April 22, 2020

Coronavirus ghost town: Shanghai has changed since the outbreak

Coronavirus ghost town: Shanghai has changed since the outbreak

The Shanghai I live in now is not the same city I moved to with my family last summer, before the COVID-19 outbreak. I loved watching poker-faced grannies dancing in synchrony on street corners, dodging swarms of scooters on my bike as hundreds of delivery drivers hurried through the street to satisfy ravenous online consumption, and taking the second longest subway system on earth to more restaurants, cafes and museums than I could visit in a lifetime. To get more shanghai news, you can visit shine news official website.

But then COVID-19, caused by a member of the coronavirus family that’s a close cousin to the SARS and MERS viruses that have caused outbreaks in the past, enveloped us in an invisible fog. Shanghai and the public life that flowed through its concrete veins disappeared. Old Shanghai shopped; new Shanghai stopped.

It is now the world's biggest ghost town, haunted by 26 million fearful souls wearing surgical masks. The streets are almost empty. Roped-off playgrounds gather dust instead of giggles. Aside from grocery stores and emergency facilities, virtually nothing is open. We stay at home following safety protocols: mandatory masks in public, no visitors or deliveries, 3 feet of separation at all times and hand sanitizer, constantly.

Before the virus, elbowing dozens of eager grandparents every day to take my son to kindergarten in a joyous kind of Shanghainese chaos made me feel like a local. After school we would take bikes, trains or buses to shopping mall playrooms, playgrounds packed with kids climbing up slides, Montessori and gymnastics classes or museums.

Now my son stays home, all the time. Instead of school, we have TikTok toddler classes. We read books, watch Netflix (if our network allows), build Legos, make up songs, anything to resist making every day the same. We still go outside, but only when protected by surgical masks and suspicion of the faceless passersby who used to be our neighbors. They might be super-spreaders. We’re told to avoid crowds, but that’s easy — there aren’t any. Roughly 3,000 people live in my complex; I see five or six a day.

This new Shanghai is a place filled with dread and vulnerability, but there is surprising joy, tranquility and hope, as well.When I bike to the store, I’m often the only one on the road. My subway ride to claim my daughter’s emergency passport felt like a chartered trip, as if the city’s infrastructure existed just for me. Never has a city so large seemed so still. Shanghai has become the most peaceful sea of concrete imaginable.

Overcoming anxiety, our neighbors managed neighborliness and brought us fresh vegetables. Forbidden from visiting one another, we met in the lobby for the handoff. It was like meeting Deep Throat, except instead of the smoking gun, he came bearing cabbages.

Public life is gone, as if it is a frilly indulgence rather than a human necessity, and private life has replaced it. We look to each other for intimacy and interaction. Suddenly, I spend 24 hours a day at home with my family. No school, work, shopping or escape has created a void now filled with family and the immediate present. Every day is a new chance to be together without distraction. Our enforced intimacy feels peaceful, as long as we don’t look ahead. There is joy in that. My main responsibility now is to be with my kids. It’s a beautiful blessing shadowed by anxiety.

The last thing my wife and I did in Shanghai before the virus hit was have a baby. What joy, but what a start to life. New mothers in China live a "month of confinement” to recover and cherish those initial moments of life. We feel like all of China celebrated our confinement with us.

But our month is ending. Normalcy is fearfully flickering back to life in Shanghai as the holiday ends and the city collectively tries to live safely without destroying the economy. Shops are tentatively opening their doors like my newborn’s eyes, afraid of the light.

As I put yet another surgical mask on my son’s face and wonder whether today is the day we admit defeat and flee abroad, I accept the truth for myself and my unseen neighbors: We’re in trouble. Even so, I hope we’re humble enough to stay with the trouble and learn from it.

As our month ends, I wonder whether the lessons learned will outlive the virus: Focus on what’s now instead of what’s next, family intimacy instead of shopping dependency, experience instead of excess. I hope so.

Posted by: shinenewstop at 08:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 780 words, total size 5 kb.




What colour is a green orange?




16kb generated in CPU 0.0116, elapsed 0.0613 seconds.
35 queries taking 0.0543 seconds, 77 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.