As the first-year anniversary of the infamous Shanghai lock-down approaches, Pat Belson at nuBridgeRelo in Shanghai, China gives us an idea of what it was like with an email written at that time.

Dear Mum

Happy Easter. Today is day 18 since being confined to our apartments—day 24 if you live on the other side of the river in Pudong!

You ask, what have I been doing? Well, it is probably a more interesting list of what I haven’t been doing! I know that the next time I order a Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks it will be with a new-found respect and I won’t even care about the cup size! It’s funny how when you are deprived of basic necessities, how meaningful they become: Everyday things like coffee, milk, chocolate, walking, chocolate, beer, chocolate, bread and chocolate now take on a mystical reverence.

We had another care package delivered yesterday containing rice, cabbage, celery, an onion, noodles, cooking oil, meat, a packet of tissues and two rolls of toilet paper. A useful selection of goodies you would have to agree. I have been checking the internet for recipes using toilet paper. Thanks also for those pictures of easy to cook recipes you sent. I have printed them off and stuck them on the fridge to eat later!

Even though I stocked up before the lock-down, I have been making do with what I have left in the cupboards. I have become quite creative with my meals and am probably eating healthier and more balanced meals since going into lock-down. It has also been a journey of adventure and exploration as I search into the far reaches of my cupboards looking for tinned and packaged goods long forgotten. I know I am a maverick, but I am throwing caution to the wind with a devil-may-care attitude and opening tins with use by dates of 2019—heck, I even found a perfectly good packet of Darjeeling tea bags I forgot to use in 2014! My landlord, who lives in another part of the compound, has just messaged me to enquire if I have enough food. He is obviously worried that if I starve to death he will not only lose rental revenue, but it will bring bad luck and he won’t be able to re-rent the apartment.

Even though we are confined to our apartments, the authorities don’t want us to rest on our laurels or, heaven forbid, sleep in. At 7:30 every morning for the past week we have been woken by the recorded message, ‘Come on Down and do the Testing’ blared out on a loud hailer. The testing marshals have realized that the recorded request reverberating around the stair well at 200 decibels not only can wake the heaviest of sleepers, but would wake a hibernating bear! So one by one the apartment doors open and the tenants slowly descend the stairs to line up outside to do the testing. We try to keep an orderly distance between those in front of us as we shuffle towards the testing table. I have noticed some people will get dressed up, while others have obviously just gotten out of bed and are wearing bath robes. My neighbour wears the same T-Shirt he has done for the last five days of testing and is given the widest of social distancing by others in the line, though I am sure it’s not from fear of catching Covid from him. And there’s the young woman in 402 wearing a green rain poncho and carrying battery operated atomizer that sprays disinfectant. I laugh to myself, because after 18 days locked up in our apartments, who among us has Covid!

The testing crew are all dressed in white hazmat suits that make them look like Michelin men on a Weight Watchers’ diet. These people have been coined, ‘Big Whites’ and are supposedly nurses and medical staff volunteered from other provincial hospitals. They have stickers emblazoned on their chests announcing that they’re from the ‘Second People’s hospital of Suzhou’ or some other small provincial hospital, come to save Shanghai. I smile at the fact that most marshals, and there are around 10 in the group, have on their backs their names written in marker pen, because dressed as they are, they all look the same.

When it’s my time to be tested I break in to an operatic aria, which I deliberately mangle when my tonsils are tickled with the testing wand. Today we had a very short nurse testing so everyone had to almost squat to her level to be tested. After the test we all slowly make our way to the front door of our building and ascend the stairs back to our apartment for another day in paradise.

I have been keeping busy replying to the many agent emails requesting service costs for Shanghai, but my reply is the same: ‘Sorry, but the city is closed for Covid. We will advise when we are open again. Have nice day!’ I am beginning wonder when the city will be open again. The rumour is that Shanghai might be open in May or maybe longer.

Social media is awash with memes and funny observations during this time. My favourite is: The hardest thing about a seven-day lock down, is the first three weeks! Another social media wag claims that the lock-down is the government’s way of meeting the two child policy numbers for 2022! This could be true as there have been no condoms in the care packages delivered to us!

Well, I think that’s enough fun for now; as with everything nowadays, we need to ration our humour to make it last, for how long, I don’t know!

Your hungry son, Pat.

Of course Pat, like the other 25 million people in Shanghai, couldn’t have known that the lock-down would drag on for another 43 days, making it two months in total. He claims that the upside of the lock-down is that he has become a better cook, is more tolerant and now knows how to pick up crisps that have fallen between the sofa cushions without breaking them!