‘It’s Completely Empty’: Coronavirus Fears Take Toll On Chinatown Businesses

If you happened to swing by the New Golden Gate Seafood restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown this week, you might’ve been confronted with the worst sound you can possibly hear in the restaurant business: silence.

On a recent weeknight, not a single customer was in sight. The only movement in the dining room came from the lobsters crawling inside a tank against the wall.

“After Chinese New Year, normally we are very busy,” said May Deng, the restaurant’s cashier. “Right now, there should be at least five tables.”

But instead, Deng walked through a dining room where only a server sat at a table, his head burrowed in his arms, apparently sleeping.

“There are no customers, so there’s no work to do,” Deng said.

Other Chinatown business owners said they are experiencing the same thing. The outbreak of the new coronavirus that continues to spread in China is starting to have an economic impact here. After news last week that a Boston man who had recently traveled from Wuhan, China was the state’s first confirmed case of coronavirus, the normal flow of customers has evaporated.

Read the rest of the story at WBUR’s website.