It was an hour before we were due to meet in a bar called Great Leap when the phone throbbed on the kitchen table with a message from my friend. “Change of plans. The entire compound next to that bar is in lockdown. Better keep our distance,” it said.
It has been the same story every other day for the past couple of weeks as a scattering of Covid cases in Beijing has set off a spate of mini-lockdowns. When I suggested meeting an acquaintance in a coffee shop in Sanlitun, a district full of bars, restaurants and empty designer shops, she warned me off. “Heard Sanlitun has a new confirmed case. People who came through that area or even just passed by received an alert pop-up on their health kit,” she said.
The health kit is a constantly updating smartphone app that shows your Covid status, how long it has been since your last PCR test, and everywhere you have visited. Everyone must have a PCR test every three days and you have to scan a QR code with the health kit every time you enter a building, a shop or an office, leaving a detailed trail of your movements.
It takes only a couple of dozen new cases a day in Beijing, a city of more than 20 million people, to trigger a wave of orders to self-isolate and to get tested daily for three days. The lockdowns usually cover only a single building or complex but the fear of getting locked down has a wider impact as people think twice about going to crowded places and organisers cancel events.
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A friend and I were on our way last Friday to two events at the 798 Art Zone, a former military factory complex that is Beijing’s contemporary art district, when she received a text message saying one of them had been called off.
“We are very sorry to inform you that… 751 Design Night… has been temporarily cancelled, due to the severe situation and requirements of the current epidemic prevention and control. You will be cordially invited when the event is rescheduled,” it said.
The other event, which was the opening of a new museum, went ahead as planned, complete with an expressionist dance performance that moved through the galleries on two floors with crowds forming to watch at each stop.
The following day another friend proposed that instead of having dinner or going to a bar we should take a walk and visit a Buddhist temple. He was due to fly to a beach resort in southern China for a week’s holiday a few days later and he was determined to avoid getting trapped in Beijing because he spent an hour in the wrong bar.
For the most part Beijing’s limited lockdowns are a manageable inconvenience for those affected but a lockdown in the northwestern city of Lanzhou had tragic consequences this week. Tuo Shilei said the strict anti-Covid measures indirectly caused his three-year-old son Wenxuan’s death by carbon-monoxide poisoning.
Wenxuan and his mother fell ill around noon on Tuesday after exposure to gas fumes but when Tuo tried to call an ambulance and the police he was unable to get through. When the boy’s condition worsened after half an hour, his father tried to leave the compound where they lived but it was under lockdown and guards would not let them out.
Tuo finally rushed through the barrier and with the help of a passer-by he found a taxi to take him and Wenxuan to hospital but it was too late and the boy was declared dead at 3pm. Amid a storm of protest on social media, municipal authorities said that public criticism was justified and that the rules had been applied too rigidly.
“We will learn the bitter lesson, put people and life at the centre, improve work style and governance capabilities to avoid similar incidents from happening again. We also fully accept critics from the public and will firmly rectify the problems,” they said in a briefing on Thursday.
Wenxuan’s funeral was on Wednesday morning in the family’s hometown of Hezheng, a few kilometres from Lanzhou. Tuo did not attend because he was afraid he would be quarantined as soon as he got there.