I’m Living in Post-COVID China
Life may resemble sci-fi, but we’re past the biggest hurdles
Hi everyone,
As you may or may not have gathered from reading my previous stories, I live and work in Shanghai, China.
For us, COVID-19 was serious a lot earlier than it was for anyone else in the world.
In a perfect world, the virus would have begun, lived, and died right here in China. But as we all know, that’s not what happened.
My experience of the virus at its peak was very isolating, because the rest of the world couldn’t relate to what I was going through.
Everyone else in the world was fine, so people looked at the virus ravaging China with contempt and superiority.
More than once I heard the line “that’s what you get when you eat bats” from certain smug individuals living on safer sides of the world.
But all too quickly, that weird virus that had only spread among “bat-people” had completely dominated the planet. Isn’t it so odd how the consequence that viral experts predicted would happen if we did nothing is exactly what happened? Seems stranger than fiction.
Now I look around the internet and see endless content posted by famous actors and internet personalities to help everyone get through this. I feel almost like I was ripped off! When I was panicking, I was doing so alone!
I’m just now finding out that Chinese celebrities were doing the same thing while the virus was bad here, they were just doing it on Chinese social media. (Which objectively makes sense).
The real advantage I have now is that I’m living in a version of China that exists post-COVID, so I’m able to glimpse into your future and report back. Having looked into your future I can say that things work out ok. Life just becomes a lot more like 1970s paranoid sci-fi.
*Things worked out in China because no-one fought the restrictions when things were at their worst. If you’re living in a country that is protesting isolation… results may vary.
Here in China, we’re all able to travel freely and almost everything is back open. That includes theatres, sports, bars, etc.
High schools and universities are back open, and kindergartens and primary schools confirmed today that they’d be open in early June.
Everything turned out ok, we just have to live with a lot more monitoring.
I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant last night, and it was an experience that would have been very unusual during regular times, but not so much these days.
My temperature was checked, my name and passport number written on a list, and my QR code was verified.
Here in China, we all have an app that stores and displays our personal health QR code.
A green code shows businesses that we haven’t travelled and haven’t done anything or interacted with anyone that would raise our risk of having caught the virus.
A red code means that we have, and we won’t be allowed in. Once a code has been made red it can’t become green again until the day comes that a cure of some kind is invented.
Life lived inside a 70’s science fiction movie will continue on until at least next year.
On a positive note, I got to go to Disneyland last week during Shanghai Disneyland’s grand re-opening!
It was absolutely amazing, and of course I detailed everything about the experience on Medium.
If you’re curious about what Disney did to re-open their very first park, click here to read all about it.
I hope everyone stays safe and keeps up social distancing. Don’t be a martyr for the economy, money will always bounce back eventually.
Best Regards,
Jordan
