Stepping Out of the Gate: After Two Months of Shanghai Lockdown
I moved to Shanghai in December 2021, and soon I had to stay at home for the entire two months. Starting at the end of March, the Shanghai government implemented a strict lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak and split the city into two parts by the river Huangpu. First, they shut down the eastern part, Pudong, and then, Puxi, west of the river.
I got lucky living in Puxi, where the “city closure” started on April 1, which was four days later than in Pudong. Unfortunately, I hadn't stepped out of my community until late May since then.
The definition of “city closure” in China is not only shutting down entertainment places, public areas, and restaurants, but it also restricts everyone from basic needs, such as grocery shopping. We could not leave our residential community unless we worked in transportation, delivery, or the medical field.
I was trying to get used to the absurdity. During the two-month lockdown, my daily living included going downstairs to do PCR tests, panic-buying food online at the beginning, and joining group purchases in the community chat group. Food was the most concerning problem at first; people did not expect a lockdown for more than four days, and this was the period the government told us. After four days, the Pudong lockdown wasn’t released, and after another four days, neither was Puxi. The restriction was endlessly extended without an official date for when to be free.
I still believe I was a lucky one. In March, my employer sent our computers to our homes. I was able to keep working and have a stable income during the difficult time, while many people were suspended without pay or even lost their jobs. My company also delivered a total of eight packages of food and daily supplies to us. I had more than enough food and gave some of mine to my friends by booking a delivery service online and passing them to the riders through the gate of my residential community.
At the beginning of May, I started to be emotionally unstable. The period of lockdown was beyond my tolerance. I thought the end date would be no later than May, as the rumour said it would. Some of my friends found their way to leave Shanghai, and they were charged expensive taxi fees, and it was difficult to book a flight or a train ticket. I felt powerless to fight for anything; I could not afford the cost to leave Shanghai and my job at the moment. At the same time, I felt hopeless and anxious about the situation, and finally, I had a panic attack.
I was overwhelmed by an overload of information from social media. There was countless unceasing and distressing news — a pet Corgi was beaten to death by a community guard because the owner was sent into isolation, bad isolation places for people who caught COVID, someone was forced to be quarantined even though test results showed negative on the “Health Cloud” app, deaths related to delayed medical care and suicide. Some audio recordings of these incidents were collected and edited in a montage video, “Voices of April”, which went viral in one night. It soon got censored in China, and even the word “April” could not be found in Internet search results in China. Articles that were relevant to these “sensitive topics” were also censored and disappeared.
In late May, residential committees from the “prevention area” started to send us passes to let us go out for two hours of grocery shopping per day. In my community, it lasted for five days before the “city closure” was fully lifted on June 1, but did not include the “closed” and “control” areas, which still had positive cases in the past seven days.
Simply going to the grocery stores and for a walk cheered my day. I could eventually live like a normal person. My friends made up my birthday celebration, but there are more things that I cannot make up — I couldn’t go back to my hometown, Macao, after my sister gave birth to her first baby in April.
These brutal restrictions have never ended completely, as things can’t go back to “normal” truly. I needed to take a PCR test every 72 hours or 48 hours on some occasions so that I could be allowed to take public transportation and enter my workplaces or public places, such as malls and restaurants. Some buildings would still be in lockdown once one of the residents tested positive.
While a lockdown like this can arise in such a large city with a population of nearly 26 million people, it is inevitable that this also happens in other provinces in China. The voice against China’s zero-COVID policy and other strict measures has been accumulating, and so the Beijing Sitong Bridge protest was meant to take place.
Oct, 2022
I got lucky living in Puxi, where the “city closure” started on April 1, which was four days later than in Pudong. Unfortunately, I hadn't stepped out of my community until late May since then.
The definition of “city closure” in China is not only shutting down entertainment places, public areas, and restaurants, but it also restricts everyone from basic needs, such as grocery shopping. We could not leave our residential community unless we worked in transportation, delivery, or the medical field.
I was trying to get used to the absurdity. During the two-month lockdown, my daily living included going downstairs to do PCR tests, panic-buying food online at the beginning, and joining group purchases in the community chat group. Food was the most concerning problem at first; people did not expect a lockdown for more than four days, and this was the period the government told us. After four days, the Pudong lockdown wasn’t released, and after another four days, neither was Puxi. The restriction was endlessly extended without an official date for when to be free.
I still believe I was a lucky one. In March, my employer sent our computers to our homes. I was able to keep working and have a stable income during the difficult time, while many people were suspended without pay or even lost their jobs. My company also delivered a total of eight packages of food and daily supplies to us. I had more than enough food and gave some of mine to my friends by booking a delivery service online and passing them to the riders through the gate of my residential community.
At the beginning of May, I started to be emotionally unstable. The period of lockdown was beyond my tolerance. I thought the end date would be no later than May, as the rumour said it would. Some of my friends found their way to leave Shanghai, and they were charged expensive taxi fees, and it was difficult to book a flight or a train ticket. I felt powerless to fight for anything; I could not afford the cost to leave Shanghai and my job at the moment. At the same time, I felt hopeless and anxious about the situation, and finally, I had a panic attack.
I was overwhelmed by an overload of information from social media. There was countless unceasing and distressing news — a pet Corgi was beaten to death by a community guard because the owner was sent into isolation, bad isolation places for people who caught COVID, someone was forced to be quarantined even though test results showed negative on the “Health Cloud” app, deaths related to delayed medical care and suicide. Some audio recordings of these incidents were collected and edited in a montage video, “Voices of April”, which went viral in one night. It soon got censored in China, and even the word “April” could not be found in Internet search results in China. Articles that were relevant to these “sensitive topics” were also censored and disappeared.
In late May, residential committees from the “prevention area” started to send us passes to let us go out for two hours of grocery shopping per day. In my community, it lasted for five days before the “city closure” was fully lifted on June 1, but did not include the “closed” and “control” areas, which still had positive cases in the past seven days.
Simply going to the grocery stores and for a walk cheered my day. I could eventually live like a normal person. My friends made up my birthday celebration, but there are more things that I cannot make up — I couldn’t go back to my hometown, Macao, after my sister gave birth to her first baby in April.
These brutal restrictions have never ended completely, as things can’t go back to “normal” truly. I needed to take a PCR test every 72 hours or 48 hours on some occasions so that I could be allowed to take public transportation and enter my workplaces or public places, such as malls and restaurants. Some buildings would still be in lockdown once one of the residents tested positive.
While a lockdown like this can arise in such a large city with a population of nearly 26 million people, it is inevitable that this also happens in other provinces in China. The voice against China’s zero-COVID policy and other strict measures has been accumulating, and so the Beijing Sitong Bridge protest was meant to take place.
Oct, 2022