Uncertainty over the virus for China’s Year of Oxen Suppliers

WUHAN, China (AP) – Vibrant red lanterns pierce an alley in Wuhan, China, but customers only sneak in. On the corner, Gong Linhua remembered the previous years when her shop was full and the street outside was full of snack carts.

“It is the first time in 20 years of business that I am in this situation,” said the seller of Lunar New Year decorations. At 60, she is thinking about retiring if the economy does not grow.

Even in China, where COVID-19 is largely under control and economic growth has accelerated to 6.5% in the last three months of 2020, the recovery is uneven, and fresh outbreaks are diminishing business for some.

Winter has brought China’s biggest rebirth to date, with more than 2,000 new cases and two deaths in January. The number is small compared to most other countries, but enough for worried officials to limit travel and activities for the Lunar New Year, one of the biggest holidays of the year.

This is a blow to airlines, trains, hotels and restaurants and a reversal from the last major holiday in October, when tourism returned. Near the bottom of the food chain are the shops that stocked up on ornaments for the Year of the Ox.

With about two weeks until New Year’s Day on February 12, Wang Cuilan remained optimistic, even though sales have been up to half a year so far.

She and her husband have been operating a store on the alley next to the Gong store for about 20 years. Businesses have declined for hotels and entertainment venues, their customers have big tickets, so orders for decorations have also dropped, she said.

This year is worse for sales than last year. Wuhan, the city that bore the brunt of the pandemic in China, was closed just two days before the Lunar New Year in 2020. By then, most items in the Year of the Rat had already been sold.

But a few customers came last week after a brief scare from the Wuhan virus kept people at home earlier this month.

“If the epidemic situation remains stable and the weather is good, I think it will all be exhausted in the last 10 or more days,” Wang said.

Business was not the only thing on her mind. The Lunar New Year is the time when families come together. For many migrant workers, who leave their hometowns for better paid jobs, it is their only trip back each year.

Wang wondered if her 26-year-old daughter, who works in neighboring Hunan Province, would miss the New Year at home for the second year in a row.

The government has not banned holiday travel, but strongly discourages it. Many cities require more negative COVID test results for outsiders, both before and after their arrival.

“He wants to come back,” Wang said. “It will return if the government does not implement stricter measures.”

Travel by car, plane and train fell by about 75% in the first three days of the holiday travel period, which began on Thursday, according to reports from the Ministry of Transport and the state media. The ministry predicted that travel would decrease by 40% over 40 days compared to 2019.

Economic forecasters say the overall impact could be limited, as factories, shops and farms can continue to operate instead of closing for a week or more, as they usually do for the holidays.

As dusk fell in Wuhan, the Lunar New Year vendors began to bring their wares, plucking the giant lanterns one by one from the outside shelves and carrying them in boxes of stuffed toy oxen. Wang’s son and nephew helped pack her store.

Any unsold item with an ox theme will probably be canceled and discarded. In the Chinese zodiac, an animal appears only once every 12 years.

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Associated Press writer Joe McDonald of Beijing contributed to the report.