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Hunger and anger in Shanghai'southward unending lockdown nightmare

Updated 1235 GMT (2035 HKT) April 19, 2022

(CNN)When my 73-yr-old begetter raised concern well-nigh his shrinking food supply late final week, the catastrophe brought by Shanghai's citywide Covid lockdown of a sudden hit home.

"Will exist running out in a few days if no government handout soon," he messaged me Thursday.

So, as if anticipating my inevitable worry, he added: "Still have some rice and crackers -- and enough of java."

It was a startling revelation on the grim reality in Cathay's biggest city and financial hub -- from a member of the generation that lived through the Keen Dearth and the tumultuous Cultural Revolution that killed millions during the first few decades of the People'due south Commonwealth, founded in 1949 past Communist revolutionary Mao Zedong.

Fifty-fifty during the darkest days in Mao'southward China, my parents -- Shanghai-born and bred -- used to remind me that, unlike many in the countryside, they were fortunate enough not to fearfulness the prospect of starvation.

At present, with lockdown measures turning increasingly draconian, a once virtually-unthinkable topic has struck a chord with residents in the urban center and beyond, more so than anything else: people going hungry in Shanghai in 2022.

By the authorities' ain acknowledgment, the food shortage has been a largely man-fabricated disaster owing to a lack of planning and coordination.

Despite official pledges, government handouts have been unreliable in many parts of the urban center, including my begetter's apartment complex in northeastern Shanghai filled with retirees similar him. The elderly oversupply had more often than not failed to secure supplies through online bulk-purchases, practically the only style to buy annihilation in Shanghai at the moment, due to their relatively small demand and lack of tech-savviness.

I set out to aid only never had I thought online grocery shopping would be such an emotional rollercoaster.

Armed with a membership for a retail warehouse guild -- presumably allowing me to confront less stiff contest than those using a general online grocer -- I quickly realized it was incommunicable to take hold of one of the coveted delivery slots, which are assigned at 9 p.m. daily, even with nutrient all the same bachelor on the virtual shelves.

The retailer'due south app merely crashed each night -- and would only come dorsum online a few hours subsequently with a glaring "no more than delivery slots for the day" message.

As frustration and anxiety built up, my hope dwindled forth with my father's supply. On Day 2 of my futile attempts, a friend tipped me off well-nigh a "boutique" online retailer that was still offering a grocery package with next-day delivery slots. Elated to find out she was right, I immediately ordered for my male parent.

When I broke the skillful news in the online family group conversation, however, uncles and aunts -- all facing their own food shortage to various degrees -- jumped in to express their shock that I willingly paid 398 yuan ($62) for v kilograms of vegetables and lx eggs.

"Highway robbery!" cried one uncle, while an aunt stressed the price was more than than four times what she would ordinarily pay for the aforementioned corporeality of food in the market.

"But these are boutique eggs," my dad deadpanned.

I was relieved that my father's fridge was replenished in time only, hearing relative's comments, felt a sense of "survivor's guilt": What about the countless residents who can't afford price-gouged groceries?

An indefinite lockdown

Literal survival wasn't a concern for virtually of Shanghai's 25 million residents before April.

For the past 2 years, the city had bolstered its condition equally the most important international gateway to Cathay -- for both people and goods. It had prided itself on its more than targeted and lenient arroyo to Covid containment, despite Beijing's strict cipher-Covid policy.

With Shanghai shunning citywide mass testing and adopting less restrictive quarantine rules, information technology once looked like a potential part model for the whole state as the rest of the world had largely called to live with Covid with an emphasis on vaccination.

So came Omicron, with the highly contagious Covid variant sweeping through the city and infecting more than 390,000 residents since March, according to authorities statistics.

Afterward repeatedly denying the city would be locked down -- with constabulary even announcing a probe into declared online rumormongers -- Shanghai regime abruptly changed form in late March and sealed off the entire metropolis at the beginning of Apr.

The government initially billed it every bit a four-day "temporary pause" -- claiming they would promptly test the entire population, isolate positive cases and then re-open the city. As a result, many residents never bothered to stock up.

Despite widespread panic buying before the lockdown, my begetter was amongst the unfazed. A retired electric engineer who enjoys travel, photography and coffee, he had recently strained his back muscles -- and wasn't going anywhere in any case.

Still, his dwelling house solitude turned out to be much longer -- and more precarious -- than he ever envisioned.

With tens of thousands of new infections reported daily, the government has continued to extend the lockdown -- ordering any residential community with a unmarried new positive example to be sealed for an additional 14 days.

My father's apartment complex is currently slated to be locked down until May two. But fifty-fifty that engagement remains uncertain, as the regime proceed to retest residents, meaning the lockdown clock could reset at any time.

For one time, millions of people in Shanghai -- immature and quondam, rich and poor, liberal and conservative -- seem united by their rising anger.

Despite the censors' ferocious effort to erase all traces of bad news, social media users continue recounting and re-posting heartbreaking stories, increasingly disgusted by highly choreographed state media images showing an orderly and effective lockdown.

Amid my friends and family, almost everyone has a personal story to share about the lockdown chaos and misery: from sneaking out in darkness to barter some food with a neighbour, to learning harrowing experiences of a friend dumped into to a hastily built isolation ward with leaking roofs and alluvion toilets, and hearing the wailing of an old woman next door whose children were unable to see their newly deceased father 1 last time.

Propaganda adds insult to injury

People are too seeing Chinese propaganda czars double downwardly, painting Omicron as a potentially lethal threat while stressing that only zero-Covid tin relieve China from the deaths and havoc acquired by the virus in the West.

Officials take made it clear the policy has the personal postage stamp of blessing from the country's strongman leader, Xi Jinping, who has yet to visit Shanghai -- a urban center he once led -- amidst the deepening crisis. Xi is expected to assume an almost unprecedented third term later this year, paving the fashion for him to rule for life.

Outside Shanghai, that bulletin still seems to resonate with many, though debates have started to emerge and intensify. Inside the eerily quiet metropolis, the lockdown and its ensuing cataclysm have go a watershed moment for locals and expatriates.

With state media headlines screaming "information technology's not the influenza!" confronting government statistics showing only about two dozen severe cases among the infected in Shanghai and so far, well-nigh anybody seems to agree on the apparent absurdity of "the solution being worse than the trouble" -- particularly as stories surface on social media about deaths relating to those unable to receive medical care for non-Covid causes due to the lockdown.

Some residents take questioned online why the authorities appear more keen to attack critics of zero-Covid than to convince residents aged over 60 in the fast-graying city -- the most vulnerable grouping with a disappointing vaccination rate of 62% -- to go the shot.

Others reflect on the electric current tragedy and contemplate their adjacent steps.

"How did Shanghai fall like this?" has been the line I have heard most frequently lately. It's mostly a rhetorical question -- the real question seems to exist "Shall I stay, or shall I become?"

For expats, many have been voting with their feet -- undaunted by the bureaucratic and logistical hoops they must leap through to just exit their residences.

For locals, it involves more than soul-searching but, echoing sentiment online, a growing number of Shanghainese -- native or adopted -- have told me they have decided to put their foot downwards to emigrate.

Entrepreneurs and bankers alike say the vicious lockdown has demonstrated money ways nothing in a world where anyone can instantly become collateral harm in plans instigated by a distant and unaccountable leadership.

For almost people in Shanghai, especially of the older generations like my male parent, they will always call the urban center abode. They remain focused on surviving the ongoing nightmare, trying their luck with bulk-purchasing online.

My father said someone in his community recently initiated a java group-buy try -- only quickly failed due to lack of interest.

"No one seems to be in the mood for coffee right at present," he said.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/19/china/shanghai-covid-lockdown-nightmare-intl-dst-hnk/index.html

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