Shanghai to reopen after a two-month lockdown 1:04
Hong Kong (CNN) --
In Shanghai, skyscrapers lit up, streets filled with traffic, and young people drank and danced in the streets as fireworks exploded overhead.
The city celebrated this Wednesday with a long-awaited burst of life, as the government lifted the lockdown across the city.
But the reopening process is likely to be slow and painful, as residents of the financial hub grapple with the trauma of the past two months.
For Henry Shi, a 30-year-old photographer who ventured out of his community Tuesday afternoon, the first thing that struck him was the ambient noise of the city.
"The city had become very quiet and everyone has stayed at home. Now the noises are back, of cars roaring in the streets and of people hustling, it feels like I've woken up from a long sleep."
As midnight approached, the mood in Shanghai was one of joy and relief.
Videos posted on social media show cars honking, pedestrians chanting in celebration and fences, once used to restrict residents to their compounds, gate pulls and streets.
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Starting Wednesday morning, most of the city's 25 million residents can leave their communities, stores and office buildings can reopen, cars return to the streets, and subways and buses resume. services.
But for some, there is a lingering sense of bitterness, sadness and anger, having witnessed the suffering and pain inflicted on the city by the zealous enforcement of the government's zero covid policy.
The chaotic lockdown led to widespread food shortages and delayed medical care for emergency patients.
Young children were separated from their parents in quarantine.
On June 1, the Shanghai authorities lifted a two-month lockdown in which the country's economic and financial center had been, due to China's covid-zero policy. (Credit: Hu Chengwei/Getty Images)
Residents, including the elderly, were forced into spartan, makeshift isolation facilities and forced to hand over their keys to disinfect their homes.
The draconian measures triggered wave after wave of protests, severely eroding public confidence in the Shanghai government.
"A ridiculous drama ended and no one has come forward to explain it, no one has apologized to the lives that were insulted, damaged and lost, and no one has been held accountable," a Shanghai resident wrote in a widely shared post on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform.
"Takeaway is back, crawfish is back, beer is back, but the sense of security is gone," read the post, which was later censored.
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This is how the confinement affected Shanghai
The restrictions disrupted business in virtually every sector and crippled the city's economy.
Many companies have been forced to temporarily suspend production, others have suggested they may not recover.
While the lockdown has been lifted for the most part, some covid restrictions are still a part of daily life.
Most public places and transportation still require a negative covid test within 72 hours, and long lines formed at testing sites outside residential complexes throughout Wednesday.
For the first time in two months, Shi, the photographer, took a bus to the Bund, Shanghai's famous waterfront along the Huangpu River.
Families were enjoying a walk with children running around, most still wearing masks.
In the glitzy Lujiazui financial district, restaurants were closed for lunch and offices were still largely empty;
many companies only required that workers return to the office next week, Shi said.
Unable to find a restaurant for dinner, she settled on a bar of dark chocolate, some rice cakes, and a can of beer for lunch.
For Shi, Shanghai's exit from lockdown felt very different from Wuhan, which was on lockdown for three months in early 2020 following what was the world's first Covid outbreak.
Shi, who was in the central Chinese city for work at the time, said many Wuhan residents had been grateful to the government for bringing the outbreak under control.
"Back then, the public understood the need for such extreme measures, because the situation was so serious. The public sentiment in Shanghai is completely different: many think these measures are unnecessary," he said.
The Chinese government had portrayed Wuhan as a success story in its handling of the pandemic, with state media celebrating the lifting of its lockdown as a "heroic" victory over the virus.
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The timid return to life in Shanghai
In Shanghai, however, the official narrative is much more moderate.
Officials have even refused to admit that a "lockdown" was ever imposed, instead calling it "static management mode."
In an instruction widely circulated online on Tuesday, Shanghai authorities ordered media organizations to avoid using the phrase "lifting the lockdown."
"The situation in Shanghai is different from that in Wuhan because (we) never announced the 'lockdown,' so there is no need to talk about 'lifting the lockdown,'" the notice said.
"The static management of the entire Shanghai area is just hitting the pause button, during which the main functions of the city were still running."
On Wednesday, state media avoided any mention of the word "lockdown."
On the microblogging site Weibo, hashtags such as "Shanghai is back" and "Long time no see Shanghai" created by state media attracted hundreds of millions of views, but none of them made it into the top 10 trending topics, a list carefully managed by the censors.
Rocky Lee, a sales manager in Shanghai, was one of the few who returned to work in an office complex near Jing'an Temple.
Looking at the cloudy city skyline from his office window, nothing seemed to have changed.
However, Lee said it is difficult for Shanghai to return to what it was.
"The measures taken in the last two months have really damaged the reputation of the city and made people realize how poor their governance capacity is. Many companies and investors have lost confidence in Shanghai and China in overall," he said.
Like many of his middle-class friends, Lee is considering leaving Shanghai and emigrating abroad because he no longer feels safe in the city.
"You can lock me up at home for two months, you can force me to be quarantined by the government and kill my dog. What else can you do? How can you convince talent to stay after they've done all these things? ".
Shanghai