Surviving Lockdown in China
and making friends with all my neighbors
So we did it, we managed to survive a dreaded covid lockdown. It was not easy, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world either. Probably because I’m in Chengdu and not a certain other city in China (*cough* Shanghai *cough*).
There was a covid positive household in one of the other buildings, so that building was on full house-arrest-lockdown (if people opened their door an alarm would go off) but our building could still go outside to pick up deliveries and walk the dog. However, my daily step count (which WeChat just sort of idly keeps track of for you) went from nearly 10,000 a day (not including my biking!) to a mere 52. It was impressive how much that lack of movement affected my whole psyche and personal motivation.
It was incredibly hard to work from home, in part because I was supposed to be auditioning actors for our Sichuan Opera / SciFi children’s play (not technically official yet but as soon as it is I will fill y’all in with more details) and obviously that is nigh on impossible online. Then there’s the various events I had to cancel and all of the typical guanxi-building dinners and meetings that have been postponed to some vague date in the future.
I did manage to write a new short story, though it’s still got lots of editing needed, but I’m hoping it will be submittable soon. I have also been continuing with my attempts to learn ukulele for some kids shows at the theater, though so far I’ve only just gotten twinkle twinkle little star under my belt, ha!
I’ve also done quite a few live TikTok and live Douyin events, though I kept on getting kicked off the Douyin lives, ha! At first I took it personally, but after a while it became like a game. There’s a group of people on Douyin who just try to get hosts kicked off by typing horrible crap into the comments section (and I was making the mistake of accidentally reading it aloud when trying to comb through the insane number of messages popping up on the screen). So, once I stopped treating the comments like a teleprompter, that was the first hurdle.
Then of course there was the second more difficult hurdle: figuring out which words were on the insta-shutdown list. Context does not matter, saying these words, phrases or names will just get you instantly kicked off by the bot-censors, so there’s: rights (I was discussing American gun rights, I thought for sure this wouldn’t be a problem — ha!), police, spy (as in James Bond - now I know you just say JD for jian die), or even Mao Zedong (he’s on the money, folks, how do you not say Mao??). Also, you just cannot speak in English (or any dialect that is not Mandarin) at all.
But by the last few sessions I seem to have gotten the hang of it, and with the exception of the remarkably few haters, it was incredible fun. My sessions were daily by that point and evidently a lot of the people in my building enjoyed watching along as well (as they were trapped inside, too, ha!)
Finally, the much-anticipated day of release arrived and it was a little bit like a scene from a sitcom. We got the notification at 7am and instantly there was a flood out of the gate of folks headed out for breakfast, ha! If you’ve not had Chinese breakfast before, you’re missing out, because there is something so perfectly wonderful about starting your day with fresh steamed buns and tea eggs.
Of course, we got a message, going along with the release message from our complex management company, asking us to be di diao “low key” about our new freedom, since 2/3 of the complex is still under house arrest — er, lockdown. In that they could look down from their windows and see the metal gates being moved away. So I thought, ok, I will wait until I get out of the front gate before I do my happy dance.
I get to the front gate, however, and notice a red carpet and banners and *balloons* so yeah… not terribly di diao of the management company, ha! However, much to the delight of my neighbors and the by now very exhausted guards, I proceeded to do my happy dance ;)
For my first walk of freedom, I had taken the puppy, Nala, with me and we walked around a bit enjoying the heady joy of being out and about. Then we popped into one of my favorite local cafes for a mini quiche and iced latte. We sat at the outside table and I proceeded to pull out the Stephen King book I’m reading (an actual paper book, the joy!). I had happily delved into the book while waiting for the quiche-and-coffee to arrive. Nala started freaking out and pulling at me, so I moved to see what she was up to. Then suddenly, the chair goes splat, a large, thick wooden board had fallen from the sky and destroyed the chair. It was almost weird and cartoon-comedic, but certainly would have involved a very serious trip to the hospital, if the ambulance had gotten there in time, if I hadn’t moved. So… moral of the story, y’all need to adopt a rescue dog because karma will certainly work out for you in the end.
But things in the city are far from normal, as it’s the largest outbreak I think Chengdu has ever had to deal with. One of my friend’s asked me to help out with a video to help them sell out their draft beer (as draft goes bad surprisingly quickly) and all the bars in the city have been shut down for anything other than take-out. And there’s no open container laws in China so they did a promo: for 10rmb they would fill up any drinking vessel you brought. Well, they ended up selling out pretty quickly, but we made a video anyways because the process was just too funny, and the Chinese internet has been loving it - using it as an opportunity to berate American excess or more commonly fantasizing about the large container that they would have brought to the bar (face wash pan? Kiddie swimming pool?).
Felt a little guilty about my general lack of productivity for my work with the theater, but was happy to see the link for the Sichuan Opera video I had done a couple of weeks ago. Video linked below is in both English and Mandarin. My boss was also happy to see it, so that of course was event better. Also had more time than usual for long podcast recordings and some narration work at the home studio, and got this long but fun story out last week as well (thank you for editing this monster Ivan!) SupChina Podcast China Stories - Dense brocade: The story of Hunan’s all-female embroiderers
Just found out yesterday that the theater is still closed due to the outbreak and we’ve been asked to work from home. Working from home isn’t actually so bad if you’re not trapped there, ha, so I’m also hoping to make use of some of my spare time to start a new writing project. I’m also going to try to keep up with the daily yoga routine I did during quarantine, as it really did help with my back pain.
Speaking of which, I’m going to get up and take my hero the puppy for a walk to enjoy an iced latte in the safe (if you don’t include covid) environs of an indoors cafe. I hope that you have a great day, too!
Love and Lattes,