While Frank Sinatra and Henry Mancini crooned that “love was lovelier the second time around” I’m not sure there are too many sentiments worth celebrating when a lockdown comes around again. But, if experiencing things the second time around raises the level of intensity, this may be true whether in love or under lockdown.
I was quite surprised by the level of anger people are feeling. We underwent a very painful lockdown for over two months, have slowly been opening up and finally for just a week now have been able to eat in restaurants and sit down in coffee shops (assuming our Covid QR codes show negative green, of course). So, it seems to have caught a wide swath of people off guard when our compound was put on lockdown again last night.
What happened is this. Nearly a week ago, it was discovered that someone in building 9 of our 12-building compound was in contact with someone who was Covid-positive. This “close-contact” person was transferred by the authorities to a facility and building 9 was on lockdown with residents unable to leave. Other buildings were not on lockdown. Unfortunately, the person who had close contact became Covid-positive in the facility where they were transferred. And, since that is now considered a positive case, our entire compound needs to go on lockdown for one week minimum with monitoring after.
Interestingly, there was a gap of several days after hearing about building 9 when other residents came and went as pleased. We began to be informally informed a day early that the compound would be locked down, and it was just a matter of time before the official announcement would be shared. So, most residents went out and lived it up as much as possible on Saturday, eating out, shopping and meeting people. We knew a lock down was coming designed to contain our contact with the outside world.
Chew on that one for a bit.
Sure enough. Late Saturday night the official announcement came, the police were outside our compound and the fences went back up.
People here couldn’t believe their eyes. They simply haven’t been able to get their heads around this logic, and there is endless chatter and guess work behind the thinking of this policy.
Singing, Groping and….Coughing
Just to illustrate the tracking ability of the local government, I include a diagram here which was shared in a group I’m in that someone in the local government created to analyze a recent situation at a KTV joint. The story goes something like this.
Karaoke has been a popular past time for some time in China. Unfortunately, some places are seedy. There are some karaoke parlors which offer young women to accompany patrons at a price. They sing, they pour beer, giggle and unfortunately get groped along the way. This is a kind of sick grey area prostitution.
Rumor has it, car loads of old men went to a certain karaoke place to do this, leading to several Covid cases. At least, that’s the rumor.
The authorities plot out who, how and where these people are and hunt them down. We can see how this works very clearly here in this embarrassing and very public sketch. We aren’t told who did what, and maybe the groping never happened. Given the amount of unfounded rumor I’ve seen over the last few months, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a nice group of people simply out having fun.
More Patience Needed on Hot Days
To be clear, I don’t think our neighbor in building 9 had anything to do with this karaoke visit. I show this as an illustration for how deep and detailed the surveillance goes. This zero tolerance is a very costly endeavor and demands much resources.
During our compound’s mass Covid testing which began at 7am this Sunday morning, my wife encountered an elderly man in the compound who was furious. He couldn’t believe they would keep the neighborhood supermarkets where elderly buy daily vegetables closed to reduce human contact while opening karaoke places. Clearly someone is greasing the wheels.
All of this context combined with the methodology above has led to some serious frustration.
Today, the temperature in Shanghai reached a historic near 106 Fahrenheit (41 Celsius) with a heat index of nearly 125 Fahrenheit (51 Celsius). I can’t remember experiencing this kind of heat in my life.
Heat makes people do strange things. I’m grateful we don’t have Covid. This would be a terrible time to get a fever.
To conclude this short (and, hopefully interesting) piece, I think of Benvolio’s words to his friend Mercutio before meeting his foe Tybalt and his end:
I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire.
The day is hot, the Capels are abroad,
And if we meet we shall not ’scape a brawl,
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
“from Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene I”
Words of warning, from Elizabethan Shakespeare to post-modern Shanghai.
Stark Discussion 