We All Got Shanghaied - Shanghai Epidemic Diary Part 3

After the "Tuancheng Ji", my heart gradually calmed down. One is that the experience of being in prison has been comprehensive. Except for volunteer activities such as organizing nucleic acids, which I hate, I have already played the roles of volunteers, team leaders, and enthusiastic neighbors (middle); and in Shanghai outside the cell, every night News and help are also similar. The second is that after I started reading papers and writing articles, I was thinking, apart from faithfully recording the daily life under the epidemic, what is "my" perspective and thinking? Although I have accumulated a lot of fragmented insights, collected a lot of fragmented information, and vaguely have some structured pictures, how should I recognize and express, and try to judge the event I am in? Could I have written Arendt's imperfect but insightful essays in Crisis of the Republic? Or at least something like Javier's The Power of the Powerless? I hope I can write my thoughts on the day when the lockdown is lifted.

After the 18th, I gradually lost my interest in recording the information that poured into me every day on WeChat, Twitter, Weibo, Douban, etc. Of course, the mood is still swinging between calm and gloomy, sometimes it feels that after three full weeks, people will finally be unable to bear the pain of losing their freedom, maybe I can see more NO MORE resistance, in some unexpected way? However, collective actions against nucleic acid production broke out in sporadic communities, and there is nothing to say about the rest. And I can't help but see that the amazing adaptability of human beings can turn any abnormality into everyday life.

On the night of the 22nd, Shanghai residents in the circle of friends enthusiastically forwarded "The Voice of April", and launched a silent contest with Tencent's overtime censorship brother. But such a gentle, even a little aggrieved, short video is a work that all the residents who have been imprisoned for nearly a month can feel the most empathy. years or decades later. People's psychology probably has to go through round after round of impact and trampling before thinking about change? Or is "courage" the most unattainable virtue in the world? However, the night of the 22nd still made me think, if the city is locked down for a longer time, will there be any voices in April or June?

However, I think there are still many stories and messages of absurdity and comedy worthy of a small note. In the death of similar left and right (accidental inability to seek medical treatment in time, and suicide), it has become a perspective to observe the city, in addition to sadness and anger. , to provide some laughing, even schadenfreude. Like Arendt once remarked,
"The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt,
and the surest way to undermine it is laughter."

The "leadership" news and rumors in the past few days always make people feel like Kong Yiji's hotel inside and outside the city, full of happy air.

On the 19th day and night in the WeChat group, the phone recording of the foreign master-German Ralf can be used as an appetizer for the whole comedy perspective. Although the English-speaking volunteers on the other end of the phone replaced the neighborhood committee and the greater political authority behind it—or use a popular word—the authorities, innocently endured the overwhelming curses of the Germans; but the foreigners’ backing to a strong motherland is really Said the call sign of most Shanghai people.
It's a disgrace for you, for the government, for Shanghai, for China.
You are like the joke of the whole world now.
Aside from the F-word that his friends couldn't restrain, let's look at the things that he finds unreasonable. More than ten days ago, he was transported to the square cabin unnoticed and transported back home; now he is asked to go to the square cabin after he has no symptoms; 6,000 yuan was spent on the safety of pets at home; Make a call, the phone number cannot be displayed and cannot be called back.
The whole political system is like a stroke. It says A today and becomes non-A in the afternoon. People can't help but sing: "Living in China is really fun!"

Open the city closure story along the side of the government, and one joke after another is so overwhelming.
For example, on the 17th, Sun Chunlan climbed high to inspect the old community. He believed that standing at such a high place would definitely allow the Deputy Prime Minister to see the Omicron virus clearly. Another example is that on the 19th, when Deputy Mayor Chen Tong went to the parents of the residents to check the material reserves, he even tucked his hands into his sleeves. The photos he took looked like Doraemon, what a lovely Communist Party cadre. Another example is Wu Jinglei, the director of the National Health Inspection Commission who has lost his privacy. In the medical report that came out, the words "sleep 2-3 hours a day on average" and "two stools are no different".

The aid materials from various places were thrown away and resold. The Nanqiao Town Government responded that the Liaoning materials were treated as garbage, saying that most of these materials had rotted and deteriorated after a long period of transportation; Face. "It was a really good show."

These resold aid materials, the so-called red list of companies holding supply guarantee qualifications, and the passes that are said to have been resold all together demonstrate the chaotic and corrupt texture in the system. Under the aura of "efficiency" and "mission fulfillment", the weakness of authoritarian governments is so obvious. An official account has done some simple data analysis and processing for the list of 1,072 companies in Shanghai that provide guarantees for the epidemic, and it is not difficult to imagine how many tricks and transactions are hidden in these companies.

However, in the face of a weak authoritarian government, even more powerless are the vulnerable individuals who cannot be self-organized by society.

Just like CMBYN, LALA LAND's yin-yang online movement, our jeers, while dissolving the authority of the government, do not translate into practical accountability. These voices are like shooting stars, only streaking across the sky of the LAN in the middle of the night when the network censors are resting, and the next day is clean as if nothing had happened.

I sometimes wonder, what can we do?
Perhaps the only thing we can do now is to make a decisive political judgment and try our best to see the truth, and we must not forget it.

[Note: CMBYN and LALA LAND refer to a yin-yang commentary campaign launched by Chinese netizens on Weibo to criticize the government. CMBYN is the acronym for the movie "Call Me By Your Name". Criticism messages under such content, that is, referring to "the United States" as "China", ironically criticizing the Chinese government. LALA LAND is the American movie "La La Land". This criticism directly refers to the statement of Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when he said that "living in China, you can have fun" during the epidemic period, that is, China is a love (stealing) fun. The place. The result is that the superfluous discussion of the two films themselves was shut down, and the criticism that flooded in at night was deleted the next day. 】

If we follow the clue of the life of the residents under the lockdown, although the comedy has not diminished, this comedy is always based on a tragic tone.

In Shanghai, barbed wire has been installed at the gates of some communities and buildings. The green barbed wire is very similar to the protective nets used by all kinds of animals in the Shanghai Zoo. As a result, a large number of parodies of communities and zoos have been circulated. Of course, people are still people, and in the dead of night, there are videos of kicking the barbed wire.

Another example is that the storm chased away the temporary bathing room of the square cabin, and a naked middle-aged man was crawling in the wind and rain.

Another example is a college student. Because the person living with the positive infection slept in the living room, he did not dare to go to the toilet through the living room, so he went online for help after three days without a queen size.

Those rumors that are full of people's simple and good wishes, such as Zhang Weiwei being slapped, are also moments that make the small academic world fall into a small happy moment. The truth is that the students were locked up in the school until the depression surged, and the heart-piercing incompetent howls were heard from time to time in the positive control building. Having the experience of living on campus in a university, I can really empathize with the suffocation and collapse of six people in a dormitory being locked in a room every day.

Back in my own life, I am also exploring the small theater of daily resistance. In addition to walking the dog secretly every morning and evening, I also began to try to do some small actions to reject antigen nucleic acid. In fact, every time I went out during the day, I was kicked out in the garden by security guards in white clothes riding a tram. At that time, I always remembered the scene when my mother shoved chickens when they were raising chickens. It was really funny. I walk the dog, people walk me.

Our community seems to be a positive nucleic acid model community, and no one refuses it. After I tried to go downstairs, the call from the neighborhood committee came directly, and the volunteers did more detailed work than I expected. After all, I had troubled the people in the neighborhood committee before going out to seek medical treatment, so I had to make up a nonsense and go downstairs obediently. As for antigens, we can only say: in ancient times, Mulan joined the army for her father, and now there are dog surrogate mother antigens. In fact, whether to do it or not depends on the mood, even if it is a little personalized resistance to these policies. Although it didn't work, it also brought a little laughter to the little family.

Beijing Omicron has been stealthily spreading for a week. I admit that I am heartless gloating, schadenfreude, the word is so vivid! In addition to presenting the most comprehensive collection of stockpiling goods to teachers and friends in Beijing, we also shared the joy of watching the government get slapped by the virus.

There are not many verbs that Chinese contribute to English, but shanghai is one of them. After the opening of the port in 1843, Shanghai often abducted and sold Chinese workers to sell people in broad daylight, which made the place name shanghai also have a verb meaning, that is, "to lure, abduct, and force (someone to do something)". On April 1st, Puxi closed the city, and he said that it would be lifted on April 5th; now on April 25th, "theoretically" I can't go downstairs. ta said that the supplies are sufficient, and there is no need to panic; he said, believe in the country, and insist on clearing; he said, we will definitely win; he said, we won.
German friends, and most of us, should now have a lively, tearful, absurd, slightly cheerful, personal use of the verb shanghai.