At six o’clock each morning there is a changing of the guard. Alarm clocks go off and citizens looking to feed their families madly tap at screens hoping to secure a delivery spot on a grocery app. Meanwhile, netizens battling government censors to tell the real story call it a night. In Shanghai today, both resistance and survival are virtual.
What began as a two-stage, four-day lockdown in China’s biggest city is now into its fourth week, as officials battle to contain the city’s worst Covid surge to date, driven by the highly-contagious Omicron variant. There are currently more than 21,000 Covid cases among Shanghai’s 25 million residents, and no clear timeline for the lockdown lifting, leaving rich and poor, locals and foreigners united in a quest for survival and information in a way I haven’t seen in my more than a decade as a journalist in the city.
