Tag Archives: covid-19

‘social reset’

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Question du jour: how do we translate ‘社会面清零’? As conventionally used, my sense is that it means something like ‘zero-Covid in society,’ with the unspoken predicate ‘because all the positives have been locked away.’ It’s the unspoken half of the phrase–the unspoken threat of violence–that has me thinking we should translate directly–社会面 means “social aspect’ and 清零 means ‘clearance’ or ‘reset.’ I’m hearing that the people with the most power in Shanghai today are security guards, representatives from neighborhood offices (居委会), and the ‘big whites (大白)’ whose presence has become equated with arbitrary violence and detention. Apparently, these are the people enforcing zero-Covid, while most low and mid-level cadres are being replaced with people who do not question the policy. This means that when Shanghai re-opens (whenever and however), there will be a new political hierarchy in place, in addition to the completely devastated economic situation. So, why not be translation literalists (in this particular case), and call what’s happening in Shanghai a ‘social reset’?

At this writing, the art channel, 一条 has posted an exhibition of photographs of the abandoned city.

covid among us–essay online

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I’ve provisionally thought through February and March chez Shenzhen, writing the essay, ‘Covid among Us: Viral Mobilities in Shenzhen’s Moral Geography,’ which has been published online at Made in China. I’ve converted a pdf version of the essay for easy download, below:

covid-among-us_-viral-mobilities-in-shenzhens-moral-geography-online-version-1Download

happy cat covid story

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Short but very sweet story about a friend’s cat, who is pregs with first litter–hee! Originally, my friend had planned to have the kitten neutered, but. By the time the kitten was old enough to safely undergo the procedure, friend’s building was locked down. And so, she had to wait for the lockdown to lift in order to bring her cat to the vet. Meanwhile, kitty went into heat and made a great escape into the urban village, where apparently the semi-feral community was having a good, good time. About a week later, the cat returned, much to my friend’s relief. My friend had secured her balcony (no more escapes) and settled in to wait out the outbreak. A few weeks later, however, kitty began showing. If all goes well, kitty will give birth next week.

a poetic primer for understanding these times

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All that we do not know haunts us. In some sense, social media has only made us more aware that our knowledge about what is happening next door or in the next city is limited. Nevertheless, we still extrapolate feelings from posts and insinuate critique into memes. This means that we require a basic lexicon to decode texts that were intentionally written to avoid censorship. Currently circulating is a poem about the courage to write directly about what’s been happening. And yes, I’m aware that the poem has circulated anonymously. Translation, below:

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word of the day, “unwilling”

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I first saw the chat record in a chat group,, dated April 16. Two days later, I saw it in my moments in a circulating WeChat post. The group leader said, “I’ve received an urgent notification from the top, everyone in the building is required to go down stairs for a corona test. Please respond with whether or not your willing to go downstairs.” He followed with his response, “unwilling.” It was followed by 50+ “unwillings.” The chat leader then said, “Thank you everyone. There have been enough responses. I’ll go negotiate with them.“ After three thank you emogis, he added. “Some leaders notified the neighborhood office at 5:45 p.m, to have us all go downstairs at 6:00. The teachers in the community office are helpless, so don’t blame them. Many of them only get 6 or 4 hours of sleep a night.” The same day that I saw the circulating WeChat post, I also saw a series of “will not participate in any more corona tests,” circulating on TikTok post, with music.

describing the crazy to u.s. americans

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When I speak with U.S. Americans about China’s commitment to zero-Covid, I find myself comparing it to north American support for second amendment rights. We are no longer talking about a policy that is or is not working, but rather about a belief that the country itself is in danger. In China, the central government is acting as if any form of living with Covid will harm the country more than disrupting daily life for millions of people; and many agree. Similarly, the NRA acts as if the foundations of U.S. American democracy will be permanently damaged by background checks on people who want to purchase guns; and many agree. In both cases, what seems from the outside as an irrational escalation of commitment to an outdated policy, from the inside looks like a fight to maintain an imperiled way of life.

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provisional governance in shanghai

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It seems that a Shanghai community has established its own provisional community office because of the incompetence of the official community party secretary. The above photo is a picture of the first edition of their community bulletin, which is called “Tiandi Estate Epidemic Prevention.” The headline is, “Announcing the Establishment of the Provisional Autonomous Community Office for Phase 1 and 2 Second Tiandi Estates.” How cool is that?!

what happens in shenzhen if you need your teeth checked?

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This is a serious question. During times of mass corona-testing, dental services have been closed and dentists and their assistants redeployed to people test stations. But this information hasn’t been made public. Instead, you only discover that dental services have been suspended if you need your teeth checked, can’t get an appointment, and then someone explains the situation to you. Otherwise, there’s just a black hole where the dentist used to be.

Both in China and abroad, much ink and digital text has been dedicated to extreme cases of people being unable to get emergency medical care. However, the redeployment of dental workers illustrates how regular healthcare has been (indefinitely? until further notice?) suspended in order to mobilize workers to meet the need for personal to give tests. Annual check-ups can’t be booked, for example, if your dentist is busy swabbing throats instead of filling cavities. This situation illustrates one of the challenges to navigating Shenzhen’s current management of the omicron outbreak–there have been no comprehensive announcements of how city resources have been re-deployed to achieve zero-Covid. This means that you find out what’s been closed or redeployed through unexpected encounters with a new normal that has not been formally acknowledged.

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shenzhen covid update for inquiring minds

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“What’s up in Shenzhen?” You and other inquiring minds want to know.

Well, for starters, we have a new conspiracy theory about how Shenzhen’s successfully prevented a massive omicron outbreak on the scale of Hong Kong and/or Shanghai.

Your curiosity gets the best of you and you impishly ask, “What’s the tea?”

I lean forward and whisper, “Apparently, the city’s zero-Covid strategy has served to cover-up the fact that Shenzhen was caught unprepared, just like Hong Kong and Shanghai. At the beginning of the outbreak, the city didn’t have enough quarantine centers to house all the positives, symptomatic and not. So instead of treating patients, they sent everyone home to wait it out, without ever releasing true statistics. The basis of this conjecture is the unstated question: how could Hong Kong and Shanghai have so many positives and Shenzhen not?”

And my voice is rising along with my excitement, “I mean, you can hear the rhetorical force of the conspiracy theory, which pivots on what the numbers mean. And let’s be real. Statistical abnormalities should be ringing our bells because so much of who we think we are is tied up in hypotheses about populations, which are in fact statistically imagined entities. So, to my mind, which is a curious mind, the reasoning behind this theory of what is actually happening is mischievous satirical impeccable. Especially, if your point of epistemological departure is that omicron spreads+government can’t be trusted. Which, who doesn’t believe?

Anyway, the post (which counts as rumor mongering within official social media, but that’s another story for another day) reads:

I finally understand, and here’s the story:
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hallucinating in shanghai

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The stories coming out of Shanghai are increasingly distressing. Thousands of people are being rounded up and forcibly moved to quarantine centers, which are still under construction. Once inside the centers, detainees are told that they are on their own until testing can be arranged because it takes two consecutive negatives to get out. Indeed, the situation is so fraught that it has brought the specters of Xinjiang and the Cultural Revolution into the conversation. Some have started commenting under pictures of the Big Whites (大白 nickname for those in hazmat suits), “the red guards have arrived!” Offline, the outraged assumption that Shanghai (SHANGHAI!) could be treated like Xinjiang is more vocal, and occasionally mentioned online. But I’ll get to that, below. There’s much to unpack in all of this, especially Xi Jinping’s fraught relationship with the CR, Xinjiang and, of course, Covid. After all, the 20th Party Congress will be held (presumably) some time in October, and Xi has hitched his coronation third term to zero-Covid. Today, however, I’m translating and commenting on a copy of a chat record that’s low key circulating on WeChat. I’ll be responding in the next post.

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