The silence at the two-floor offices of Fu Ji Food and Catering Services Holdings in Shanghai underlines an obvious fact - that the company is in trouble.
Employees at the offices in the city's Pudong district on Friday afternoon were tight-lipped, declining to comment on the liquidation process that Fu Ji would undergo, saying only that none of the firm's top managers were available.
A company official who identified himself only as Li admitted that some operations had closed recently but he declined to give more details.
'I can only tell you that the answer is 'yes' but we can't tell you which operations are closed now,' he said. 'We are busy handling many things at the moment and have no comment for now.'
The company's headquarters were indeed half-empty while there was no signboard bearing the company's name or logo.
After being told that the visitor was from a Hong Kong news organisation, a company official directed this reporter into a small meeting room, closing the door while insisting that Fu Ji had nothing to say for the time being.