China wants to move on from covid. In Shanghai I see the ghosts of lockdown everywhere

A stroll through the heart of Shanghai in mid-January brings on a nasty case of cognitive dissonance. Traffic is as noisy as ever. Cafés are packed. Undaunted by a recent cold snap, Shanghainese have bundled themselves up in puffy jackets and zip around on electric bikes. Walking beneath the bare plane trees along the city’s quaint lanes, I can’t help dwelling on the troubling time, less than a year ago, when it was hard to spot a single soul in this area.

Back then the city of 25m was enduring one of the country’s longest lockdowns as a result of China’s strict “zero-covid” policy, designed to prevent any spread of the novel coronavirus. Most residents, myself included, were kept in their homes for two months. Food and drinking water were scarce at times. Some people died because they couldn’t get routine medical care. All the shops and restaurants were closed. The façades of buildings on many streets had been boarded up to keep people from leaving their homes.

The ruins of zero-covid are strewn throughout the city, ghostly reminders of life lived under the threat of lockdowns and forced quarantines

When they abruptly abandoned zero-covid in December, the Chinese authorities all but decreed that everyone move on and forget the past. In Shanghai that is not proving so easy. The ruins of zero-covid are strewn throughout the city, ghostly reminders of life in the “nucleic-acid era”, as Chinese people have dubbed it (after their name for polymerase-chain-reaction, or PCR, tests). The most obvious relics are the thousands of testing booths abandoned on street corners. Until recently tens of thousands of residents gathered in front of these eight-by-six-foot metal containers each day for their compulsory covid tests. They functioned like domestic passport controls, issuing health-code visas that lasted for two or three days. Without a pass you could be denied entry to hospitals, offices or even your own home. Behind the acrylic testing windows, small teams laboured to procure and package samples of bodily fluid.

Now the booths are dormant. Signs hang in their windows marking the end of testing and quarantine on January 8th. Some booths look as though they were hastily abandoned: piles of cotton-tipped swabs and vial racks sit just behind the window of one that I used to frequent on my way to the office. Several bottles of water are waiting for the dabai – “big white”, the local nickname for health workers in hazmat suits. It is as if they could suddenly pick up where they left off.

Walking the streets now I find restaurants are open and crowded, and contracting the virus is considered a given

The ease with which I move around now is jarring. QR codes still adorn the entrances to many public spaces in the city: restaurants, hospitals, parks, government buildings, even the backs of the headrests in taxis. During zero-covid, to gain access I would have to scan the code with my phone to confirm I had taken a test and had not been to an infectious district. Submission to this ritual required a mental adjustment. At first I was tempted to resist any curtailment of my freedom of movement. Once it became clear the person implementing the policy was just like me, I gave in and even became helpful, gladly offering up the codes tracking my health and whereabouts. It is only after removing myself from the situation that I understand the strange condition I was suffering from.

Needing a break from zero-covid, I left Shanghai in September, only returning this month. After a week on the ground I still reach for my phone when approaching the entrances of buildings, as if I still need to present my health code. I try scanning a QR code to see what happens, and a green matrix barcode flashes on the screen, granting “permission” to enter where none is required. The system continues running without purpose, leaving behind sentinels that have not been told they’re obsolete.

Shanghai residents are starting to come to terms with what happened during the nucleic-acid era. During my first taxi ride in the city after arriving back, the driver, a 30-year-old from Henan province, had endless questions for an American who could speak his language (such as: did I own a gun in my home country? And what did it feel like to shoot one?). I posed a question of my own: how was the lockdown? He chuckled and said his experience was fine. Then he explained how he had been hauled off to a quarantine centre in April because a positive covid case had been detected near him. When he was eventually released he was not allowed back home – his community, like many back then, barred people from returning from quarantine out of fear of infection and lockdown. He slept in the back of a lorry with seven others for weeks. They subsisted on instant noodles that were cooked at a nearby building site and passed over a fence. “My freedom was greater than others,” he said. “But there wasn’t much use for freedom.”

Shanghai residents are starting to come to terms with what happened during what they have dubbed the “nucleic-acid era”

Walking the streets now I find restaurants are open and crowded, and contracting the virus is considered a given. Within a few days of returning to Shanghai, my wife tested positive for covid for the first time. We are staying in the same block of serviced apartments we were in during lockdown, but one floor above our old room. Different artwork hangs on the walls but everything else is identical. It is slightly disorienting. A few months ago we would have seen long lines of people queuing for tests on the street below. At that time, the thought of a positive test was cause for panic. The entire building would have been locked down. We would have been hauled off to a quarantine camp. Now, my wife could go wherever she liked (she chose to self-quarantine).

On a recent trip to a coffee shop I chatted with the barista about the lockdown and her covid experience. She had come down with a mild case just before New Year’s Eve and missed that night’s festivities.

When I told her I had never been infected she looked at me wide-eyed with disbelief. So did the three or four other customers sitting in the small café. A few months ago this would have been the reaction to hearing I had caught covid. Now they saw me as an oddity, another relic of a bygone era. ■

Don Weinland is The Economist’s China business and finance editor

PHOTOGRAPHS: Raul Ariano