Hongkongers will be allowed to eat and drink in outdoor spaces of entertainment premises from this Thursday. This means the Expo will embrace the restart of food-tasting sessions, which have been absent for three years.

"It is anticipated that my booth will gain around fifty percent of the income from tomorrow," said a female vendor called Ying, who sells fruit at the fair.

"Customers won't believe you no matter how you tell them the products are good," she said, "unless they taste by themselves."

Allen Shi Lop-tak, president of the Expo organiser Chinese Manufacturers' Association of Hong Kong, touted the further relaxing of Covid curbs. "It would be better if we could have a full recovery of cross-border travel with China," he said.

"It will bring more customers and benefit the merchants and manufacturers a lot since they suffered a huge loss in past years," Shi said.