An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown
Based in Shanghai since 2014, I can share some details on why it feels so unbearable to be here right now.
Firstly, the totalitarian government have never been good at communicating anything except propaganda. So on one hand we're inundated with "Go Shanghai!" and how brave volunteers distribute food, on the other hand, we're completely in the dark about what's going on. Goalposts are being moved daily, rumors proliferate, and things change every day, adding a lot of stress to an already suboptimal situation.
Second, I can confirm that the food situation is extremely bad. We are a family of two, and always been kind of preppers, so we had many bags of rice, pasta, dehydrated veg, frozen meats in our large fridge. Chinese society, en masse, is much more used to just ordering food daily. Many people never cook. It's cheaper this way (though of course the quality varies). Bigger families with aunties who can cook just used to pop by the local wet market daily and get a bag of fresh produce. Many households might not even have a fridge at all, or have a small one.
The government was saying that "there will be no lockdown", and when the lockdown became imminent, people barely had two days to stock up. Queues, fights, empty shelves everywhere. More stress.
A lot of people in our community do not have any food left, and we've received two government issued "rations" so far (in 12 days of lockdown): one with 5 tomatoes, and one with 3 pounds of chicken drumsticks, 3 potatoes, 1 head of cauliflower, and a bunch of rotten lettuce. If we did not stock up, we would be starving right now. We donated quite a bit of food to our neighbors already, and many people are actually very close to having no food at all. Getting a delivery is almost impossible, group orders organized by compounds are often ridiculously overpriced, and not always work out. Scams are emerging.
Thirdly, I understand the author's frustration with the guards ("baoan"). Those people never had any formal power, but now they "run things" and, for many, the newly obtained power went to their heads. Violence and abuse is abound. We have PCR tests every 1-2 days, sometimes at 6am, some compounds at 3am. People dragged from their beds and forced to stand in queues.
How would you respond to all that?
Yes, it has some potential to save lives, but if it was communicated better, if we had more time to prepare, and they could still run food deliveries, nobody would complain that much. It's terribly mismanaged, and even after we "open up", I will strongly reconsider staying here. Omicron will return, and I do not want to be here for the next (and next, and next) lockdown.
As a Chinese, I can say that the situation is worse than it in the article. My brother is a student who lives in a flat and has not eaten for two days and no one has brought basic substances. He can't leave the flat, he turns to his tutor but his tutor is also forced to stay at home (eating instant noodles every day). We are worried about him but there is nothing we can do, if we criticise the government on chinese Twitter we will be arrested by the police. ಥ_ಥ
> People are finding out that state media exists not for accurate news, but only to spin reality into a narrative that fits the powers higher up.
Are people really finding that out only now? I thought that this was generally accepted knowledge even in China, despite the constant fear and propaganda they live with.
What's happening now with the strict lockdowns and zero-Covid policy is inhumane. People are literally prisoners in their own homes and anyone in a position of power will abuse it to avoid hurting their social score. What a fucked up situation.
A high school friend of ours is apartment-jailed in Shanghai right now. She is a young mom, and all the moms in the apartment are all out of everything required to care for babies. Trying to share strategies on how to use any kitchen ingredients to make formula or rash ointments…
I wonder if this will actually have any political blowback in the coming years, or if this only strengthens the ccp.
> This is the biggest, richest, most international city of China and people are starving, without medicine, and without freedom.
Ouch. Seems like a really bad situation.
I posted a Tell HN about lockdowns coming before they were announced, about two or three weeks ago.
I'm currently in lockdown, not sure when we're getting out. And then after that someone in the compound will probably be infected pretty soon and it all starts over.
Feel free to AMA.
I also highly recommend reading this thread by Naomi Wu on her thoughts of the Shanghai lockdown: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/151273459548510617...
It seems like condos and apartments can easily be turned into prisons. I'm glad I live in a house, even if it is in north america.
What actually is going on in China, is there some type of economic meltdown in progress ? Like, we can say it's because of covid, but something seems a miss to me.
> This is the biggest, richest, most international city of China and people are starving, without medicine, and without freedom.
What?
I am in China too. In Shenzhen. I think the author is very unkind to the Bao An. I am 100% sure they would treat me the same if there is a similar lockdown here, but I imagine they are under a lot of pressure.
My hearts go out to them though. I have a dog here in China, and I am very afraid of what will happen to her if an outbreak like this hits my area. And how can you even have a dog if you can't leave a building for two weeks? What a nightmare.
Hard to verify the source of the video but there is one going around reddit right now showing mass suicides from people jumping out of high rise windows. Claimed to be people in lockdown in Shanghai.
When people are starving and have nothing left to lose, change happens.
I'd like to hear from someone in China on why the government still pursues a zero-Covid policy. Is it just face-saving at this point?
If you believe anything you've heard about covid coming out of China for the last 2+ years I have a bridge to sell you.
With omicron isn’t a zero Covid policy a fools errand? As the virus mutates into ever more infectious variants a zero-Covid policy becomes impossibe.
Everyone here is commenting on Covid, vaccines, social policy and whatnot.
I can't help but see a different, bigger and human story here.
It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Convenient fast food delivery systems that become tools of rationing and siege. News and communications systems turned to propaganda and social control.
Meanwhile the only good vibe in here is the person-to-person charity and sharing that occurs amongst the "prisoners".
We should look at this and learn a very important lesson as technologists.
My friend is trying to escape Shanghai to go back home but apparently it's very hard to get to the airport.
the worst thing I hear that highways around Tianjin and Beijing are closed. If you have friends living in those places, please message them to reserve a loooot of foods
"This makes this whole lockdown feel drenched in identity politics, because letting go of zero covid forces China to also let go of that narrative."
Not identity politics - perhaps national pride, but certainly not identity politics. Shame the author raises this 'dog whistle' in this otherwise credible article.
Little weird to be talking about peopel starving and lacking meds, but then again they re able to find fresh fish. Anyway, i wonder what this pattern of isolatation can create in terms of covid variants which may develop in china or australia but which haven't been introduced to the rest of world this season.
For anyone interested, here are a couple Instagram accounts I am following posting from inside Shanghai. Scary stuff. Potentially NSFW (sometimes they post videos of some nasty stuff happening)
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This is what annoys me about the US COVID protesters. We really didn’t have lockdowns in the US. A lockdown is when you have curfews, can’t go out, can’t travel at all, etc. I saw little of that in the US and what was there was sparsely enforced to the point of being not much more than a suggestion.
The shear size of some of these provinces make the logistical challenge of food delivery almost impossibile.
This is horrifying and to think people are starving in these conditions with no option but to run away with dire consequences.
What makes this lockdown stricter than past lockdowns such as in Feb-April 2020?
It's beyond me why would anyone move to Shanghai in 2017, that's already after T left China after spending there better half of decade because of how unbeareable it became with Xi coming to power and that was many years before 2017 with tightening screws in every aspect of (foreigner's) life. China peaked some time between 2008 and Xi being elected, since his election it's all going downhill very quickly.
Btw. as Beijinger who spent few weeks in Shanghai on business trips I've never understood appeal of Shanghai, I'd much rather go for Shenzhen or Chengdu as alternatives to Beijing.
The rest of the world seems to have gone all-in with vaccines and are now moving away from lockdowns. Why are China sticking to the lockdown route?
This is China, but not sure about the city. People kneel on the street to get COVID test QR scan: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1510829144590123010
It’s bloody awful. From start to now it’s been a clown show. It seems like no one learned anything in the past two years except that medical staff are much better at treating COVID. Thus zero deaths with more than 13,000 positive infected. A large majority are asymptomatic.
SH miscalculated/mananged trying to live with covid in the first place. Jilin (5m) and Shengyang (9m) both coming out of lockdown after month - seems like new stealth strain is still broadlycontainable. Whether cost is worth it medium term is another question. Probably time to force elders to vaccinate and then try to live with covid again. From what I read they're cutting off SH by shutting regional HWs and moving to reopenning by districts that manage to zero tests. As for logistics issues with delivery, inevitable at this scale, but should be within state capacity to sort out. In terms of eating bitter, skipping a few meals is mild relative to even recent PRC history.
Can care packages be sent to the OP? Safely?
This is legitimately confusing to me. Didn’t we learn that:
1) Lockdown do nothing
2) Vaccines are effective
Why are they locking people down? Why aren’t they just vaccinating them all?
Newsflash: communism sucks.
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They dont seem to be able to organise a lockdown properly do they?
Kind of crazy how sentimental and emotional the response is with barely any actual discussion going on about the merits of this on a grand scale. Yes, stories about people's dogs and temporary economic depression are awful. The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.
It's weird to me that someone ends up in China and is surprised by collectivist policies.
I’m in Shanghai too. It’s a city of 25+ million people: there will be some bad stories. But overall it is running remarkably and the vast majority of people aren’t thinking about how oppressed they are by having to eat fish. They’re helping each other and encouraging each other, because they know the cost of not doing this is millions of lives.
The lockdown is cruel and extreme, but it will save many more lives than anything less drastic. China understands the threat and isn't fucking around with the response. They're not locking down the country's economic engine for fun, or (according to the article) to save face. Thinking that is both racist and childish. They're doing it to save lives. This guy is caught in the middle, and I feel for him, but he's too close to it for any sort of perspective. The city will be up and running by summer as if nothing ever happened.