I think you know the answer to that question. It’s down. You know, it’s down. It’s been down for a month and a half. It’s going to go down more. This is not the bottom.

Hi, yes, we’re reporters. We’re asking how businesses are doing in Chinatown right now. You’re smiling.

Everything is running slow. We’re doing half of what we’re used to doing this morning, 50% less than before. Easily 60%.

No, I’ve never seen it before. Never, never in my life. This is a serious epidemic.

Have you ever seen it like this before?

Here in New York City, business owners in Chinatown say sales are down because of widespread fear.

Within days it had expanded to the entire city by order of the government.

And earlier today, Governor Andrew Cuomo explained the extraordinary measure that he is taking to protect New Yorkers and limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Life as we know it for tourists and New Yorkers will be quite different for the time being.

Yeah. Today is still a little early, but 12:00, usually, the lunch crowd should be coming in. But now, see, we only have one person at one table. That’s an empty restaurant.

I’m about to meet the owner of this restaurant, Amazing 66, and I am just getting to the front of the restaurant right now.

So this is Stella Tan. It’s Sunday, March 15, and I am in Manhattan’s Chinatown. There are some souvenir shops open, a few bakeries and restaurants open, but also a fair number of places are closed with their gates pulled down in front or with cardboard over their windows.

My name is Helen Ng, and I am the restaurant owner of Amazing 66 on Mott Street in Manhattan. I was actually born in Hong Kong, and I came over to United States with my family and four other siblings in 1969. I’m 12 years old at the time. My parents started working in the garment manufactory. I honestly say that I started working here underage the third day that I get to the United States. I go to school, and then I go to the garment manufactory to work after school.

Very nice to meet you. Good luck. And I’ll definitely come back when it re-opens.

Thank you. I hope everybody can reopen to make Chinatown blossom again, you know, more people come back there. I just want to see the street that’s full of people instead of empty. That’s the most important. All right, well, nice meeting you.

Well, I hope you can reopen and eat all those foods again soon with your staff and your family.

From my restaurant? So many of them, you know? I have the pumpkin with the short rib. I have the chicken with garlic shallots. I have the lobster with cheese, and so many, so many.

And what’s the food that you’re going to miss the most from your restaurant?

It’s sad, you know? I mean, as I told my staff, I say, they’re like a family to me. So if I don’t see them, I feel that I’m not home. But I hope this virus will go away soon and everybody be healthy.

Since the business keeps going down and my staff is worried about the transportation when they’re traveling, I guess I have no choice but to decide to close up the restaurant as of tomorrow, the 16th. And of course I don’t really like it and I don’t want to, but I have no choice.

archived recording

While there are closures and cancellations throughout New York City, there are big crowds outside grocery stores. They are lined up around the block on the Upper West Side. The most challenging spot in any neighborhood right now — the grocery store. Regular shoppers rarely see this big a crowd here. Long lines of anxious shoppers have left shelves bare everywhere.

alexandra leigh young

OK, so this is Alex. It’s about 2:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon, and I’m standing in front of this market in my neighborhood called Halsey Traders Market, and it’s kind of like a cross between a small grocery store and what we call a bodega. It’s not a full-service grocery store, but you can come here to get a few toiletries, or some vegetables, whatever you need for the night. Yeah, I’m going to go in and I’m going to see what’s going on there. So I just walked in the front door, and there’s a lot of people here right now. So there’s about three little counters where people are checking out. Each one is pretty busy right now. There’s a line behind each one of them. I see this one woman right here at the counter. She’s buying a lot of cleaning products, like Lysol wipes and sprays. Hey. Are you JuJu? Nice to meet you. I’m not going to shake your hand, if that’s OK.

juju

I’m not going to shake your hand either.

alexandra leigh young

Great, OK. Can I get you to just say your name and what you do here real quick?

juju

Yeah, sure. My name is JuJu. I’ve been supervising this store and the Key Food down there for the past 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s just the sheer volume of customers shopping at the same time. You would think like perishable items wouldn’t be moving. I have no eggs. Yogurt is running out. Meat is running out.

alexandra leigh young

What did it feel like for you when you saw the line starting to get really crazy? What were you thinking in your head?

juju

I was nerve-wracked. I was extremely stressed. Like, yesterday I went so unprepared, bags under my eyes. I’m working 19 hours sometimes. Yeah, I’ll get like a half hour of sleep. My employees are overworked. I’m overworked. I’m shaking as I’m speaking to you now because I’m nervous.

alexandra leigh young

Your leg is shaking?

juju

I’m tired. I’m very tired. You know, I’m a cashier for five minutes, I’m stocking meat for five minutes. I’m doing everything. At one point in time there was a few shoplifters. I swear to God, I didn’t even have time talk to them. I was like — I tapped them on the shoulder, have a good day, enjoy.

alexandra leigh young

What were they stealing?

juju

Soap.

alexandra leigh young

Soap.

juju

What do you — if somebody is desperate enough to steal soap, what do you do? Have a good day, man. I don’t know if you see my eye twitching. I feel like my eye is twitching.

alexandra leigh young

Can’t tell.

juju

You know, for the past 30 years, my family’s been around over here operating. My dad is 72 years old. When he comes around here, people recognize him. So you feel bad for people. You really want to help.

speaker

How you doing?

juju

What’s going on, brother? We have no garlic. We have no onion. We have no — our refrigerators are empty. Our walk-in boxes are empty. For as long as I know my entire life, Boar’s Head never delivers on Sunday. They don’t deliver on Saturday either. They close Saturday and Sunday.

alexandra leigh young

Boar’s Head is the lunch meat?

juju

Yes, the delicatessen meats, and most popular in New York. And I called the guy yesterday and I was like, hey, listen, we don’t have anything. And the guy’s like, you know we don’t deliver on Sunday ever, right? I told him, I was like, look, if you have any common sense as a businessman, and if you have a heart, you’d get your ass up this morning, all right? And you deliver food, all right? Because people are running out. He called me this morning at 7:00 in the morning. He’s like, hey, I’m in front of the store. And he had a full truck. So he didn’t just come serve me. Boar’s Head is a really big company, but each route owner is independent. So that’s where I wanted to come from. This guy got up, left his family to do something like that. That’s something I appreciated a lot.

alexandra leigh young

When you said that you saw this line and you were nerve-wracked and you were panicked, what was the worst fear that was going through your head? Like, what were you specifically panicked about?

juju

That people wouldn’t do what I was doing, the deep breaths, that people would start fighting each other, and that we would have to handle that. Like, where’s the support that we should have from our government, right? In that scenario, what am I supposed to do, put my own life in danger, or one of my guys?

alexandra leigh young

Over toilet paper or something.

juju