegro town with fewer than 20,000 people, one Chinese couple quietly runs the only Chinese variety store 🇲🇪

We recently stumbled across “KINESKI BUTIK” in the coastal Montenegro town of Tivat 🇲🇪 — and what first caught our attention was the storefront itself: giant red “中国” characters, glossy swimsuit posters, faded early-2000s design choices and a very unmistakable Chinese small-shop aesthetic 💖 that almost feels frozen in time beside the Adriatic Sea.

Curious, we walked in.

The shop sells surprisingly affordable everyday goods and summer essentials: slippers 🩴, bowls, T-shirts 👕, tape, scissors, towels, sunglasses 🕶, swimsuits 👙 and beach bags — basically the kind of place where you somehow find exactly what you suddenly need 🫣

The owners, Lin and Shen, are from Fuqing, China. Before Montenegro, they spent two years doing business in South Africa, where they said armed robbers stormed into their shop multiple times, fired guns into the ceiling, and took all their money. After it happened six or seven times, they decided to leave. Lin’s older brother had once lived in the former Yugoslavia and recommended Montenegro to them, so the couple eventually moved there without speaking English and knowing almost nothing about the country. Fourteen years later, this tiny shop has become their life here.

And Montenegro gave them what they were looking for most: safety. Today, they work from around 8am to 9pm almost every day except Sundays, while keeping close ties with family back in China. They told us they enjoy life here because people are warm, straightforward and uncomplicated. Customers rarely bargain, and many locals have become friends. While we were there, one local customer walked in saying “Nihao,” and another casually offered Lin a cigarette while chatting.

Visitors often remember the couple for being friendly and always smiling.

They also added “中国” to the storefront after meeting a 70-year-old Chinese auntie traveling solo in Montenegro. Chinese customers are rare here, but they wanted the shop to feel like a tiny piece of home.

When we asked if they would return to China one day, they said maybe for retirement — but they would definitely miss Montenegro’s simple life, friendly people, slanina, and ćevapi.