China's main trade fair, which usually attracts tens of thousands of buyers from around the world, opened on Tuesday with nearly empty halls; most customers stayed home out of fear of a new respiratory disease.
Exhibitors from companies all over China displayed samples of their wares -- everything from pajamas to laboratory oscilloscopes -- at booths that filled the downtown convention center here and many floors of five adjacent buildings. By the end of the day, however, many vendors were complaining that business was off more than 90 percent compared with previous years.
Sitting with a stack of brochures at a table next to a large model of a machine that fills bottles with beverages, Gary Lee complained that he had no buyers. The fair, he said, generally "is the key to our business," producing deals that account for half of his company's sales.
Bradley Xu stood in another stall where the walls were hung with more than 100 kinds of faucets, shower heads and other bathroom fixtures. He said he had signed up 40 customers on the first day of last year's trade fair but none on Tuesday. He typically racks up 20 percent of his sales at the fair here.
"Maybe some customers will not visit the fair but still plan to place orders," perhaps over the Internet, he said hopefully.
Buyers found themselves facing empty corridors on Tuesday.
"The last time, you couldn't even move through the aisles, there were so many people," said Saed Qawasmi, a trader who lives here and buys for many distributors of garments and housewares in the Middle East.
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