New Shanghaism

After two months of strict total lockdown since the end of March in 2022, Shanghai has permitted some of its residents, whose communities have been free of covid for at least 14 days, to walk out to the streets again for a few hours per day or week. I was granted to leave my apartment once per week for 4 hours, yet it’s long enough to have me witnessed how drastically my once beloved neighborhood has been turned into a huge chaotic dumpster with large amonut of disposable white foam boxes.

Entering the third year of pandemic since covid first broke out in China in 2019, most countries around the world have chosen to ease their policies on covid, since symptoms of omericon appear milder and valid vaccines are adapted in a larger scale, both makes omicron less fatal and terrifying, which indicates living with covid has became feasible and the gradual recovery in all aspects of life is happening. Meanwhile, on the very contrary, China has decided to tighten its already strict zero-covid policy when increasing cases occurred in Shanghai in March this year. As a mega cosmopolitan city, an unexpected total lockdown was forced and the whole city suddenly stopped functioning since the end of March, more than 25 million residents were stuck at home or wherever that's indoor, and some of them still are when I am writing this on May, 28th, yet the date of total reopening still remains unknown.
As a result of strict lockdown, getting food was no longer easy, food shortage became a serious problem for every family. Therefore, the food supplies delivered by governments in each districts on a regular basis became essential. Each family was given a white foam box with food, but with 25 million people to feed, how to deal with the enormous amount of disposable packages of white foam boxes is definitely a real challenge.
Along with many other serious problems, such as untrustworthy systems of PCR tests execution, misconducts or corruption of govermental officals on food supplies, sucides from depression, deaths from either acute or chronic diseases out of timely medical care and so on, emerged from this contentious lockdown, it inevitably makes more and more
people to question the validity of the zero-covid policy that Chinese government has insisted on.