Earlier this year, photographs of abandoned streets in the Chinese city of Wuhan are notable for a world that is not yet familiar with the realities of lockdown and social estrangement.
This week, a series of footage of Wuhan went viral on social media, showing how much our world has changed.
The footage showed the city’s Wuhan Maya Beach water park, an electronic music festival, on Saturday where thousands of swimmers, many of whom liked the inflatable rubber rings on the masks, were pushed into the water as a DJ climbed up. level across the pool.
It would be a surprising spectacle in any country ruled by social estrangement this year, but in Wuhan, it had a specific resonance: the first position affected by COVID-19 before the coronavirus escaped worldwide, infecting nearly 22 million people and killing some 775,000.
The vast majority of the 4,634 coronavirus deaths reported in China occurred in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. The city’s 11 million citizens experienced one of the tightest lockdowns in the world, which ended in April. International governments and experts have accused Chinese officials of acting too late and even seeking to cover the facets of the early emergence of the virus, something Beijing has denied.
While there have been doubts about the transparency and accuracy of China’s figures, no network transmission has been recorded in Wuhan since May.
Wuhan Maya Beach Is owned by Happy Valley, China’s premier theme park operator.
In an attempt to bring tourism to life, Hubei’s Department of Culture and Tourism has submitted loose tickets to 400 sites across the province.The water park’s HOHA music festival takes place every night from July 11 to August 30.
Participants had to make an appointment on the WeChat app to show that they arrived here from a “low risk” and log in with Hubei’s fitness authority.