Reporter's diary: life has come to a never-ending standstill in Shanghai but tech helping amid Covid-19 lockdowns
South China Morning Post
5 min read
The view from my window in Shanghai still seems surreal, even after 20 days of lockdown.
Sitting by the window is my new routine - I can stare at the empty street, feel the wind rattling against the glass and hear the birds singing. This Chinese mega-city, where traffic jams used to clog the streets until midnight, has never been so quiet, with only the occasional cat and food courier driving an electric vehicle to be seen.
After three weeks of lockdown, there are still no signs of a relaxation in anti-epidemic measures. The city reported more than 17,600 cases on Friday, far away from China's 'dynamic zero-Covid' goal.
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I'm not a novice when it comes to quarantines, having been through two 14-day isolation periods last year. But the current lockdown is a totally different experience to hotel quarantine. This time the lockdown is wider, and people are having to fend off all kinds of negative news. Medical resources, for example, are depleted. A person I know has been unable to receive her kidney dialysis treatment, and she cried over the phone. I almost cried too because I am unable to help her.
Most residents did not expect an initial four-day lockdown to be extended indefinitely. A friend told me that he relied on instant noodles and bread for a week before deciding to organise group buying for his community. "I can't work until I fix my food problem," he said.
Like many young Chinese, a great deal of my life is built around the internet. My WeChat, the multipurpose super-app operated by Tencent Holdings, constantly pings with new messages. Friends share information on where to source daily essentials at reasonable prices. There are videos of difficult conditions in some mobile cabin hospitals, with patients having to set beds up themselves in some cases.
There are phone recordings of desperate conversations between people in need and frustrated officials. Some people can be heard complaining that they have received rotten food from the local government. Being locked down, I have not been able to verify these claims, but the accusations are rife on social media.
To preserve my mental health, I decide to shut off from the grim news headlines from time to time.
My dance studio offers online classes, where members can join a virtual class on Tencent Meeting and practice in front of a camera. At first the experience was not smooth, with my teacher constantly being disconnected, leaving me standing in my living room alone. But with time and familiarity, online classes have improved and I now have a sense of being able to maintain some semblance of normal weekend activity.
Group buying, supplies from my company and the local government, and connecting with others via the internet have all helped me through the bad times, but when my laptop charger stopped working, I began to panic.
Horrible thoughts entered my mind. What if I can't get it fixed? How will I survive? More mundane problems as well - such as not being able to report remotely, watch Netflix or catch up on the latest Covid-19 news.
As of now, the city has effectively no package delivery services, and going outdoors to find a local PC repair professional is impossible.
After several failed attempts to reset the battery I thankfully found a replacement cable in the back of my drawer. Crisis over. You really need to hoard things, not only food, that is one of my takeaways for living under the threat of lockdown in 2022.
Before lockdown, I was still planning a normal life in zero-Covid China, with only overseas travel off the cards. I had thought of a skiing trip in north-eastern Jilin province in early March - with hindsight I now know that my brilliant plan would have involved travelling between China's next two centres for the Omicron strain of Covid-19.
Jilin reported more than 300 cases on Friday, after a province-wide lockdown began in early March.
I only arrived in Shanghai last year, and did not visit many local supermarkets or shopping malls. That is because most of my needs could be taken care of by food delivery apps. Even if I wanted to cook something myself, I could source fresh food from apps like Hema and Meituan Maicai. Hema is operated by Alibaba Group Holding, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
Before the March lockdown in Shanghai, there were never any bans on bars and dine-in restaurant services. The daily discourse in Shanghai was always about the latest investment trends or changes in geopolitical trends. Local news was usually filled with tips on the latest delicious restaurant to open, or where to find the best cup of coffee.
But that was the past and this is now.
In the past six days, my fellow residents and I have had to walk to a local station and undergo PCR tests for four consecutive days, followed by four self-administered rapid Covid-19 tests. Although I do not understand the full scientific rationale for this amount of testing, I now see it as an opportunity to walk a bit and engage with the outside world.
A little pond at the front of my residential building has become a focal point for the community. A small boy downstairs takes a bucket to collect tadpoles from the water as he goes down to receive a Covid-19 test from local officials, returning the next day to deliver the tadpoles back. That "freedom" lasts only 10 minutes though.
I have decided to walk the 12 floors instead of taking the lift when needing to go outside for tests. I still want the use of my legs when this lockdown eventually lifts.
