Out of the community

Shanghai will officially lift the blockade tomorrow - of course, according to the official caliber, there is no "unblocking" because it has never announced a "closed city". However, if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck, and it doesn't matter that much whether it's called a duck or not.

Our community has long been a prevention zone, and theoretically it should have been free to travel, but in order to "orderly travel", these two days are still issued according to the principle of 2 households and 1 person. I didn’t want this kind of freedom of time-limited and alms-giving, so I didn’t sign up at all, but last night I learned that some owners had liberated themselves and rushed out without going out. When I woke up this morning with clear skies, I suddenly felt an impulse in my heart: I I don't want to wait until tomorrow.

8:55, ride to the gate of the community. Two security guards stood there, but no one questioned them. When this moment came, it was so simple that I was not used to it, thinking about it, isn't it the same as usual? What should have been such a move and a right has become a luxury in these long two months.

The barbed wire fence outside the door has not been completely removed. Looking back from the intersection, it feels like a fence holding the mouth of a tame giant whale. Since March 24, me and 3,887 other people have been crowded in this fish. A full 68 days in the abdomen.

The street market is a bit dirty, and a lot of rubbish has not been cleaned up in time. Perhaps because it is still early, only 12 of the ten shops open, and the only people queuing up are the people who are doing nucleic acid tests at the entrance of the hospital. Some stores still have notices on the door that say "We will be closed on March 28, we will see you on April 1". Times have changed, and now it seems that I don't know whether it should be regarded as amazingly naive or a terrible illusion. At the window on the second floor of Laoxin Village on the side of the road, someone stuck his head out, talking to an acquaintance on the street, and heard him sigh, "I thought it would be almost a week."

This old street is still lively. Not far away, the new commercial street with the theme of "Happy Shopping for One Kilometer" is dead silent except for a Hema. Thinking of the joke on the Internet: "There is an embarrassing call: the shopping mall has resumed work, but the shop has not resumed work."

Outside the door of a nearby office building, someone pulled up a clothesline, and several pieces of clothing were fluttering in the wind. Two big whites with foreign accents walked by, one of them chatted and said that he would finally return to normal tomorrow, the other did not know whether he was depressed or happy: "We Yangpu are not good enough, I still have work to do."

In the past, there were fallen leaves piled on the ground at the bustling subway station entrance, and the words "Please cooperate with the current limit, please enter the station to measure the temperature" and "From March 23, the entire line will be suspended, and the recovery time will be notified separately" on the electronic screen. "Please hold the armrest tightly, don't look at the mobile phone, and pay attention to the safety of your feet" was played on the loudspeaker in a loop as usual, which made people horrified. It was like an echo from the ruins of human civilization in a sci-fi movie.

I don't know why, but the sparse pedestrians on the street give me a feeling that many of them don't come out thinking to buy something, work or do anything, but just like me, just walking around aimlessly .

I originally wanted to go for a walk in Jiangbin, but I had to scan the site code when I entered the park, and my nucleic acid negative was 4 days ago. The security guard said: "There's no way, now you have to be negative for 48 hours wherever you go." During the days I was blocked, I did 31 nucleic acid tests, some days even every day, but the community has been reduced to precaution since the 28th. Didn't do it again after the district. It's an absurd microcosm of the situation we live in: done so many times, it's not going anywhere, but when you really need it, it's out of date.

The Expo Cultural Park next to it, which has just opened for half a year, was originally designed as an open space without walls, but now every opening has been blocked. There is a guard post at the entrance, and the only duty of the security guard is to tell the tourists like moths to the fire: the park is not open yet, and it is forbidden to break in. This new park is not very good. The biggest advantage for me in the past is that it is empty. Even on the days when there are the most tourists, the distance between people is much higher than the 2 meters required for epidemic prevention, but it is useless to talk about it now.

Cycling around and getting nowhere. I remembered what Songjiang's friend said a few days ago, although he can go out a long time ago, but he rarely goes out, because it is a dead city outside, and there is nothing to see. Even my original desire to read a book in an open space under the shade of a tree in the park could not be realized, and I couldn't find a seat. Finally, when I was tired, I sat on the steps beside the road and took off the Mask to breathe.

After reading dozens of pages in the book, she looked up and someone came towards her. There was a hint of surprise in her eyes. I subconsciously thought she thought it was weird for me to read on the side of the road, but she seemed to hesitate and said, "Please wear a mask. Good." I glanced at her, and she didn't say anything, and left angrily, hearing her whisper, "The quality is really poor."

After being out for nearly two hours, I came home. In front of the flower bed inside the gate of the community, a group of people cheered "We're unblocking" and took a group photo. Passing by the back window of the neighbor's house and hearing some podcast jokes playing in the kitchen, vaguely inaudible, no matter what, I can't laugh listening to these now, it requires a lot of forgetting or ignoring, whether it is inadvertent or unintentional. Lungs, tenacity, or both. I envy their optimism.

This is false dawn. If you look closely, you will see grids large and small, one after the other, turning the metropolis into a ghetto - just as the word's original meaning "small city" indicates, A rich ecology that is inherently close to each other can be isolated overnight into countless isolated units, or "a bag of potatoes".

The resulting absolute security comes at a high cost. British philanthropist Jonas Hanway has written that poor people often think that "they must keep warm" when they are ill, and as a result, "their fumes are trapped in the house, often poisoning themselves". Now it looks like a metaphorical prophecy.

Two days ago, someone said that they didn't want to go out after staying at home for a long time, the so-called "unblocking social fear" or "exit anxiety syndrome". Although the language is joking, it cannot but be said that it is a social mentality that resonates with many people. But as Wang Xiaobo once said, "Unfortunately, any kind of negative life can produce a lot of messy details, making it quite interesting; people sink in this kind of taste and forget fundamentally. This life needs to improve.”

Two months is enough for us to adapt and evolve in a specific ecology, becoming a specialized species that is difficult to adapt to outside this environment. Just like the Mexican blind fish, after being trapped in a dark cave for millions of years, to survive in order to conserve energy, they not only sacrificed their vision, but their brains were severely shrunk, because in that environment that was redundant .

Not only that, according to the current rhetoric, the community is self-governed by the residents, that is to say, in theory, the residents voluntarily did not go out for the past two months. In the community group, the director of the neighborhood committee said, "Thank you for your strong support for the work of the neighborhood committee over the past two months." No one responded. Last night, I heard from a friend that the neighborhood committee in her community also sent a lot of disgusting comments, "Thank you for your perseverance." She sneered: "It seems that you can leave or abandon it."

We don't have a choice, but the responsibility is all our own. "If there is a problem with the city/community, you are responsible for it", although you don't actually have the right to "take your own responsibility". They just want you to take responsibility, swallow it silently, and stop worrying about it. After all, isn't it all over? As is often seen in Chinese families, there is no reconciliation and no apology during a quarrel - the way the parents apologize is to say to you: "It's time to eat."

Normal life has not come back, not even what was originally ours. Of course, everything that happened in the past two months reminded everyone that even if you think it belongs to you, it is not yours; however, the freedom we have now is hardly something we have worked hard to obtain, it is more like a sudden change. It's kind of unearned, and you don't even know how you got it.

More than 200 years ago, Kant said, "He who accepts the gift of freedom will not be satisfied with the pleasures given by others." This statement may be understood in reverse: to be satisfied with what others have given means not yet Understand your natural rights.

People have never deceived themselves into thinking that they are free, not to mention that they used to think that this thing was of little use, and that they could live well without it. What noble liberty can do is at a loss, and it is easy to feel abandoned." What's more, in a hierarchy of power, "liberty" is not so much a right for many people as it is a morally dubious privilege, not for everyone. How can you cherish something you don't really own?

But if it used to be "they thought they didn't need freedom", after this time, more or less people should realize that it is still useful at critical moments, otherwise after losing it, you will continue Lost many other things.