‘Let’s Not Talk About It’: 5 Years Later, China’s Covid Shadow Lingers
Posted on: Mar 13, 2025 09:31 IST | Posted by: Nytimes
People who endured the longest Covid restrictions in the world are still grappling with what they lost: their loved ones, their livelihoods, their dignity.
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Reporting from Shanghai
Bit by bit, the traces of Shanghai’s coronavirus lockdown in 2022 have disappeared from around Fu Aiying’s stir-fry restaurant. The smell of rotten eggs, from when officials carted her off to quarantine without letting her refrigerate her groceries, is long gone. The testing booths manned by workers in hazmat suits have been dismantled.
Even her neighbors have moved away, from the century-old neighborhood that had one of the city’s highest infection rates. Soon, the neighborhood itself will vanish: Officials have slated it for demolition, saying that its cramped houses had helped the virus spread. Ms. Fu’s restaurant is one of the few businesses still open, in a row of darkened storefronts and caution signs taped to doorways.
But the boarded-up windows have done little to contain the emotional legacy of that time, a grueling, monthslong lockdown of 26 million people. Some residents, who had prided themselves on living in China’s wealthiest city, found themselves unable to buy food or medicine. They wondered when they might be dragged off to quarantine, forcibly separated from their children.
Ms. Fu spent 39 days in a mass quarantine center, with no idea of when she’d be allowed out. After she was finally released into the still-locked-down city, she had to sneak into her restaurant for rice and oil, because she didn’t have enough food at home.
She felt like a part of her had been permanently dulled. “Since my time in quarantine, I don’t have a temper anymore. I don’t have a personality anymore,” said Ms. Fu, 58, tearing up.
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