prisoner in the hallway

Saturday, April 2, sunny

After my hope of unblocking Pudong as scheduled yesterday was lost, my life has entered a new cycle, but this time I have given up hope, which has made myself a lot easier.

Our community began to be closed on March 24th. At first, it was only said for two days, but two days later, the closure and control continued until 18:00 on the 28th. Before the deadline, at 8 p.m. on the 27th, the news of Shanghai's unprecedented closure of Jiangxi from the next day came. Originally, Pudong said that the closure would be lifted on April 1, but the latest statement is that the closure will continue for two weeks.

Our community has always been all negative, and it is supposed to be a 2+12-day control area, but this morning I got bad news: there was finally a positive case, and the nucleic acid result of another is still uncertain. In any case, a positive case is the entire community. Imprisoned for 7+7 days without leaving home.

Talking about this, I asked Suda: "So now this is 7+7 days from March 28th? Or is it from today?" She swiped her phone without raising her head, and sighed: "You can do it now. Don't bite the policy, the policy is changing all the time, you can only do it now: listen to the arrangement of the neighborhood committee."

Tomorrow has gradually lost its meaning, and I can only try my best to live every day of the present.

After finishing writing the epidemic diary " The Days Waiting for Unblocking " at noon, Suda read it and said, "I'll tell the truth, don't be angry - I think your writing is not as good as before. You entrained those jokes you mentioned, Although it is also the current reality, as a reader, I may have seen it long ago, and what I really want to see is your record of the details of life, but I don’t know why, you rarely write about it.”

She was right. Of course, the reason is very simple: the coming and going is in this compartment, although it is said that you can eat and sleep, but everyday life is like dehydrated bread, which is difficult to swallow. Maybe this "unsightly" itself is the reality of life, and I can't make it so delicious.

I don't know why, but I still have a sore throat this morning, and the boss is also a little uncomfortable. He can't get up under the quilt, and he usually seldom sleeps in late. It may have just caught a cold yesterday, but at the time of the epidemic, I received text messages every day saying that once I found a headache, I had to report it according to regulations. Fortunately, the second antigen test was delivered at noon, and the whole family was negative.

Today’s breaking news is a 20-minute recording that was leaked online. The expert from the Pudong Center for Disease Control and Prevention told the public that the amount of information was huge: the health cloud is not allowed; Cases, not critically ill, mild like influenza.

Talking to friends, many people have a hunch: on the basis of this recording, a new social consensus on the epidemic may be taking shape. After so much suffering, more and more people are finally realizing that it is not the virus that drives us into fear, but the fear itself.

April 3, Sunday, sunny

When I woke up early, my sore throat disappeared, but it was okay, just a false alarm. In fact, if I don't get quarantined and don't affect my family, I'm not afraid even if I get infected with Omicron.

Mom called because today is my lunar birthday. She is the only one in the world who still remembers it, and I have completely forgotten about it. I have been celebrating my birthdays on the lunar calendar since I was a child, but in recent years I have gradually become accustomed to the solar calendar. In addition, after the closure of the city, every day is almost the same. Even the solar calendar needs to memorize something every day to be clear, not to mention the lunar calendar.

She ate a bowl of wonton noodles, "thinking that today is my son's birthday, although it is an extraordinary period, I still have to live happily every day." After two days of unblocking, the town closed the roads and closed the supermarkets. People were panicking. Fortunately, the countryside can at least move around freely in the village, which is always much better than Shanghai.

I told her, don't worry, we all have enough to eat here, and the emotions will be relieved by themselves. She smiled and said, "Well, I know that my son reports good news but not bad news, but I can't do anything to worry about it, so everyone can relax and arrange their own lives, right?"

The emotional connection between people should not be blocked by the ban, but at this moment, it is even more necessary. The junior sister said on WeChat that she was in a low mood because she received a call from her father from her hometown. She thought he was asking how she was doing after being banned for more than ten days, but she was just asking for money. Under her emotional breakdown, she cried and said, "Have you ever been concerned about your daughter's well-being in Shanghai over the years?"

When I talked to her, she had calmed down, but she felt sad. Thinking about it, it was not indifference, but indifference, "a habitual indifference to other people's feelings, because he was also treated like this and grew up." Unexpectedly, under the closure of the city, I was forced to be independent, but I needed stronger nerves to face this huge world. I know that she is actually a person who needs emotional connection very much, but this kind of connection creation, even if she understands the truth, she still has to be patient and do it herself.

In our society, sometimes it seems very strange: on the one hand, the emotional connection you want, even the closest person is often unable or unwilling to give; .

In the past few days, people from all over the world have rushed to help Shanghai, and I saw some people laughing at themselves: "We Shanghai people have already lied down, and we were forcibly lifted up by the people of the whole country." It may not be necessary to wait for the epidemic to end, which will arouse the resentment of Shanghai all over the country. : It clearly enjoys preferential treatment, but poses as "I don't need this kind of help", but before, it can't control the spillover and affects others - in a human society, this seems selfish and selfish Not grateful.

A large number of positive infected people in Shanghai are being transferred to neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces for resettlement. I heard that the old and new villages nearby have gone to "group tourism" because there are too many infected people. I also sent some information about the latest transfer to Jiangsu and Zhejiang quarantined to friends who needed it. He smiled: "Now we can finally leave Shanghai."

It was rumored yesterday afternoon that Shanghai will be completely unblocked on April 18. The reason is that Shanghai Disney has pre-sold tickets from this day. , still undecided. This may be a rumor, but the psychology behind it is true: people want to seize all the clues to judge the arrival of the expected node, because they really have nothing else to believe.

At 8:00 p.m., I had a conversation with Nie Riming on "The Return of the Epidemic: The Response and Long-term Impact of Core Cities", which was also the first online conversation of the "Weizhou Reading City" project. Talking about it is actually more like an interview with him. I agree with his judgment: "The impact of the epidemic on the economy has only just begun." We can't just be stuck in the mud pit before us, we have to prepare for life after the epidemic.

April 4, Monday, sunny

It was almost 12 o'clock in the middle of the night last night, and I was woken up and went downstairs to get a steak. There are too many orders for group purchases, and there is no guarantee when they will be delivered. The second child is not fond of meat. I have called it several times. We can't do it if it is too expensive. This time I bought the cheaper one, 20 yuan per piece.

Early in the morning, another large package of vegetables also arrived: 6 tomatoes, 6 green peppers, 4 cucumbers, 3 carrots, 2 zucchini, 106 yuan. Nothing else, the price of green peppers has risen a lot, 20 yuan a pound.

Under the closure of the city, the vast majority of Shanghai people can't care about Shi Shiran, and they are all rushing for food. Since it is difficult to get vegetables on e-commerce platforms, vegetables have now become temporary currency during the siege. There is a joke that graduate students from 985 colleges are willing to teach neighbors children to exchange two green vegetables. The real problem now is not the lack of materials (it is said to be piled up), but the liquidity of the market has been blocked.

Someone in the neighborhood group of the community reminded: some new villages have found illegal acts of posing as vegetable group purchasers to enter the community owner group to commit fraud. The specific method is to publish information in the owner group, falsely claiming that there is a vegetable supply, and it can be delivered to the community if it is over 200 yuan , but you need to pay in advance, and you will withdraw from the group after payment. Although the reminder said, "Please pay attention to screening when participating in group purchases, and beware of being deceived", but to be honest, it may be difficult for people to screen - of course, this is also a common situation in China. After the accident, the thought is not how to improve the mechanism. , but requires individuals to undertake their own risk.

Suda pulled me into the "Notice Group for Grocery Shopping and Nucleic Acid Testing in the Building Group". Now I can only rely on the building group to help myself. I have lived in the same corridor for more than ten years. I have never added a neighbor's WeChat account. Some residents of the community had to retreat to the original transaction of barter after the inventory was almost depleted. The neighbors cooperated with resources. For example, the owner has potatoes, and the west family produces pork, so they can make a pork stew with potatoes. Originally, this kind of "dojo in a snail shell", which uses resources as much as possible under the cramped conditions, is also one of the traditions of this city.

I saw a paragraph that succinctly described the current living conditions of Shanghai people:

Nucleic acid: negative

sunny

body: round

Dishes: missing

In the evening, I went downstairs to do the fifth round of nucleic acid tests. Now the nucleic acid tests in different communities are still classified according to the risk level. There may be 20 mixed 1, 10 mixed 1, 5 mixed 1, three households mixed 1, one household, one tube, and one tube per person. . Both times we do it seems to be one household, one management. It was over in three minutes, but it was a rare day in the past few days to go downstairs during the day and see the blue sky. Beyond the surveillance cameras, there was another world across the wall—of course, it might not be any different from ours.

Tuesday, April 5th, overcast

Ching Ming Festival. In previous years, this was one of the most congested holidays on the roads around Shanghai, because everyone had to go out of the city to sweep graves, but this year it was unprecedentedly quiet. Some people said: "This damn epidemic has already affected the three realms: the incense in the sky can't be served, and the paper in the ground can't be burned. , living can't make money."

My cousin sent me a new script:

During the Qingming Festival, there are many rains: no rain;

Pedestrians on the road want to break their souls: no one;

Let me ask where the restaurant is: closed;

The shepherd boy pointed to Xinghua Village: the city was closed.

In a video, an old Shanghai aunt said sadly: "I didn't buy tin foil this year for Qingming, and it's not easy to burn it." The old man next to her comforted her: "I said, don't burn this tin foil this year, burn them I can’t receive it, and the courier is gone. They also have to seal the bottom, and the top is all positive, shouldn’t they seal it? The bottom is all negative.”

I tested the antigen for the third time today, and of course it was still all negative. Our life is trapped in this repeated cycle of continuous testing and grabbing food. In fact, there is no "life" anymore. In the past two days, I have seen many people on the Internet saying that Shanghai people still have not suffered enough, and they still think about the quality of life and want to be "elegant", which is just hypocritical. For this reason, I think it is necessary to write an article " They Just Want to Live Like Humans ", because in my opinion, this kind of survival ability of "it is better to die than to live" is not worth boasting about.

Not surprisingly, some readers left a message saying that it's just that you haven't been forced to do that, "standing and talking doesn't hurt your back." I don't know what she went through, but I found that many people have a strange resentment, as if "decency is useless, you will know when you are forced to live like an animal".

Because I hardly screen messages (the platform administrator will help me screen them), the message area of my official account is full of various opinions all the year round, and I have always been indifferent. But I have to admit that after being blocked for so many days, I have become more irritable and unbearable than before. Today, I saw someone teasing me, "Don't write this kind of war-inducing article", "Focus on other things." "I was eating, and I was so bored that I finally couldn't help but say, "Why are you so annoying? What do I write for you?"

I was also a little depressed when I was still, and I told my friends that at that moment I really wanted to speak out, because there were always people who "admonished" like this, and what I wrote was originally my business. A friend put on a smiley face on WeChat: "You are always so good-natured, the normal desire to attack will only cause problems if you hold back. My old classmate has been banned for 20 days in Minhang, saying that he has become more vicious than before. More, I support you and be a little bit more venomous."

I vaguely feel that after this epidemic, social emotions may become polarized, some people will hug their thighs more tightly, while others will give up their illusions. At this time, moderate and neutral people will be in a difficult situation. Intellectually, I shouldn't have pushed for this polarization, but in reality, when I'm being abused, threatened, misunderstood, my patience isn't as good as it used to be. Especially when I see personal threats, I may have taken it seriously in the past, but now I immediately block it without hesitation.

Even so, the days were still depressing. Yesterday afternoon, a reporter from The New York Times asked me if I could talk about the Shanghai epidemic. I politely refused, but agreed to quote my official account article. In November last year, they interviewed me once during "Time and Space Accompanying". Although they only quoted one sentence at the end, they may not have seen many people, but many relatives and friends nervously warned me, "Don't pick up again." , At this point in time, foreign media is too sensitive. My silence itself is the reality of life in the epidemic.

Wednesday, April 6th, sunny

14th day blocked. Two-week anniversary.

My mother asked me how my two grandchildren were doing. "The brothers are really uncomfortable during this time. After all, they are children, and adults don't feel it."

The children have nothing to do at home except for online classes. The second child has to fight with his brother from time to time, and often one of them has been scuffled together without paying attention. Sometimes it's a game, sometimes it's a fake. In order to let the little boy vent his energy, Suda asked them to help them mix noodles and make cakes for the past two days. The boss was very skilled before, and this time the second child also started to learn, because otherwise he would be too boring.

From time to time, readers worry about me and ask me how I am doing. An interviewer (who has become a friend) who was in Luoyang last year even said, would you like to send me something? It just happened.

In fact, my parents-in-law in Fuzhou also said that they would send things countless times. The problem is that the courier has stopped and they can’t receive it. The old man is afraid that we will not eat anything, so that we have developed a new habit now: taking pictures of every meal for them to see , to show that we have not run out of food.

Although I have no worries of running out of food for a while, I discovered an embarrassing reality today: the daily necessities at home are running out. Rolling paper and washing powder can last for about a week, but there is a high probability that they cannot be unsealed within a week. Before patronizing the group dishes, I forgot that these living materials will also be exhausted. Fortunately, I found a neighbor, and there are ways to solve these.

In the evening, the group was reposting today's three events: an old man died suddenly during a dispute during the nucleic acid in Yangqu Xincun; a corgi was beaten to death during the epidemic prevention in Pudong; the most incredible is Rainbow Bay in Hongkou. The 32-year-old woman thanked the food delivery driver for delivering meals to her hearing-impaired father, and recharged his mobile phone with 200 yuan. She was slammed by the Internet on Weibo.

Not long ago, none of this seemed possible in Shanghai, but now it is happening so densely that the city, in just ten days after March 28, has become so unfamiliar. Of course, if this can happen in Shanghai, it means that it is very likely to be staged in any city in China. This can't help but make me wonder if our original reality of life is an unreal illusion.

Thursday, April 7th, sunny

My mother called and she said that all roads in the countryside were closed, and even small shops could not be opened. , that is, "paying homage to ancestors".

I persuaded her to feel at ease, Chongming was fine, and Shanghai couldn't be like this forever. But when I said it, I knew very well that this was just wishful thinking, because a question we are afraid to ask ourselves is: In fact, if it goes on like this, there is nothing we can do. Unblocking is like locking down a city, it does not depend on our wishes.

It has been blocked for many days, but the number of positives in the community is increasing. Received a notice today that nucleic acid abnormal groups have appeared in 7 doorways, and the neighborhood committee asked the volunteers of the relevant building groups to suspend their volunteer services.

Yesterday was the sixth round of nucleic acid, and today we will do it again. Probably because the centralized nucleic acid test will cause infection in the crowd, we will no longer test in the community activity center this afternoon, but spread out and do nucleic acid medical staff in groups of two. Our corridor is under a large clump of cherry trees.

Nucleic acids and antigens have been incessant for days, and many people do not know why they are doing it. To be honest, I am also a little dizzy. Today I finally saw an explanation:

Today, your community arranges for antigen testing, which means that the community has no positive positivity in the past 5 days, and the situation is good, and it may be the earliest to unblock; if you arrange a nucleic acid test today, it means that the community has positive symptoms but the patient has been taken away, and there are no suspected cases in front of you; if your The community did not check anything today, which means that there are positive cases and suspected cases in the community that have not been sorted out, and it is even more necessary to wait for unblocking.

In any case, the result is "waiting", which may seem to some people to be tempered, but it is actually a waste of life. When queuing up for nucleic acid testing in the afternoon, Xiao Mao saw a black thrush's nest on a camphor tree in the distance, but unfortunately he didn't bring a telescope. Suda smiled and sighed: "What a nice weather, we shouldn't be staying at home."

During the night, the volunteers distributed a box of items, including 5 catties of rice, a pack of dried noodles (900 grams), 6 green balls, 1 barrel of oil (1.5 liters), and a bottle of soy sauce (500 ml). It is worth noting that rice, The noodles and the youth league are all provided by Zhejiang enterprises. Every family has such a box, I don't know if there are enough people to eat.

Chatting with friends, Minhang also distributed rice and vegetables. He said, "I think the distribution of rice is for long-term consideration, and the distribution of vegetables is to prepare us for a hard life."

Whether that's the case or not, we're all being targeted right now.

April 8, Friday, sunny

After being locked at home for many days, I feel like a sleepy beast. Although I am still writing articles every day, I am overwhelmed with bad news and my self-perceived state is not very good. I cannot help but think about how to cheer up.

More than a month ago, due to working at a desk for a long time, my shoulders and neck were inevitably sore, and now I can't go out, and I do shoulder and neck exercises from time to time every day. It was sunny this morning, and I took out the quilt to dry it again. Suda laughed at me as a "quilt fan", but it at least made me sleep a little more peacefully.

The books that were piled up in the aisle of the study were also sorted out, and they were sorted and stacked on the new bookshelf. I had been unable to free up my hands before, and I always felt that this was a very low priority. I couldn't take care of it, but if I didn't clean it up, the study was always a bit messy, which would inevitably affect my mood.

Today, the team leader of the building distributed antigen reagents for the fourth test. In the afternoon, a large cabbage from our house arrived, 123 yuan, and she was also ringing the doorbell. She is a foreign daughter-in-law. She has been married here for many years, and her children are in the fourth grade. This time, she is also very busy, and all kinds of notifications are handled by her here. We are also unhappy, the dishes are coming, just shout in the group, and we will come down and help divide them together.

In fact, Shanghai people don't like to owe each other favors, but after such a lockdown, even if they don't want to owe it, they still owe it.

Saturday, April 9th, sunny

The fifth antigen test in the morning was all negative. The eighth round of nucleic acid at noon was still under the cherry blossom tree. Although it was a little annoying to measure, on the other hand, it made people feel a little hopeful, because this was the only legal opportunity to go downstairs and let the wind out, even if it was done. You can also sit in the community garden and blow the wind. It is no wonder that in ancient times, those women in the boudoir who did not go to the door and did not go to the second door only had a few days to look forward to burning incense and worshiping Buddha.

The epidemic has come and gone, and it has never been better. No. 39 in the building next to it, I heard last night that an old couple had been transported away. Only a 95-year-old man lived alone at home. Someone in the neighborhood group asked, "I don't know how the neighborhood committee will follow up with the care work?"

In the afternoon, Suda will move the sofa in the study to the living room, because it is very low utilization in the study all the time. She wants to adjust the layout of the house every once in a while, and I am a Taurus who is very reluctant to adjust, but since she has mentioned it so many times, I have to cooperate.

This two-seater sofa is so big that we have forgotten how it was put into the study. Even if the books in the aisle of the study have been cleaned, it still does not work. We have to make a lot of efforts to disassemble it, and then assemble it in the living room. .

She sat down and smiled contentedly: "It's so comfortable, this is life."

Sunday, April 10, sunny

Vegetable prices have risen. Bantam green cabbage was originally three or four yuan, but in the early days of the lockdown, it was 6 yuan, but today it is 11.8 yuan. This time, I was also surprised to find that many of the neighbors in the building were quite rich, because in the grocery shopping group in the corridor, there are many group buying Solitaires every day, a lot of high-quality beef, Arctic shrimp, etc. hand, but soon gathered several.

Today, Suda gave to our neighbor Xiao Zhao’s home-made toast, gave room 101 a pound of flour, and helped room 202 to print elementary school homework—her daughter is in the fourth grade, a very good elementary school, but There is a lot of homework, and after the community is closed, I cannot go out to print.

Suda came back with a few oranges, I asked, "Where did they come from?" She smiled: "202 gave it. I don't want to take her money, so she just stuffed me a bunch of oranges, which are still very expensive." I Said: "How do you know?" "I saw that they bought it in the group."

For some reason, I remember what the Chinese-French half-blood Bao Ruowang wrote in his memoirs, in prison, "the concept of friendship and the concept of personal freedom have been highly developed. This is an ironic I found many years later. fact."

As some friends discovered this time, this may not necessarily be a bad thing in the long run: in order to survive, people are forced to restore their ability to self-organize in a state of emergency.

April 11, Monday, sunny

According to the original lockdown plan, today was the day the lockdown was lifted. It was announced at the Shanghai Epidemic Prevention and Control Press Conference that in the past two days, Shanghai has launched nucleic acid screening across the city. As of 8:00 am yesterday, a total of 25.12 million people have been sampled, and 21.52 million people have been tested, of which 25,996 have abnormal results. Each area will be classified according to the test results, or continue to be controlled, or unblocked as a prevention area.

Our community seems to be a long way off. I learned early in the morning that another family was positive for the antigen, and the neighbors in the group couldn't understand at all: "Why do you do more and more? How did it all come out?" "Cross infection or what?" Not only that, the positive ones were found. The gates are not adjacent, and there is no rule to follow depending on the distribution of buildings.

Residents in 7,565 prevention zones in the city have unblocked, but judging from some of the outflow notices, many "prevention zones" are also fake and still quite strict. Only Chongming Island in the outer suburbs has been unblocked. Because Chongming has the weakest connection with the urban area, the vast majority of cases are concentrated in the shipbuilding base on Changxing Island. In fact, there are very few on this island. It will not spread in dense crowds and is easy to clear.

At 3:00 pm, Chongming City was officially unblocked. I heard that the old city was blocked, like a carnival. By dusk, there had been more than one car accident, and there was even joy and sorrow. One person riding an electric car died unfortunately. Mom says our town isn't fully open yet, but it must be soon.

At dinner, Suda suddenly stopped his chopsticks and sighed, "You said it would have been better if we escaped to the countryside of Chongming earlier?" There is a family of classmates in the second class, the school has just closed and the community has not yet been closed. I returned to my hometown in Chongming within a week.

How should I put it, this may be a decision at a juncture in history. Sometimes even those who made the right choice did not expect their luck at the time, the window of opportunity was fleeting, and they did not even have time to make rational judgments, but could only rely on intuition. instinct.

Perhaps we will face such a choice in the future, but none of us know whether we can make the right choice, and it may be years before we know what we have paid.