Three small business owners recount how they survived amid shop closures and restaurant dine-in bans during the latest Covid-19 outbreak
The month of May in Beijing typically means sunshine, spring flowers, and folks flocking out in the evenings to hit the roadside stalls for some skewers and a beer or two.
However, on April 30, the municipal government of Beijing enforced a dine-in ban on all food and beverage venues, effective on May 1, to control the Covid-19 outbreak. This was followed by subsequent closures of parks and many other roadside businesses, effectively hitting the pause button on street life for the entire month (though in some cases, roadside barbecue and food stalls made a comeback where once they had disappeared due to gentrification).
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, Beijing had a total number of 210,000 F&B businesses in 2019. With their turnover already hard hit in 2020 and 2021, and now their customers barred from dining in, how did these venues ride out the storm? For this episode of the Story FM podcast, Kou Aizhe and co-producers chatted with three small business owners on how bans on dining in and gathering were affecting their livelihoods. Originally released on May 27, these interviews have been translated into English and published after the lifting of the dining ban on June 6, as a look back on the ups and downs of the past month.
Founded in 2017 by Kou Aizhe, Story FM is one of the most renowned podcast in China. Each episode focuses on ordinary people’s lives and viewpoints, including the difficulties of marginalized people. Through intimate and private interviews, Story FM digs out first-person experiences and lets listeners immerse themselves in another person’s voice and feelings. You can listen to their podcast in Chinese on Ximalaya, Qingting FM, Apple Podcasts, and the 故事FM mini-app on WeChat.
Translated By
Ana Padilla Fornieles is a Spanish translator, writer and creative currently based in Beijing, where she is part of Spittoon International Arts Collective and a regular contributor to The Beijinger. You can find her prose and poetry featured in The Shanghai Literary Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Womanhood, Sledgehammer and more. Her comics and linocut prints have appeared in Shaving in the Dark, F*EMS and Celestite Poetry. Her literary translation work has been published or is forthcoming with a series of publishing houses and magazines, such as Penguin, De Gruyter, Spittoon Magazine and Books from Taiwan.
