The real situation in Shanghai is beyond your imagination

Special records for special times.

01

On the evening of April 10, an open-air movie was put on in a community in Shanghai, and “Tom and Jerry” was cast on the wall of the opposite high-rise building.

Tom and Jerry were chasing on the concrete wall, and people from all walks of life watched from balconies and were fascinated. What is this evening, what year is this year?

Life is like a derailed train. After the train runs aground, there is a strange scene outside the window. Someone on Weibo used Zhang Ailing’s sentence:

“The whole of Shanghai took a nap and had an unreasonable dream.”

This big city should not be like this. It has a population of 25 million and lives in more than 6,000 communities. It consumes 15,000 tons of vegetables, 25,000 live pigs, produces 27,000 tons of domestic waste, and sends and receives more than 10 million express packages every day.

Every day, busy people travel through the city along 20 subway lines and 1,461 bus lines. The number of people on the bus for one day alone exceeds 6.5 million, exceeding the total population of Singapore.

The huge city has its own restraint and pride. Teenagers pursue trendy brands, middle-aged prefer yuppies, and old-ages have uncles. Shanghai old aunts dare to choose peacock dance for square dance. Shanghai has the most cafes and cafes in the world. Drive all the way into the security room of the residential building.

The overlapping neon lights have evolved the name of the magic capital, from the Genting Tiangong in Lujiazui to the ants and vegetable leaves in Zhoujiaqiao, where all the slices of the class are hidden. People are like climbing skyscrapers, high-spirited, and lonely and lost.

However, the sudden lockdown of the epidemic has flattened the skyscrapers, and everyone is in the same paragraph.

The first batch of residents in Jiading District, who were under control, thought it was just a loss of spring. The cherry blossoms outside the window were blooming and fading, and the old man fishing went and came again, but soon, the sound of construction at the nearby construction site also disappeared.

The Japanese owner of a football training company, Chiba Yasuhiro, saw the planes at Hongqiao Airport gradually disappear. He lives on the upper floors:

“Usually I can see planes taking off and landing, but now I can’t.”

After pressing the pause button, life is no longer easy to talk about. Shanghainese, who have to clean up their garbage when they go out, start looking for wild vegetables in the community. The old woman, who did not want to speak loudly, waved banknotes across the fence, hoping that passing cars would give alms and sell vegetables.

Some residents were locked indoors, tied with trousers, and used fishing supplies. The last time this scene appeared was in Jiang Kun’s “Escape from the Tiger’s Mouth”.

Luna, an employee of a foreign company, lives in a community near the Lujiazui business district, with the bustling Century Avenue around the corner.

However, she found that when the surrounding amenities and shops shut down and the lights of civilization went out, “we are starving in the very center of Shanghai.”

No matter what class, food has become the overriding issue. The queen of investment will ask for help because of bread, and the chief of brokerage will worry about losing an old hen.

The Brazilian couple at NYU Shanghai, one is in charge of WeChat and the other is in charge of the app, compare themselves to modern hunter-gatherers.

Some people recalled that the last time I was so excited about eating meat was when I was a child for the New Year. “I didn’t expect that this year is already 2022, and we will be happy to have a meat meal, and it’s in Shanghai.”

Some people hope to use Lingna Belle’s doll was exchanged for two pounds of pork belly, and someone rented a cat to play with, and the rent was three oranges. Coke is the most sought-after hard currency, Luna said, “This bottle of 3 yuan carbonated drink can change everything.”

The Shanghainese with a wry smile compiled it into “Song of Vegetables”, the magnificent Shanghai beach, but in the end it was nothing more than firewood, rice, oil and salt. “With Coke, it’s better to replace tobacco and alcohol than lamb chops for coffee beans.”

On April 14, someone came from Suzhou. When I arrived in Shanghai and moved into an apartment building, the group was boiling and the topic of welcome soon changed to “How is the air outside?”

Netizen Xiang Xi wrote:

What is the outside world like now? After being locked in the community for more than 30 days, what it looks like outside is already a little vague in my memory. It seems that walking down a road is the subway station. When I come back from get off work in the evening, someone at the entrance of the subway station shouts that flowers are cheaper by 5 yuan a bunch, and there are brokers who sell houses, and hot sweet potatoes.

Outside Shanghai is falling silent. On April 4, some citizens used drones to take aerial photos of Shanghai.

Under the camera, from the Bund to the Shanghai Tower, the traffic lights are still running normally, but the streets are empty. Only a 2.5-ton copper bull stood silently on the Financial Plaza. There are few vehicles on the Nanpu Bridge, and it is difficult to see ferries on the wide river under the bridge.

There are female takeaway riders who live in tents under the Suzhou River Bridge every day. When she came to Shanghai in March, she encountered the epidemic.

During the day, the city is empty, like a movie. At night, the Suzhou River still has a light show, and the river is full of streamers.

She said that she will not leave, she must stay and see what Shanghai really looks like.

02

The people of Modu pay attention to the boundaries of life. Like many big cities, their neighbors are just nodding acquaintances. However, in this April, everything has been changed.

The netizen, Zhai Ye, lives in Changning. There is an old house mixed with public houses in the community. There is no property. The so-called community is just an iron gate.

It was not until April 7th that the residents spontaneously set up a community. There was no time to chat in the group, solitaire, imported forms, and completed the group purchase of more than 200 milk, and then quickly switched to eggs, then bread.

After the milk group purchase was completed, volunteers were born naturally, and then the neighbors contributed printers and trolleys, and the new ecological reconstruction was completed.

Afterwards, people who had seldom chatted before began to communicate with each other in the group. Ji Ye received a watermelon from his neighbor’s brother, and two days later, he gave back the eggs and vegetables he just received.

The little brother used those vegetables and added beef to make a pot of borscht soup and sent it back. “It’s a familiar taste that Shanghai people like.”

Some people help neighbor children with their homework online, and some help old people cook food and put them at the door .

During the lockdown, the head of the group became the pillar of the community and the most present identity in Shanghai at present.

Eight days after the lockdown, Luna became the head of the most central community in Shanghai.

She is in the consulting industry of foreign companies. Before the lockdown, she had to travel around the world all year round, and she actually spent less than two months in the community a year. Most of the residents in the community are also engaged in finance and other industries, and they have no contact with each other on weekdays.

However, they have now become the room codes in the group. Luna is skilled in sorting out the supply, purchase, logistics and other channels. Her experience is to participate in the group purchase when she sees it, because the materials are never on time:

the instant noodles issued by Jiadingcang have never been Arrived on the same day. No one knows when the supplies will arrive.

The head of the group, Calvin, is a drama producer in reality and manages dozens of people on a daily basis. Neighbors sighed that a producer would be more suitable to be the head of the group. She even contradicts the supplier’s qualifications in many ways.

On Weibo, Liu Chun retweeted Weibo, lamenting the professionalism of a Shanghai aunt as the head of the group.

In the screenshot, the aunt’s form is clear and orderly, efficient and concise, with a foreign enterprise style. Leave a message in the comments, the real Shanghai style is in the form.

The experience of group buying has been continuously upgraded. Some group leaders have built hundreds of people, trained more group leaders, and those group leaders organized self-help in their respective communities.

More experience has been circulated everywhere. For example, the shared document of the “Guide for Epidemic Prevention in Magic City” has been iterated to version 4.0, with over one million readings. After the death of the corgi, “Shanghai Pet Mutual Aid Information Collection” shuttled through the island-like communities.

A Shanghai girl named Gao Jie, facing the door, lived with a 96-year-old grandma.

She was worried about the difficult life for her grandma, so she wrote a note and posted it on the grandma’s door:

Grandma, I am Miss Gao who lives opposite the door. If you need any help or supplies, you can call me. My family has some reserves.

She replied to the door and sent a note to her door:

Miss Gao: Thank you for your concern. Our family has a lot of supplies. If my daughter and you need to add vegetables, we can hang them on the bamboo poles at the door and take them at will. Thanks again for your love.

Grandma washed the vegetables she kept at home and hung them in the middle of the two corridors.

03

Life is moving forward a little bit, and the rapper Little Tiger said: I was happy for a minute after grabbing pork belly and suddenly uncomfortable. The writer Qimao is me who said that I am actually in Shanghai in 2022. I am afraid that I will not be able to eat and will grow bean sprouts. It is really magical!

Netizen Kelly, Wang Ke, recorded trivial things in the diary. Article 10 wrote:

Say it again, the sister of 603 upstairs hopes that you will remember in your life that the sister of 402 gave you a piece of chocolate from the gap between your teeth! ! !

The last sentence of that record is: The light has been seen, and now we are only waiting for the dawn.

Everyone is accumulating hope in life. The 70-year-old old lady planted the leftover vegetable heads and moved them downstairs to let everyone enjoy the vegetables blooming together.

The 41-year-old artist recorded the sound of birdsong, hoping to launch a birdsong radio station and share it with more people who missed the spring.

He said, in fact, this beauty has always existed by our side, but it is usually ignored by us who are busy.

There is more to be ignored and discovered. When the magic capital shrinks into a tiny world, the ice of the neighborhood is broken, and the spirit of volunteerism and civic consciousness is being reawakened.

The official account publishes community rules, volunteer groups speak in an orderly manner, and everything is managed with scientific processes and engaged in modern norms. This is the self-help of Shanghai people. Disorder caused by panic will always be stitched up by civilization.

After the Black Death, medicine became popular in Europe; after the Spanish flu, a lost generation was born in Europe. After the Wenchuan Earthquake, people in the city have become more philosophical.

Two years ago, after Wuhan was unblocked, someone received a text message: From now on, there will be a lot of strength, arrogance, and love, believe that actions are valuable, and believe that life is better than death.

In Shanghai, the longest closed community has been over a month, and the shortest has been 14 days. These years will go deep into the history of the city.

Those who are in the same paragraph have anger, helplessness, sadness, unexpected warmth and surprise, incomprehensible confusion and waiting. What they have in common is that they will think about the true value of life.

In the window of a flower shop in Shanghai, Linna Bell decorated with pink and white roses has long since faded. In Luna’s community, the flowers and plants have long been neglected.

In the corner of the community, there is a pile of potted plants of various shapes.

On the eve of the epidemic, a small exhibition was planned here. Now, it has become an abandoned corner, and no one can go to prune the branches.