shthrow2 [none/use name]

Also yeah, I went back to China for the first time in 5 or so years recently and the vibe in Shanghai was very different.

Effect of covid maybe? The lockdown was a pretty dire time but I’ve never seen neighbourly solidarity like I did in my xiaoqu over those three months.

The protests were only really widespread in late November, after the Urumqi fire, and then China embraced COVID in like the first week of December. A few policies stuck around and there was a slower rollback of those, but they did literally go from “quarantine camps for close contacts” to “everybody catch it, don’t even bother testing” in the space of about two weeks.

Don’t really know how much more “abrupt” it could have gone.

No, this is happening all over the country. Local governments manage when and how, but at this point it seems like everywhere has given up with it. Some national-level measures have been dropped too, like internal travel codes.

I know people who were in quarantine centers two weeks ago for being close contacts, and today you can actually have covid and just stay home with zero enforcement. It’s crazy.

My contacts trend young and outgoing so take that as you will, but generally there’s a weird mix between the relief of zero-covid finally being over, and the new anxiety about what lots-of-covid is going to mean for the country.

It’s all happened so fast that it hasn’t really set in yet. I don’t think anyone really understands why its unraveling so rapidly, everyone expected a much slower and more gradual process.

It had to happen eventually. Scary times ahead though.