Shanghai, China's economic, trade, financial and opening-up center, however, since Omicron entered the community in March, this economic engine with a population of about 25 million began an unexpected long-term lockdown at the end of the month.
In a flash of dozens of days and nights, in addition to the high-profile trend of confirmed diagnoses, various secondary disasters under the lockdown, and even the resulting resonance of public opinion, also touched the heartstrings.
Recently, with the slowdown of the epidemic and the loosening of restrictions, "escape from Shanghai" and "farewell to Shanghai" are rampant. At this time, Yolanda, a Shanghainese living in Hong Kong, was interviewed by "Hong Kong 01" and discussed her attitude towards the closure of the city and her attitude towards Hong Kong. Hu Zhi’s other thoughts, as well as his anger at his father’s illness in Shanghai due to “human factors”, etc., “I often tell my friends a joke that Hong Kong’s daily increase of 60,000 people is on the street. I don’t dare to talk to my relatives and friends in Shanghai because I’m afraid they will worry about me. Now that Shanghai is adding 20,000 people a day, I’m still shopping on the streets of Hong Kong, but I still don’t dare to tell them, because I’m afraid they will envy me too much.”
Yolanda, who came to Hong Kong in 2017, studied for a master's program at the Chinese University and is currently working in marketing in Hong Kong.
The last time she returned to Shanghai was in January 2021. At that time, the impact of the epidemic on her life was different. She stayed until November before returning to Hong Kong.
Some public opinion once thought that Shanghai would not be locked down.
(Xinhua News Agency)
There is no shortage of arguments in the market that Shanghai, which is highly internationalized and economically important, will be quite different from other cities in China in terms of epidemic prevention measures, which means that the ultimate measure of closing the city will not be adopted.
Yolanda said that in the past, there have been sporadic outbreaks in the mainland, including Shanghai, but they have not reached the level of closure; when she was in Shanghai, there were also local confirmed cases in communities three blocks away, but they were only closed. The community will be controlled for 3 to 7 days, and it will be unblocked after all staff have no new nucleic acid tests.
Therefore, she believes that citizens are accustomed to this level of closure and control, and this partial closure and control model has been effective in the past year, so citizens are relatively confident in the Shanghai government's management and control capabilities.
However, a few months later, the development of the situation far exceeded expectations. This time, following the implementation of the global blockade of Hubei Province in January 2020, the authorities imposed a severe global blockade on a first-level administrative region for the first time.
"At the beginning of this round of the epidemic, everyone's attitude was relatively positive, and they may think that the same as before, the lockdown will last for one to two weeks at most." For Yolanda and many of her friends in Shanghai, things have developed so far It was unexpected, "that's why there is a shortage of stockpiles."
Yolanda believes that citizens are accustomed to the original level of lockdown and control, and are relatively confident in the government's ability to control, but the development of events later caught them by surprise.
(Xinhua News Agency)
Angry for his father's illness "The square cabin is a state that guarantees you will not starve to death"
In the face of natural challenges, the scale and trend of the epidemic, ordinary people cannot make too many predictions, but when the impact directly falls on the relatives, Yolanda can no longer hold back, especially questioning the "human" factor involved.
The owner was Yolanda's father. He was in Shanghai and had to go to work in the shelter. "My father was notified at the time to help build a new shelter, and then he was responsible for security at the periphery. The company guaranteed very safety. So the salary It is also calculated according to the ordinary daily salary standard (200 RMB/day), not the high-paid cabin crew.”
When we arrived, we found out that there was a construction site, and a group of five or six workers slept in a container-style shed. There was no one to manage it, no protective clothing, and no daily nucleic acid testing.
On the second day, a worker started to have a fever, but no one took care of it. In the end, many of them became ill. "After someone was recruited, no one came to do the nucleic acid test, but they were asked to do the antigen test themselves. ".
Yolanda said that until the third day, no one came to do nucleic acid for the father who had a fever, but the result was delayed, and they did not live in the square cabin, they still stayed in the work shed, the so-called temporary isolation point, and could only eat food every day Antipyretics and Lianhua Qingwen, "My father had a liver disease and told the medical staff in Fangcang that the liver was very painful after taking Lianhua Qingwen. If he could change other medicines, the medical staff said there was nothing else but this one."
On the fifth day, when everyone had basically subsided the fever, a group of talents were transferred to the shelter of the Shanghai Convention and Exhibition Center for isolation, "Although it is a shelter with better facilities in Shanghai, it still cannot take a bath, so my father is in shelter 14. I haven't had a shower every day."
After the fever subsided, his father still had symptoms such as coughing, so he asked the doctor about the medicine, but he was still told that there was only Lianhua Qingwen, "My father said: Fangcai is to ensure that you will not starve to death, meals will be served on time, and the rest Not at all".
After two negative nucleic acid tests, Yolanda's father, who was released home, continued to quarantine at home for 7 days.
At that time, the neighborhood committee directly sealed the door of their house with seals without notifying the people in the house, and her father never showed the diagnosis from the beginning to the end, and the results of the first nucleic acid test were not given. Pass.
She suspected that they were finally classified as diagnosed inside the cabin, so that they did not need to be counted in the newly added social data.
Yolanda was very angry about what happened to her relatives, because she felt that it was an infection caused by human factors, "Why do you want to build this shelter in the first place, everyone has been shut down for a month, and those who have been recruited are almost better, and the big one Most people can heal themselves at home, so they have to be pulled out to increase the chance of transmission. Second, even if a shelter needs to be built, it must be well managed. It’s not just about locking people in to ensure they don’t starve to death. The staff and The infected people are not protected, managed, and cared for, which makes people feel that the existence of Fangcang is purely for political show, showing that the government is actively fighting the epidemic.”
Every time, when Yolanda and her father had a video call, she would choked up and couldn't speak, and she was very sad, thinking that the other party was alone, had a fever, was sleeping in a container, and couldn't take a shower, and she felt very broken. The real scene of people number 100 sleeping in the exhibition hall can only make everyone have the idea of resolutely not going to the square cabin.”
In addition, Yolanda mentioned that her brother-in-law had a routine nucleic acid test result that showed "not out" during the lockdown and was not positive, so someone came to the door to pull him into the car and send him to the cabin for isolation, thinking that the entire end could be seen from it. The management is very chaotic.
At the same time, the distribution of materials is also a big problem. She said that in the first two weeks, the community where her family lives has only distributed materials once, which are four packs of dry goods, similar to fungus and red dates. will be very difficult.”
"Face" is a false escape from Shanghai = leaving China?
During the lockdown of Shanghai, there have been occasions when an Anhui nanny was quarantined by her employer and was forced to live in a phone booth for 5 days after she came out of a makeshift hospital. An accompanying wife from Guangdong lived on the street after her husband died of illness, and her inquiries about more than 40 hotels were rejected. In cases such as staying in, so that after the authorities gradually relaxed the policy of going out, the talk of "escape from Shanghai" became very popular.
In a time of peace, the already very modern metropolis still sees such a scene, does it reflect that the implementers of this policy have not taken all the necessary considerations, or even have the ability to check the city such as Shanghai, which has affected Shanghai's "face"?
In this regard, Yolanda believes that this is not entirely the problem of the executors. The executors are indeed unable to take all considerations into account. There will also be political considerations and personal desires in the execution process, so it will lead to show-style efforts and toss ordinary people. Even the situation such as false public and private appears.
In her view, the bigger problem actually lies in the system. No matter how "internationalized and modernized" Shanghai looks, its essence remains the same.
She explained that when major events such as the epidemic occur, there will be natural tension between cities and countries. In the mainland, the result of the confrontation between the two forces is obvious, "Whether you are an international metropolis or a small 18th-tier city, you are You have to listen to what the center says."
Therefore, giving Shanghai the opportunity to freely choose an anti-epidemic model is equivalent to nothing. Since the central government has set the tone, it is doomed to increase the number of layers and give priority to politics.
As for Shanghai's "face", she believes that it is also a kind of false face in itself. People in Shanghai also know that this is a false high-level based on economic development. Once the money fails, the face will be wiped away. The meaning, in her opinion, may be to leave China.
She said that those who have the conditions in Shanghai have been considering immigration recently, and many people around her have begun to ask her how to come to Hong Kong, and some people who have never criticized the government in the past have also changed, "To a certain extent, everyone has also They all start looking at what's under the face."
People around you from scolding Hong Kong for lying flat to envy Hong Kong's Yolanda: If you don't have a job, you will die 100%
Hong Kong has just experienced the fifth wave of the epidemic.
The picture shows a dozen hospital beds in the open-air quarantine area late at night on February 15.
(Photo by Li Zetong)
Back in Hong Kong, clearing and coexistence, whether to close the city or not are always controversial topics. In the fifth wave of the epidemic just past, Hong Kong did not adopt the closure of the city, but implemented the clearing on the premise of not closing the city. As a result, life can still gradually return to normal, but it also pays the price of high diagnosis and high mortality.
As a Shanghainese, and witnessing the fifth wave of the epidemic in Hong Kong on the front line, Yolanda is not sure about the inevitable relationship between a model like Shanghai and the mortality rate, considering that secondary disasters may also endanger people's health and lives, she said that she It can only be compared from the extent to which most people's lives are affected.
Judging from the cases around him, Yolanda said that most people infected with Omicron have mild symptoms and can even go to work normally, and the lockdown has a direct impact on economic income. After all, not every job can work from home, "Many of my friends in Shanghai said to me: 'If you don't go back to work, you don't have to go back to work. The company will just disappear.' Paying a heavy economic price to protect against a virus with weaker lethality is not worth the loss."
Paying a heavy economic price to protect against viruses with weaker lethality, Yolanda felt that the gains outweighed the losses.
(provided by respondents)
Obviously, Yolanda does not agree with the choice of continuing to lock down the city as an anti-epidemic model in the future. He believes that if all citizens lose their jobs, the meaning of clearing is impossible to talk about, and it will also arouse a large degree of emotional disgust among the citizens, " You don't have to die if you get the new crown, but you will die 100% if you don't have a job."
In the face of the possibility of new epidemics in the future, if the authorities continue to adopt lockdown measures as an anti-epidemic model, will it affect the desire to return to Shanghai?
In this regard, Yolanda affirmed.
She has experienced the 14-day quarantine twice when she returned to Shanghai twice before. She said bluntly that she basically needs to write the word "forbearance" on her forehead to ensure that she will not go crazy, and all her relatives and friends in Shanghai have told herself that Don't go back to Shanghai, so until the mainland adopts other ways to deal with the epidemic, I will not consider going back. "It is true that many of my friends in Shanghai will express envy of me, from scolding Hong Kong for lying flat to envy that Hong Kong residents can move around freely."
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