Buying food, an odyssey in the confinement of Shanghai, the richest city in China

In the middle of 2022, get food in Shanghai -the richest city in Chinathe second largest economy in the world – has become an odyssey in the face of the strict confinement dictated by the authorities to try to stop the worst resurgence of coronavirus covid-19 recorded so far in the metropolis.

With more than 25,000 new cases daily – most of them asymptomatic – caused by the contagious omicron variantthe authorities insist on the national tolerance strategy zero against the viruswhich has given results in the face of other variants via confinements, massive tests and practically total closure of the borders.

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Whoever signs these lines has already experienced the confinement of Beijing at the beginning of 2020 and that of Spain since March of that same year, and can categorically assure that the one experienced these days in Shanghai is the strictest, with an abysmal difference.

In those cases, it was allowed to leave the house to stock up, but these days in shanghai it is practically impossible even to place individual home orders over the internet, in part because a good part of the shopkeepers and delivery men are also confined; The nearly 11,000 -according to official data- who still work have to sleep in vans or tents because, if they return home, they will not be able to go out again.

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This has left most residents of the city ​​of about 25 million inhabitantswith a single outlet to obtain food: joint purchases (“group purchasing”), which in recent years had experienced a real “boom” in China.

NEIGHBORHOOD SOLIDARITY

The inhabitants of the urbanizations in which the city is divided have begun to organize themselves in groups of the popular social network WeChat -the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp, censored in China- in which food is offered at home, but only in large batches.thus turning the usual retail buyer into an improvised wholesaler.

In these groups, in which messages do not stop appearing day and night, whoever finds one of these offers announces it and collects funds from interested neighbors: the most common are for basic food, but there are also cleaning products or even wine and fast food restaurants.

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Of course, you have to be quick: if you do not pay constant attention to these groups, it is easy to miss out on one of those orders. As they would say in Formula 1, “If they blink, they’re going to miss it.”

At first glance, this may seem complicated, especially for foreign residents who are not fluent in the local language, but, when hunger knocks at the door, you learn fast.

The method is also not without problems: Apart from the fact that delivery can be delayed for days due to the aforementioned shortage of drivers, sometimes orders end up being canceled because the distributor has run out of inventory earlier than expected.

In addition, the fact that joint purchases are organized through “apps” puts the elderly who do not know how to use them in a vulnerable situation, saved by the solidarity of neighbors and volunteers who contact them to try to cover their expenses. basic needs.

In some urbanizations, there are those who have taken advantage of the renewed contact with their neighbors to organize -in the purest style of Spain with the “Resistiré” by the Dynamic Duo- small improvised concerts through the balconies.

In others, that optimism is conspicuous by its absence: some do not have enough inhabitants to choose to make one of these requests in groupsand in others the food supply is scarce, which would have already caused -according to unverified videos circulating on social networks- some protest situations in which the neighbors confront the guards of the enclosure or scream desperately through their windows.

Others take it with humor, with memes that suggest painting a second red line on antigen tests -a great novelty in China before the latest outbreaks – to be sent to one of the city’s quarantine centers, since food is guaranteed there.

THE AUTHORITIES DISTRIBUTE FOOD

At the end of last year, the Chinese government had already recommended that citizens keep the pantry relatively full in case of emergencies.

However, many in Shanghai trusted the initially announced deadlines: in the urbanizations in which cases were detected in March, a 48-hour confinement was issued that lasted another 12 days to finally link with the closure of the city, which a priori It was going to be five days staggered on the two banks of the river that divides it.

Finally, that last closure was also extended throughout the city, whose government announced this Saturday that it will only be lifted for communities in which no case has been detected during the multiple rounds of tests in the previous 14 days, although residents only they will be able to move around their district and meetings “will be strictly restricted.”

Be that as it may, an official date for the total reopening of the city has not yet been set.

The situation has resulted in many residents denouncing food shortages, something for which the authorities have delivered bags with groceries such as vegetables, eggs, meat, rice, noodles or oil, although they vary both in composition and quantity depending on the area.

However, in some areas the inhabitants have denounced that they received meat in poor condition, which has given rise to an official investigation in this regard, in addition to those opened against more than a hundred establishments that had inflated their prices taking advantage of the need of buyers and who have already been fined.

In the face of the crisis, the municipal Executive has already decided to lift the quarantine for “the largest possible number” of warehouses and wholesale markets with the aim of guaranteeing supply, but some supermarkets still report significant difficulties in replenishing products.

Source: Elcomercio

Deshawn