Pan, 25, closed his bar in Shenzhen after a COVID outbreak in March, saddling him with over 100,000 yuan in debts. Youth unemployment has remained high, reaching a record 19.9% in July, the fourth month in which the rate had broken records. “The rising popularity of this car boot sale market has helped me tide over the most difficult of times,” said Wang, who reckons he earns about 1,000 yuan a day.Ĭhina’s economy barely grew in April-June. Under a canopy extending from Wang’s van, customers relax in camping chairs, with soft lights in the evening completing the glamping experience. Wang started running his mobile coffee booth this summer, after car boot fairs emerged in big southern cities like Chengdu, Chongqing and Guangzhou. This year, the spread of the Omicron variant across China was the final nail in the coffin, making his group tours to the Chinese backcountry impossible. Overseas group tours he used to organize also took a blow that year, with a lucrative trip to see the aurora borealis cancelled, costing him hundreds of thousands of yuan in lost earnings. Wang, 40, gave up a bricks-and-mortar coffee shop in Tianjin in 2020 when the pandemic first hit. Hospitality, tourism and after-school tutoring have been particularly hard hit. Once considered too low-status for many, peddling wares on the street has made a comeback as people who lost their jobs or closed down their businesses seek new ways to make a living and work around China’s relentless anti- COVID policies. Since June, Wang has driven his mobile coffee booth from car boot fair to car boot fair, offering hand-brewed coffee steeped in an assortment of liqueurs. BEIJING – When the COVID-19 pandemic forced Wang Wei to shut his tourism company, the Tianjin native poured his life-savings of 80,000 yuan ($11,785) into selling coffee from the back of his green Suzuki micro van in the Chinese capital Beijing.

Dasboot cheers