Sichuan native Xiao Zeng is about to shut down the convenience store she has run for several years in the Baoshan industrial area of Zhangmutou.
The fate of the store was sealed, she said, by the collapse of Hong Kong-funded toymaker Smart Union Group (Holdings) and its dismissal of thousands of migrant workers that had formed the core of her customer base.
Called the Shun Xing convenience store - which means 'smooth and prosperous' - fortune did not favour Ms Xiao as she hoped when she named her store since the demise of the nearby factory left as many as 7,000 workers in Zhangmutou and 1,700 in Qingyuan unpaid and jobless.
Its failure forced dozens of small shops in the neighbourhood out of business and Shun Xing is among the last left standing, but will close after the Lunar New Year. 'I am packing up and returning to Sichuan after the spring holidays,' said Ms Xiao, whose two neighbouring Sichuan store owners had already shut up shop and headed home. 'Workers have gone and there is no business.'
She said her monthly income dived 90 per cent in the past three months and the store was now losing money.
The world's financial turmoil has not only snared a large number of factories in industrialised base Guangdong, but also hit hard local economies and social stability. Zhangmutou, for instance, hit newspaper headlines for all the wrong reasons after the township government was widely criticised for using about 24 million yuan (HK$27.23 million) in taxes to cover unpaid wages for Smart Union's 7,000 workers.