In June, the 28-seat wine bar will open as, right in the crook of Chinatown’s most famous alley, and construction (which Shi’s been managing in Mandarin) has drawn plenty of curiosity from her Chinatown neighbors. “It is a true neighborhood,” she says. “Everyone knows each other and many families have been living here for generations.” To get the signatures for her wine and beer license, she had her dad hit the streets, activating his friends. “Half of the signatures were from elderly residents,” she says, laughing.

Surrounded by spots focused on eating — Great N.Y. Noodletown is a block away, Taiwan Pork Chop House is a few doors down — Lei will be a nice place to have a drink. “This is strictly a wine bar,” Shi says. “There’s a trend of needing an executive chef for wine bars,” but Lei will be resolutely wine centered, with a 300-bottle–long list. The first wine she bought was from Marcel Deiss in Alsace, and her list here will look at least a little similar to the French- and Italian-leaning collections she compiled for her first restaurants. Along with bottles from Germany and Austria, and producers such as Antonio Madeira from Portugal and Llamalo X from Spain, Shi is also buying some Chinese bottles from the new importer China Wine Club, led by Camden Hauge who has been seeking out natural wine upstarts from throughout the country. Lei’s opening list will offer and a sparkling blend of pinot noir and Chardonnay from Emma Gao of Silver Heights in NingXia that employs rice wine for the dosage — as well as honey peach cider.

Drawing on experiences from early years spent in Shanghai and traveling throughout the country, Shi has put together a small food menu with Patty Lee, formerly of Mission Chinese Food. They’re intentionally omitting choices such as dumplings and hand-pulled noodles (leaving those to the pros nearby) in favor of, for example, a local take on rubing, a goat cheese from the Yunnan region that can be pan-seared like halloumi, and Jinhua-style ham (typically used to flavor soups and stir-fries) from Lady Edison in North Carolina that will be sliced like a leg of jamón. “So much of this is wanting traditional flavors that need to be tweaked to work well with wine,” Shi explains. Lee, she says, “understands the reference points.” (She hauled Lee off to Westchester to figure out how to reengineer her mom’s scallion-pancake recipe: “It’s thicker, with a crispiness on the outside and a soft chew on the inside.”)

Lei is named in tribute to Shi’s sister, Hannah (Lei was her Chinese given name) who died in the Southeast Asian tsunami 20 years ago, and Shi wants the project to reflect her own story. Working with designer Rachel Jones (a childhood friend), Shi has framed the small room in warm cherry-stained mahogany — “a very small nod to the glossy red, almost lacquered furniture I grew up with,” Shi says — while the four-person bar curves with deep-green tile and wine storage is tucked in everywhere. The art in the space is largely from female Chinese artists, a curtain dyed by ​​Hsien Hua Li, pieces from Jia Sung. Across one whole wall spans a mural painted by Ivana Štulić that’s a reproduction of a 16th-century woodblock print of a classic Chinese folktale, “Journey to the West.” And in the bathroom, wallpaper that’s decorated with long-beaked cranes by the artist Dominique Fung looks like classic chinoiserie on first glance. A closer inspection reveals some of those birds are getting drunk off gourds of wine.