Lockdown in Shanghai, April 2022

At the beginning
We were told the lockdown would last four days.
So we stocked a week’s supply,
thinking that would be more than enough.
Then we realized—
it was four days
plus two days,
plus two, plus seven, plus fourteen…
until no one mentioned
an end date anymore.

At the beginning
We scrolled through twelve apps
at 6 a.m. every day,
trying to get food (and coffee).
After a week of failure,
we gave up—
while watching the government’s new program
on goddamn intermittent fasting.
Yes, that’s the solution:
Take a sleeping pill when you wake
so you no longer feel
what hunger means.

We couldn’t help but wonder—
how are our grandparents
the disabled,
the homeless
keeping themselves fed?

At the beginning
We read heartbreaking stories online,
and our hearts broke with them.
We hoped it wouldn’t happen again.
Then we heard
of another death:
a pregnant woman,
an elderly man,
a nurse,
a violinist,
a juwei ganbu,
a corgi…
They didn’t die from the virus.

The list grew too long.
And our hearts—
too tired
to ache for every stranger’s soul—
could only whisper,
please,
spare my own family.

At the beginning
Some voices dared to say—
the virus isn’t that fatal now,
resting at home helps recovery,
no one should be dragged from their home
without proper proof.

Then we learned:
those voices
have no place here.
Because they question Guo Ben,
because they came from America,
and everything American
is deadlier than the virus itself.

Our reality—
must be defined
by strictly Chinese voices.
Voices that come from
somewhere up north.

At the beginning
When we saw a ‘sensitive’ post,
we took screenshots before reading it.
We knew it would be gone soon.
We saved them,
though we didn’t know what for.

Later, we stopped bothering.
We read,
reposted,
liked,
commented—
and waited.

Waited for the post to vanish,
and stared at the red exclamation mark,
and let the red exclamation mark
stare back at us.

We all know
that we all know.

We don’t need screenshots
to tell our children
about this white hunger—
that we survived
and our brothers and sisters
died from.

We don’t need proof
to tell them
our pain
did not come from the virus—
though we had
more than plenty.