BEIJING: It was bad enough that my father-in-law, who is staying with us, got us all locked in our small Beijing apartment after visiting a food market which the government decided was “high risk”.the quarantine system that has confined tens of thousands of Beijingers
It began on a Friday, when a man from our “shequ”, the committee in charge of keeping order in our neighbourhood, arrived sweating at our door to seal us inside. We could open our door — pinging alerts to him — to bring in deliveries and put out the trash, which would be collected every afternoon and sanitised. “Make sure the deliverymen have already left before you open the door,” he warned.
That’s not how it felt when I rushed to stock up on frozen chicken and cabbage alongside thousands of other frenzied Beijingers last month as rumours of an impending lockdown spread. We decided to buy an extra freezer to store more food. We had been classified as high risk, the shequ man told us that Friday, because my father-in-law had been at a food market that was also used by a close contact of a COVID-19 case. My father-in-law had scanned the market’s QR code with his phone, making it easy for him to be tracked along with thousands of other Beijingers who had visited the market between Jun 8 and Jun 15. If the close contact remained COVID-free, we would soon be let out.
Some cities offer 1,000 yuan or more for reporting on neighbours breaking quarantine. The collective monitoring is officially encouraged in Beijing and the local news is full of stories of residents being detained or put under police investigation for breaking the rules.Each day we removed the notice on our door in case we dared to make a break for it. But every morning a new one appeared and “don’t tear down” was scribbled on its margins.
自己堵自己，又說人家礙著你發展？