19 April 2022

Hungry and scared: Inside Shanghai’s disastrous zero-covid lockdown

Lili Pike

“Every morning when I wake up, what I worry about is no longer work, it’s what we are going to eat today. Almost all of my time is spent on this.”

That’s what Liu Jie, a university professor in Shanghai, told Grid on the 15th day he’d spent confined to his small apartment with his wife and toddler.

“I thought it would be two weeks at most,” said Liu, who requested Grid use a pseudonym because of the political sensitivity of the topic. “But I’ve already been here for two weeks, and the city clearly isn’t going to reopen. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s going to open up in another two weeks.”

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