The History of China - Shanghai Total Lockdown Update, Day 15/04 :《This Content Not Available》

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Day 15 of 4: An overview of individual accounts of the unfolding Covid lockdown situation in Shanghai, the siege-mentality that has set in, and the struggles of day to day existence both on- and offline in a city cut off from the rest of the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Shanghai Total Lockdown Update, Day 15, The Siege of Shanghai. So, I've been, of course, posting my experiences mostly on Twitter over the last couple of weeks, the different images, videos, and experiences that both I've seen and, of course, what other people have seen and experienced. There are people who are much more active on Chinese sites like Weibo and WeChat than I am, and, of course, they get a much more involved perspective on this ongoing situation than I do. Largely from one of those threads posted by somebody surnamed Shu, who I won't otherwise

name. They've been posting stories day by day, and I figured it would behoove me and you if I did my part to try to rebroadcast them and add my own perspective to what's going on in Shanghai as well. Because I know that there's quite a lot going on and this kind of gets put on the back burner by a lot of people because there's a lot more flashy, exciting stuff going on in the world. So like I said, it's day 15 now of what was to be a four-day lockdown of the city that went unheeded, and it's just gone citywide ever since then.

So for me, it's day 15. For the people in Pudong, it's day 19 or 20 for them at this point. And for some people, it's a month or more, four or five weeks at this point, of being locked down. Some people without any supplies for weeks at this point, of being locked down, some people without any supplies for weeks at a time in some cases. So the general atmosphere across basically every social media is tense, anxiety-ridden, increasingly desperate, and more and more a lot of anger. Foreign residents like me have very little to do in our off hours.

Those of us who are here are largely capable from working from home. So there's that to at least keep us busy several hours a day, five days a week. But before and after, and sometimes during that, there's the ever-present siren call of doom-scrolling Twitter. Whereas mainlanders, you know, they generally are not on Twitter in any significant number because it's blocked here without a VPN. So they're on the Chinese equivalents, like I mentioned before, WeChat, or as it's called here, Weixin, and Weibo. For them, it's a lot worse because their pleas, cries, sharing of information, their stories, their tragedies and mornings, their criticism of this increasingly barbaric situation are one and all very swiftly deleted by the faceless, soulless government censors that are there to make sure that nobody really has a good sense of what's going on. If all you have is access to those sites, then unless you're right there in the hours or even

minutes that those stories are posted, it's like they never existed. It's just deletion screen after deletion screen saying, this content not available, following related complaints, this content violates the internet user public policy. And the only thing that's left are the mirrors, the reposts, and the screen caps that are either sort of surreptitiously passed around or else posted onto non-Chinese websites such as Twitter and Facebook and the like.

Officially, the population of Shanghai is about 26.5 million people, although in reality, counting the unregistered people who of course live here as well, it's more like 28 or 28 and a half million. Everyone here is just stripped of any agency. You can't go outside, you can't go for a walk, unless it's just around your apartment. There's nothing in the way of deliveries, except in very infrequent and special circumstances. I'll get into more of that in a little bit. So yeah, we're just basically left to figure out how to survive without being able to move or have much of anything come to us.

Now, personally, I've been lucky to have two supply deliveries in the past two weeks, which have been per household about a bag of vegetables. There have been a small bag of rice and some noodles. And then because my wife was volunteering and is just generally pretty good at wheeling and dealing and foraging, she was able to get a couple extra bags here and there. Even that has proved to be not a problem, but it's certainly a challenge of bags of fresh vegetables, assuming they are fresh when they arrive, which is not always the case. Of course, it's an issue of storage and of spoilage. Certain vegetables you can keep, things like potatoes and carrots, they're fine for a while. Things like tomatoes have a much shorter shelf life, so it's kind of, in some cases, it's use it or lose it.

We don't have a whole lot of extra fridge or freezer space. And that's, I mean, that's a problem worth having because we were able to stock up on supplies. We were lucky enough to be able to do that. We'd had four days of advance notice that this four-day lockdown was going into effect. And so we and everyone else on this side of the city had that time to all at once go out and try to buy as much as we possibly could. While being, of course, told, don't panic, it's only four days. We're the lucky ones. Those on the other side of the river who had maybe six to eight hours of notice before their lockdown went into effect, who are now on day 19 or 20 of their lockdown, and sometimes even more,

they had no such generous window to prepare. It's kind of whatever they might have had at home, that's what they had to subsist on until basic deliveries arrived, which were sometimes a week or more away. Residents, by and large, do what they can to help each other. There's lots of bartering, trading, and, of course, just outright giving what they have to those who need it more. You know, if someone has nothing, you do what you can.

But it's nowhere near enough. People are starving, some to death. Bottled water for some is getting harder and harder to come by. I read that it has insanely enough, at least in some areas, been deemed a non-essential item that they're not going to allow be delivered. I don't understand how that can possibly be justified. Back when this was supposed to be a four-day and then over lockdown, the Shanghai News Station very suddenly advised viewers to treat this as an opportunity to practice intermittent fasting. Two weeks in, and that cheery disposition has dropped to community advisements to decrease intake and output. That is to say, eat and drink less, and defecate and urinate less. That content is no longer available. Following related complaints, this content violates the Internet User Public Policy. Thank you for understanding.

Ambulances, if they can be gotten a hold of at all, can take hours or even days to arrive, which is, of course, far too late to be of any real purpose at all. No medicine can be bought, much less delivered, pretty much no matter how urgent. I'm lucky that all I have to worry about is joint pain and headaches. Even when or if ambulances arrive, most residences or communities are requiring a 24-hour COVID pass to be allowed to be taken to the hospital, or far more often, the morgue. Even the dead can't be got rid of easily here anymore. Garbage collection and disposal in in more well-run areas, like mine for instance, continues to be collected and at least centralized away from the actual residences.

I have kind of a direct eyeline view to where my unit's garbage is taken out. Fortunately, we have a large empty lot that's gated off that can be just served that purpose. I think they're also, they have kind of a lock system going on where once that garbage is in that waiting area, I think an external truck or tractor can come and haul it away. But in many other areas, it's just piling up to fester in the streets or in corners or wherever with no one to collect it. Virtually all of the garbage collectors are blocked down too, after all. And there's no end in sight. No answers, no official reason given as to why this lockdown continues on, interminably and agonizingly.

We're given a date, and then the date changes, and changes again, and at this point, there just sort of isn't really a date to even pretend to look at. Maybe the 25th? Maybe? Some areas and communities that haven't had localized cases of COVID Omicron have let their residents out. They say stay within 300 meters, but you can go outside, you can take a walk or whatever. but it's almost pointless. Go out and do what? Go for a walk, sure. I mean, we'd all would enjoy that. But otherwise, it's just almost pointless. There's no stores open. There's nothing to go buy, nothing to go get. Walk down the street, spin around and eventually decide to come back.

And that's about it. This content is no longer available. Following related complaints, this content violates the internet user public policy. Thank you for understanding. People who test positive are required to be removed to central quarantine hospitals. These are quickly built prefab structures with little to nothing in the way of even basic amenities, much less privacy. They're essentially cubicles with multiple people in each cubicle, with shared bathroom facilities, no shower facilities, no change of clothes, just whatever you might have brought with you, that's all you have.

That, or the by now rather infamous quarantine hotels, where you are expected to pay for the pleasure of a solo quarantine experience. The government hotlines and phone numbers largely don't function. Many times people just don't pick up, and if they do, there's nothing that the person on the other end can actually do to help or fix any situation, regardless of the emergency or degree of urgency or desperation. They're just as stuck as anyone else, just as powerless. One recent example among countless, two days ago, April 13th, there was a recording of a phone call that went viral on WeChat. An old man was asking his district community worker for

help. This is a volunteer worker, unpaid position, it's just kind of one of the community members who's decided or been assigned to take this position out of necessity. This old man was suffering from chronic illness and saying that he had no more food. The volunteer called dispatcher, let the man know that he'd been receiving his messages over the last several days and had been reporting them dutifully to his superiors each time he'd called but had been given no response. There was nothing he could do. He had no resources either, nothing to give. As the call went on, the volunteer became audibly more and more desperate in his own tone. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale

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The old man asked him, why has our Shanghai become like this? And it was at that point that the volunteer broke down, with any facade of professionalism shattering, at the magnitude of his own helplessness in the face of all this. Although he wanted to help, truly, all he could do was tell the caller, you only see the terrible conditions for one person, yourself. I receive nearly a hundred calls like yours every day. But there's nothing I can do. I report it to my superiors and I get no response. I don't know why Shanghai has become like this either. I don't understand. The roles

had reversed, and the old, sick, starving man found himself in a far more familiar position, probably more comfortable for both parties, of comforting this younger person who was clearly emotionally devastated by what he was forced to listen to day after day. The old man told him, I really understand your position, and we'll get through this. He probably knew that he probably wasn't going to, but at this point there was truly nothing else to say. This post, which very quickly went viral all across the Chinese social media, was just as quickly deleted. And just like all the other deleted posts, many of which rack up more than 100,000 views in their very brief lifespans before their black hold. This content is no longer available. Following related complaints, this content violates the internet user public policy. Thank you for understanding.

Many people have died during lockdown. I mean, that's just a fact of life. In a city of 28 million people, people die every day. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them. Usually people have the space and the ability to grieve that loss, but here it just quickly becomes first a biohazard, and then just one more tally of pain among an increasing number of them. They go online to share their stories of their loved ones with anyone who can see their post before they too are often deleted. These people are dead not because of the virus, which has tens of thousands of positive cases across the city, but at least by official statistics, only a tiny fraction of which, like less than 5%,

are even symptomatic, and with a grand reported total of 9 people in serious condition due to COVID citywide. Take those numbers as you will. Instead, these deaths are all due to the inability to access hospitals, health services, or ambulances because of the lockdown policy. Emergency rooms themselves require a 24-hour negative COVID test before they'll admit any new patient. Not that it would do much good.

Hospitals are not only utterly overwhelmed, they're critically understaffed. The vast majority of on-call medical personnel are not at the hospitals. They're going around the city every single day, dawn to dusk, and often long after dusk, performing test after test to tens of thousands of bleary-eyed, confused, frustrated people. And it's not nearly enough. There's not enough community volunteers who are needed to carry out even basic functions just to

fill in the gaps because there are not enough doctors or nurses. These medical personnel are simply burning out and having full-on mental breakdowns. They sleep a few hours, often on little more than a piece of cardboard cutout in some small office space somewhere. They're low on supplies, they're low on PPE gear, they're low on patients. They're doing their best. But it's overwhelming. This, of course, means that in the medical system here, there's absolutely no capacity for anything else at all. There are no new appointments, no surgeries,

no medications or prescriptions given, no chemo, no dialysis, nothing. So what if the ambulance will take days to come? It's not like whatever condition you have is going to get fixed anytime soon. The full scope and scale of the damage that this is wreaking is yet to be seen in full, and will remain obscure for quite some time to come. And not just for the city of Shanghai itself, but for China as a whole. Shanghai is the bar none medical capital of the country. People come here from every corner of China for the best possible care that the medical system can provide. Many of those people, especially, were told quite suddenly that their procedures had been suddenly cancelled.

Many of them also discovered, often on the same day, that they were no longer allowed to stay in the hospital, but they could also no longer leave the city. A lot of them are simply existing outside. Another specific tale of misery and woe. Five-year-old cancer patients who had been in stable condition died after suddenly feeling discomfort while at home. Although emergency services were contacted, he was told by his compound that his COVID test from the day before had returned as invalid, and he could therefore not be transported to a hospital until a new test was given and results confirmed. He didn't live long enough for that to take place. His last words were, Mom, can you check if my new COVID test has come out? And then two hours after he died,

the results were returned as negative. This content is no longer available. Following related complaints, this content violates the internet user public policy. Thank you for understanding. Across wider China, there's very little true realization of the extent of the situation here in Shanghai. This is due both to the overactive internet sensors busily scrubbing all they can from social media, but also because the nature of social media itself is very insular in China. Weixian and Weibo accounts are by default set to friends only rather than public. So unless you already know someone who lives in the city,

you really wouldn't hear much about it. Residents who come from elsewhere have called their parents or family members back home and related to them the goings-on here in Shanghai, often to the stunned disbelief and occasional even outright denial of those family members. There is a broad and deep trust among the populace regarding domestic news specifically, and this is not on the news, so whatever they're being told by their son or daughter must be exaggerated. If there's some semblance of solidarity at all, it's coming from places like Hong Kong, which is still dealing with its own terrible outbreak and bungled response, and still has something resembling a strong international social media presence, in spite of the ongoing

political crackdowns there. And of course, the international community is very supportive, insofar as they're aware of the situation, which often isn't that much. Most of the wider world is focused on more flashy things, like Ukrainians blowing up Russian tanks. Everybody wants to talk about the victory at Stalingrad. Nobody wants to think about the siege of Leningrad. Feelings of isolation and abandonment are high and widespread.

Many Chinese from other areas can come across as gruff, indifferent, or as viewing what's going on here, insofar as they understand it, as something like a necessary measure or sacrifice that we all must simply tough out for the greater good. That's very hard for a lot of people. This content is no longer available. Following related complaints, this content violates the internet user public policy. Thank you for understanding.

At the local and community level, over-eager officials have sometimes taken to sealing residents into their own homes if they test positive and cannot be removed to quarantine facilities, by which I mean they literally physically weld the door shut with rebar. The first time I watched such a video, I muttered to myself, along with many hundreds of comments below which said likewise, how is this even legal? What if there's a fire? Worse yet, in some cases people have been sealed outside their homes. An elderly woman, after her husband tested positive and was removed to a quarantine facility, was sealed up in a community bike garage with no running water or toilet, able to bring with her

only the amount of water she could collect in all the containers she had, since she was a close contact. A pregnant woman and her husband both tested positive, and while he was taken to quarantine facilities, there was no room for her. Denied re-entry to her own home, she was forced to live out of her car for the past two weeks. No, that's incorrect. Not was forced. This is not past tense. It's still being forced. It's ongoing. Even for those in their homes, and with the doors not physically welded shut, virtually the only way to get food with any regularity is for communities to group buy huge orders altogether,

from out of town, often at eye-wateringly gouging prices, and then have it trucked in. This is all at their own expense, and is only barely tolerated by the city authorities, who briefly tried to declare it not allowed, before apparently realizing that they would quickly be facing a full-on insurrection if they did that, and backed down. One relatively light-hearted tale. One community ordered a group buy of a barber. He arrived and somehow or other went about cutting the residence's hair all day long, 18 orders in all.

Another barber in quarantine has simply moved his business in there with him. Apparently he and many others are pretty happy to stay put there, as he can at least do business, whereas on the outside he'd just be as frozen as everybody else, with bills to pay but no income to be made. Other people who are happier to stay in the quarantine camps than leave are migrant workers, construction workers, and anyone else who knows that their communities would not let them back into their homes even after being discharged by the hospitals. Incredibly rare as that's going on right now. Once you're in, you are locked in until you get, I think, three negative results, which are not conducted each day.

This is in every way, shape, and form a siege. A siege without an enemy army pounding away at the city gate, but a siege nonetheless. We are, all of us, cut off, isolated, mentally taxed to, and often beyond, the breaking point, on edge, exhausted, and at the very best, carefully monitoring our caloric intake and trying to make what we have stretch as long as possible. Because we don't know when this will end. No one does. We were told four days, And then 14 days. We're now on day 15. We've been told that we might be let out after 10 more days. On the 25th. But there are now murmurings of it possibly extending into May.

Literally nobody knows. There's no exit. There's no escape. There's only endurance. This content is no longer available. Following related complaints, this content violates the user internet public policy. Thank you for understanding, and thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves.

And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.