Why Are the Chinese Restaurants Closed?

I love Chinese food. I eat Chinese food on average twice a month. Since the Coronavirus outbreak intensified in early March, I noticed a lot of the Chinese restaurants in the Binghamton area have closed.

One of the Chinese restaurants I frequent the most is New Panda on West Main Street in Endicott. The food is very good and being that it's very close to my house, it's very convenient as well. I noticed they haven't been open since I returned from vacation on the 14th of March.

So today I did a Google search to try and find out why all the Chinese restaurants are closed. I didn't find any search results for closed Chinese restaurants in the Binghamton area, but I did find an interesting article on Today.com that shows it’s not just the Chinese restaurants in the Binghamton area.

In the article that was posted on March 10th., they spoke to a couple Chinese restaurant owners across the country who said that business has dropped off so much that they had to lay off some employees. One owner said that their business was down almost 60%.

Especially early on, I've heard the Coronavirus referred to as the “Chinese Virus” because that's where it stemmed from. I'm sure some people are avoiding Chinese restaurants just because of that. That would not deter me at all.

The report also referenced “racist fear-mongering”. I hope the people that work at the local Chinese restaurants aren't being accosted or worse yet threatened. I remember after the 9/11 attacks there were reports of Muslims being threatened and harassed around the country, even though they personally had nothing to do with the attacks and most of them were American citizens. I hope that's not the case here.

I have checked Chinese restaurants in Endicott, Endwell, Binghamton, Johnson City, and even one in Vestal, and I still have yet to find one that is open. I even called New Panda today and an answering machine picked up. The message said they would be closed until the end of the month.

So my question to you is, do you know of any Chinese restaurants in the greater Binghamton area that are still open? And, is the food good?

[via: Today.com]