Daily Times

As restaurants resume indoor dining and shopping malls reopen following the implementation of China’s optimized COVID response measures, cities across China have returned to their usual hustle and bustle.

“On New Year’s Eve, customers started to queue at noon,” said Sha Jingjing, the manager of a hotpot restaurant in Beijing’s Chaoyang district. “We received over 1,000 indoor diners on that day, which gave us more confidence for our business.”

Yang Xiulong, board chairman of the Beijing Yan Restaurant, a high-end restaurant chain with 30 branches in the Chinese capital, said he felt the same. “I thought it would take some time for the catering industry to recover. But, given the current situation, I believe this recovery process will definitely be accelerated,” he said. On Guijie, a street famous among spicy crawfish lovers and midnight snack seekers, many businesses have resumed around-the-clock operations.

Popular travel destinations like the resort city of Sanya or Zhangjiakou, where snow and ice sports flourish, welcomed an influx of tourists during the three-day New Year holiday, with many hotels fully booked. Staff at Pullman Resort Xishuangbanna in Yunnan province said that popular rooms were booked out a week before the holiday kicked off.