tourism

BEIJING — China’s consumption recovery from zero-Covid is getting off to a solid start – after a depressing fourth quarter.

When Michelin-starred restaurant Rêver reopened Thursday from a Lunar New Year break, it was fully booked, said Edward Suen, chief operating officer of the Guangzhou venue. Reservations for the next three days were near capacity, he said.

He’s hopeful business improves this year – and allows Rêver to recoup the roughly 35% in revenue it lost last year. Guangzhou city was one of the hardest hit by China’s Covid controls in late 2022, before Beijing abruptly ended most measures in early December and a wave of infections hit the country.

“Last Christmas, it was the first time in three years we didn’t run a full house, because quite a lot of people made reservations but then they got infected,” Suen said. He co-founded Rêver in June 2020.

In a down-to-earth Chinese city known worldwide for its Cantonese cuisine, Rêver is exploring a new market by serving modern French cuisine, with a multi-course dinner priced at 1,280 yuan ($183) or 1,680 yuan.

For the year ahead, “we try to be a little bit conservative on how things go,” Suen said. “Because everything’s changed so fast and so sudden in these days.”

In 2022, China saw one of its slowest years of economic growth in decades. Within a retail sales slump of 0.2% to 43.97 trillion yuan ($6.28 trillion), catering sales dropped by a steeper 6.3%.

More recent data show Chinese consumers are starting to open…