If you are wondering, I have a report from the official news source for you: yes, they did it!
On Jan 5th, Xinhua reported: “Only 35 new cases were added on the 4th. Xi’an’s current outbreak has basically been cleared, and the spread of the epidemic has been effectively contained.”
Success!
Xinhua also reports the speech of the deputy mayor of Xi’an:
“This means that Xi’an is moving in the right direction by tightening social control and implementing the strictest preventive and control measures, and the results are gradually emerging. However, as the new coronavirus has a certain incubation period and there is a process from infection to disease onset, the possibility of sporadic spread of the epidemic cannot be ruled out, so Xi’an is still in a critical period of epidemic prevention and control and cannot be careless in the slightest.”
So, it is not over.
The price that Xi’an people paid to achieve this dynamic/reset to zero strategy has been widely shared on social media. For example, in our newsletter 18, we briefly mentioned a woman who lost her 8 month fetus because the hospital refused to take her in. Public was obviously outraged and would not stop seething on it.
It puts pressure on the government and therefore some official reaction did happen, according to Xinhua:
“This afternoon, Xi’an held a press conference on the prevention and control of the epidemic: in order to prevent cross-infection in the process of seeking medical treatment, people who need urgent medical treatment in quarantine, containment and control areas will be sent to the designated hospitals by special vehicles and will be picked up in a closed loop. Other people with a 48-hour negative nucleic acid certificate can go to hospitals normally open in the city on their own. For patients with acute and critical illnesses, haemodialysis, tumour radiotherapy and pregnancy, service telephone numbers and green channels will be opened to provide treatment. “
This was on Jan 5th. Since then, there seems to be 3 more cases of full term fetus dead due to delay in medical procedure, as noticed by social media. Many people ask: on a normal day, there are 300 newborns in the city of 13 million people. How many are affected by this lockdown?
But of course, _all are equal but some are more equal than others_ applies everywhere in China. While some went to social media to complain of hunger and despair, there are also people who used their own good life to cast doubt on those complains. In the case of delivering babies, there are women who said everything was swell for them.
Since yesterday, information about blocking doors in residential areas started leaking on social media.
There is one Mr. Yang Hai who went to Wechat with a video accusing the government of blocking individual doors and unit doors to make sure no one can go out. His video was taken down by Wechat, but reposted on Twitter. His daughter on Twitter retweeted it and confirmed: “This is my father”.
But that tweet disappeared too.
You can still see the video on youtube.
Later, people found a Weibo post confirm the blocking of doors:
(rough translation)
Hello, I am a resident in [address removed by translator], there are confirmed cases in our unit, so hundreds of residents stayed in. But today, we discovered that the two gates to the unit are locked from outside. If there is any accident, we would be all trapped. I called 119, they say I should call 12345. 12345 told us to wait. I called the district command center to fight COVID , they said this is the right solution. I called out police station, they told me this is done to control the COVID spread, and it is supported by the residents. The fire escape route can be unlocked in emergency. There is no civil case here. If anything happens, there will be a criminal case. They will deal with it depending on the consequences. I am surprised that the department that is executing the laws are violating the laws. The are putting thousands of people in danger. I hope a large number of people here will help us get our rights and interests.
Unit: In Chinese residential area structure, a residential area can have multiple buildings. A building can have multiple units. Each unit share elevators and exit/entrance doors.
On Twitter, people found it hard to sympathise with the writer of this post, because in the past he was a pinkie who showed no conscience of his own. For example, people found an old post about an article in November 2020 that raised lots of eyebrows.
Mr. Li Yi (famous for being a nationalist troll) wrote an article saying that in comparison to the lives lost in the USA due to COVID, the 4000 deaths in Wuhan is equal to no death.
Our hero agreed: “Indeed, compared to the 240 thousand deaths in the USA, we are like no one dead.”
Twitter people also found out later that due to public pressure, the unit doors were unlocked. The pinkie did not express any remorse of his past heartless posts, did not thank people for helping out. He simple deleted his post!
In our last newsletter on Xi’an COVID (Jan 3rd, newsletter 18), we mentioned that during the Wuhan lockdown, there was a writer, Fang Fang, who documented the sufferings of the people and was later vilified in China. This time, people were lamenting that there was no more Fang Fang. They spoke too early.
On Jan 4th, a reporter pen-named Jiang Xue published an article “Ten days in Chang An”. It was widely circulated until the article was deleted yesterday all over the internet in China. According to a guest at VOA, the author, a famous reporter Zhang Wenmin, is out of reach right now.
Chang An : ancient name of Xi’an.
On Jan 6th, New York Times had a report on situation in Xi’an and mentioned her at the end.
But of course, outside China this article is alive and healthy. In it, Jiang Xue documented the sudden lockdown and how it tossed upside down the life of ordinary people. But the most valuable information I got from it is about how self-mobilisation of community to help each other is now impossible in China.
She observed that not only supermarkets and delivery workers can not deliver food anymore, volunteers who have years of experience of emergency aid could not leave their homes.
(rough translation)
Before the lockdown, I attended an event to give winter clothes to the homeless people, organized by a friend. I knew that homeless people usually spent the night in the city in front of banks, ATMs and other places to escape the cold. Now that the city is closed, they are being driven away. Also because the streets are deserted, there are no more circumstances for begging or trash-picking. This must be an extremely difficult winter for them.
On New Year's Day, I had a chat with Ms. Zhang, who had some time to spare. She has been working in a charity for over 10 years, initially working with people with disabilities. In the last three or four years, she has been involved in community work. During this epidemic, she has been working with communities, connecting resources and participating in many relief activities.
Mrs. Zhang told me that when it comes to extreme situations like city lockdowns, community self-help is very important. Especially for the special needs of people living alone, such as the elderly and children. Some people have no food and water, etc. Some urgent needs can be completely solved by neighbourhood mutual help. In times of major crises, community self-help is indispensable. However, the current situation is that the residential area management does not do these things, and people live on as if each were in an isolated island. There is a lot that charity organisations could do to build up the community. But this, again, is often tabooed by the government.
When it comes to the current situation, it is difficult to have food everywhere. She compared it to having everyone in a circle and having government workers "feed" them, but imagine how that is possible in a city of tens of millions. There are around 20,000 people in a residential area, and the average number of employees is no more than ten. Already, there are more administrative paperwork than they can handle. She laments that the community workers she knows are mostly young women, many of whom are also mothers. These days they can't go home at all, they are overworked and many of them sleep on the floor in the office, which makes her feel sorry for them.
"The government still does not realise that administrative power cannot solve everything. Just like this time, the community workers are working day and night. How is the effect?" We chatted and before we knew it an hour had passed.
Community Workers: in this conversation, it refers to the employees who is in charge of managing the residential areas. It seems to me that they are the ones that carry out orders from the city government on lockdown. But from other conversations I saw on internet, they are hired by the real estate management.
It is perhaps this conversation that got Jiang Xue and her article in trouble.
This has been reported in Guardian: 20 cases reported and a mass testing of a city of 14 millions just started.
Can you avoid the testing?
No, remember the health code? Everyone in China has one. In Xi’an it turns to be a fiasco. But this little color code determine whether you can leave your home. If you avoid the test, your health code will turn yellow and then you will not be able to go anywhere. Avoid the test at your peril.
Some overseas Chinese decided to come back to motherland because there is omicron everywhere, and the motherland is still dynamically zero. So smart!
They also came back with their pets. Totally unaware of the previous reported news on how pets were treated in China, back in November 2021.
They were shocked by the treatment, according to their Weibo.
They were refused check-in at the hotel until they sign a waiver that allows the government to “render the pet harmless”, which means to kill them, if they are tested positive.
They argued and begged for hours, outside in the winter, without food, according to their posts, and gave in and signed the waiver.
Bravo Shanghai, so civilised. Maybe these pet lovers can enjoy the movie “Myth of Love” now that they are in Shanghai.
When I see this news about Pingdingshan, the city where Liu Yukun lives, I can not help to share with you.
According to these Weibo posts,
City government of Pingdingshan requires all retailers to put this electronic device on their door, otherwise they can’t open for business. Each machine costs at least 4000 Yuan ($630). And it is not available even at this price. The next available price is 7000 yuan.
Small business owners who were already hard hit by the pandemics wanted to file complaints. But of course they have nowhere to file. At least for now they can vent on social media.
With Tianjing going into “relative stillness”, people are asking: is this squid game?
