The wholesale fruit and poultry market opens before dawn on Saturday and is all packed up by seven o'clock in the morning.

Each year, about 25 million birds pass through the live poultry markets in the Northeast, which mainly serve ethnic populations in urban areas.

The same day, Hangzhou also closed its live poultry markets.

"People do not like live poultry markets next door, just like they don't like fish markets," he said.

The poultry market was held in the corner of South Street and round Butter Hill.

Some of these people grew up shopping at live poultry markets in their homelands.

But the disease has killed 797 chickens in three poultry markets.

In addition, live poultry markets are common in even small towns or urban neighborhoods, facilitating avian-human-porcine contact.

H5N1 appeared to have spread throughout the nation's live poultry markets.

Yesterday, Hong Kong officials closed the territory's two main poultry markets for a clean up.