Vietnamese women sit on the banks of the Beilun River. They gather there to sell balms,cigarettes, and counterfeit perfume. [PHOTO BY HUO YAN / CHINA DAILY]

"Hanoi was all right compared with Ho Chi Minh City in the south, where there are a lot of Chinese companies. There are many business partnerships between Chinese and Vietnamese people in the north of the country, so people were worried about their businesses. But on May 13, the hotels in the north began refusing to take Chinese people," said the 39-year-old, who was born in Hanoi but is ethnically Chinese and has lived in China since 1979.

On May 14, Ding and some other Chinese businesspeople rented a bus to travel to Ping-xiang, a journey that was tense, but uneventful. However, just one day later, some of Ding's business friends who were returning to Pingxiang in a rented bus were stopped and robbed.

"Usually, I travel to Hanoi three or four times a month, but I haven't dared to go there since my last trip," Ding said.

"Although the Vietnamese government is taking action, such as compensating companies for damage and loss of business, offering Chinese investors tax breaks and preferential land rental rates, there are very few Chinese in Vietnam now. People don't dare to go there because it's too risky. You have to be prepared to defend yourself if you go there now," Ding said. Related news

"Our business has been greatly affected because people, especially buyers from the coastal cities, are worried and are too frightened to come to the border towns. This month there has been a noticeable decrease in the number of buyers compared with last year - many Vietnamese workers have gone home, and the volume of traffic has fallen. I won't go back to Vietnam for a while. If things continue like this, the interests of both Vietnam and China will be damaged," she said.

"The Friendship Pass is seeing far fewer people, and many Chinese tourists and travel agencies have canceled their plans to visit Vietnam," she added.

Vietnam Street

On Wanwei Golden Beach in Dongxing county, more than 250 kilometers from Pingxiang, a group of about 50 people from Shandong province had stopped to eat lunch and take in the scenery around Beibu Gulf. Two middle-aged women stood in the shade and stared at the muddy waters.

The group, which had traveled along the coast from Fangchenggang, a port city in the gulf, was heading to Dong-xing to see a boundary tablet erected in 1890. The tourists also wanted to buy made-in-Vietnam snacks, wooden craftworks and rubber-soled slippers at the Vietnam Street market, on the opposite side of the Beilun River to the city of Mong Cai. Instead of going through the Dongxing checkpoint into Vietnam as originally planned, they had decided to stay in China and survey the few buildings visible on the southern side of the river, which forms the border.

Dozens of Vietnamese vendors carrying wooden bracelets chased after the few visitors who stopped to take photos beside the river. Women sat on the riverbank waiting for customers to buy balms, cigarettes and counterfeit perfumes purporting to be Chanel, Calvin Klein and other well-known brands. They all wore colorful shirts and black trousers topped off with conical palm-leaf hats and floral print masks,

Vietnam Street, a five-story market of about 500 stalls, is popular with Chinese tourists and visitors because it sells goods of reasonable quality at low prices. Recent first-time visitors to Dongxing may be forgiven for not understanding how prosperous the place usually is.

At 10 am on May 23, very few people could be seen wandering around. Lachrymose Chinese songs that were popular in the 1990s were being piped through the empty rooms.

Lin Chao, a 29-year-old Hanoi native, was selling mahogany goods on the ground floor. His family has four stalls, one each for Lin, his two brothers and his mother.

"Usually there are more people around in the afternoons, when fatigued tourists return at the end of their trip and want to buy Vietnamese products to take home," he said.

Lin started his business in Mong Cai 10 years ago, but he later moved the store to Dongxing because "it's more convenient to send the products to cities in China". To better facilitate his business operations, Lin spent six months studying Chinese in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi.

"The anti-Chinese protests are illegal, and the Vietnamese government has taken strong measures to deal with them. Vietnamese people don't want to see these protests because they will affect trade and business between the two countries. Some Vietnamese have gone home, mostly those from places where the protests have been taking place. But I don't think businesses here have been affected too badly because most have a lot of long-standing, stable customers in China," he said.

However, Wen Fengli, a 35-year-old from Wenzhou in East China's Zhejiang province, who sells Vietnamese snacks and beverages at the market, said that she has noticed a marked decline in visitor numbers.

"The effect has been huge. There are so few tourists right now. Many of our established clients have called me to ask about the situation on the border. You see, we used to be extremely busy, especially during the holidays when the market was packed with tourists. We stall-holders rarely had time to stop and chat because we were too busy collecting money from customers. Compared with the same period last year, there are far fewer tourists. Even during the low season, we usually have more customers than this," she said.

Wen has been running her stall for three years and business has been so good that she hired an assistant, a 24-year-old Vietnamese woman from Mong Cai who crosses the border every day to work in the market. The woman, who has adopted the Chinese name Huang Yunlan, said, "It's safe on the border. There's too much inaccurate gossip flying around. It's affecting our business, so I hope it stops soon."