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San Francisco's Chinatown, pictured in May 2020, has been hit hard by the pandemic

Features
Lunar New Year is usually the busiest period for businesses in Chinatowns
around the globe. But in 2020, it coincided with the outbreak of the
coronavirus pandemic, leaving many restaurants empty. A year on, the BBC
speaks to business owners to find out how they survived - and what's next.

Sam Wo's has been a fixture in San Francisco's Chinatown for more than a
century, but the last year has been hard.

Coronavirus has forced restaurants across the world to shut their doors, and
Chinatowns have been hit particularly hard. The virus first emerged in late
2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, leaving businesses like Sam Wo fighting Racing to screen the ‘fake heiressʼ
not just fear, but anti-Asian sentiment. story
"All the Italian restaurants in North Beach were still busy and packed and then
you went through the tunnel to Union Square and those guys had lines waiting
to get in. And then you drive around Chinatown and it's completely empty,"
recalls Sam Wo's co-owner Steven Lee, describing the weeks before shutdown
orders came in early last year.

"So we know that xenophobia was affecting small businesses. Why would
other districts be busy and we're not?"

In the 12 months since, it has been forced to cut its staff numbers from 23 to
three due to a lack of customers.
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"People wouldn't show up, they were just scared," Mr Lee tells the BBC. "We
had to rally and tell people to fight the virus, not the people and all this kind
of stuff - but it didn't help much."

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Yokohama's Chinatown pictured in 2019 ahead of the Rugby World Cup

In Yokohama, home of Japan's largest Chinatown, it went beyond just people

avoiding local businesses. Notes containing anti-Chinese messages were le
on the doors of several restaurants last March.

They were already in deep trouble financially: sales figures had plummeted to
about 10% of what they were in a typical peak period. Striking news pictures from around
the world
Yokohama's mayor came out in support of the businesses, telling local media
that he was "utterly infuriated" with the letters.

In response, locals rallied around Yokohama's Chinatown, sending messages of

support on social media, telling businesses to "hang in there" and promising to
visit their establishments.

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Yokohama's Chinatown pictured in February during the build up to Lunar New Year

And then, the shutdowns arrived, meaning the restaurants were unable to
open their doors.
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"I know many businesses in Chinatown have closed. It's terrifying," Ying Hou,
Blandʼ
who runs Shandong MaMa in the Australian city of Melbourne, tells the BBC.
"There are gi houses where tourists come to buy souvenirs - most of them
didn't make it and have closed down."

She has also suffered following the introduction of one of the strictest
lockdowns in the world in the middle of last year.

Ms Ying says her business is still making only 50% of what it was making
before the pandemic and so she has turned to making frozen dumplings that
customers can cook at home. Luckily, they sell well: Shandong MaMa is the
only place in this Chinatown to sell fish dumplings.
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Melbourne gave rent relief to many Chinatown businesses last year, but for Ms
Hou, that has now come to an end.

"If we continue paying the full rent with the 50% income, then we are really
going to go broke."

Her main goal for the next year or so? "To survive," she said.

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In New York's Chinatown, Karho Leung, founder of barber shop 12 Pell, has story 2
also thought of new ways to bring in customers.
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"Chinatown in New York City is the one place in the world that never really
closes. We don't close for Christmas, we don't close for New Years, only a Kanye West' 3
handful end up closing for Chinese New Years."
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But last year, even the essential shops had closed by May.
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"Everything was a ghost town and it was really scary to see," he said.
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When it was time to reopen, he looked at ways of preparing his business for
customers. Taking inspiration from Hong Kong, he added dividers,
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It went viral, explaining to customers what safety measures were in place.

"We saw the spike immediately and it was the busiest week we ever had in our Russia's Navalny loses appeal
lives, and then the next week was super silent," he said. "There were probably against jailing 8
fewer than 20 clients who ended up booking and then we started getting
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GETTY IMAGES

New York's Chinatown pictured in January 2021. Many businesses are finding ways to bring people back to the area

Mr Leung realised it wasn't just his business that had a lack of customers. The
shop 12 Pell is located on "barber's row" and many other stylists were just
hanging around with nobody to serve.

It was then that he decided to offer free haircuts to people who spent $45 in
Chinatown. All they had to do was show their receipts.

"We looked at our situation and we thought, we have nobody that's coming in
anyway. Why don't we offer everybody a deal?"

The company has also worked on other social media initiatives such as getting
its audience to order directly from restaurants instead of companies such as
Uber Eats.

"We were leveraging social media as a main way to push the younger audience
to come back," Mr Leung said.

GETTY IMAGES

New York's Chinatown pictured just before Lunar New Year in 2019. A year later and the city would look entirely
different

Send Chinatown Love, a group of New Yorkers, is also trying to help

businesses by working with them to start a website, create their own social
media accounts and in some cases help redesign menus and logos.

"Everything started happening around January, February of last year, which is

the most lucrative and joyous and festive times for Chinatown. They took a hit
with that business and lost most of it," Louise Palmer, a representative for the
group, said. "So they ended up going into lockdown in March at a deficit, which
kind of set a really terrible precedent for what the rest of the year would look
like."

The organisation is also promoting Chinatown on social media, creating "food

crawls" they hope will help increase foot traffic.

In San Francisco, foot traffic is already increasing. With the reintroduction of

outdoor dining, many places have put in place outdoor seating so that
customers can eat outside.

GETTY IMAGES

San Francisco's Chinatown is slowly regaining its visitors thanks to outdoor dining

It has given Sam Wo's co-owner hope.

"I was there last week in Chinatown on Saturday and it was booming," Mr Lee
said. "Actually, there were a lot of people out."

He is now waiting for indoor dining to start so people can return to Sam Wo, as
the hill-top location means outside seating is impossible. He's also ready to
open up the first nightclub in the city's Chinatown in more than 40 years,
which he hopes will also help revitalise the area.

"We're the oldest Chinatown in the country. We're the tourist attraction that
everybody comes to when they come to San Francisco. So we have to preserve
it."

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'We're celebrating Chinese New Year virtually'

12 February

Fears raised over Chinatown's survival

11 May 2020

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28 June 2020

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