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Markets, bars and restaurants were crowded again. Local virus transmissions are close to zero. But some worry about other people going down too soon.
By Javier C. Hernandez
In Shanghai, the restaurants and bars of many neighborhoods are crowded. In Beijing, thousands of academics return to campus during the fall semester. In Wuhan, where the coronavirus gave the impression 8 months ago, water parks and night markets are crowded shoulder to shoulder, humming as before.
While the United States and much of the world are still suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, life in many parts of China has been strangely general in recent weeks. Cities have social estrangement regulations and masking mandates at their disposal, and crowds are refilling tourist sites, movie theaters and gyms.
“You no longer feel like something too scary or too harmful to life,” said Xiong Xiaoyan, who works at a paint manufacturer in southern Guangdong Province.
Xiong, who described the restrictions imposed to combat the virus as “suffocating,” visited a cinema for the first time since the outbreak.
“When the lighting devices went out, I felt like I was back in my general life,” he said. “I can have everything outdoors and have my own non-secular world.”
A return to the general has made China an atypical case in the world economy.
The United States faces a potentially long and painful recession, as some countries have re-imposed restrictions on dealing with an uptick in some cases this summer. Several European countries have experienced new outbreaks, which has put even more pressure on an already weak economy. On the other hand, China has been slowly recovering in recent months and its factories are re-humming, although expansion is even weaker than before the pandemic and task losses are significant.
It has been a radical change since the early days of the pandemic, when China, the epicenter of the epidemic, and authoritarian rule imposed radical blockades. Across the country, life stopped and the economy collapsed when others were forced to stay in the house and department stores closed largely, with the exception of those who promoted the essentials.
In Wuhan, the streets were almost deserted, with the exception of government cars and delivery drivers carrying food and supplies. The hospitals were full of patients, with nervous citizens suffering from coughing and treatment for fever. A sense of anger and anxiety perbuyed the city as citizens struggled with an immediate increase in the number of deaths and uncertainty about the end of the closure.
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