Help! I’m Trapped in Shanghai!

Please send pizza

Photo by Cédric Dhaenens on Unsplash

I woke up to the sound of my alarm blaring at 5:50 this morning, yanking me from a blissful pizza-centred dream. I wanted to switch it off, pull up the covers, and try to force my dream back, but I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t want to spend yet another day cranky because I hadn’t eaten enough solid food, so my partner and I forced ourselves into a seated position and readied our phones.

For the past month, Shanghai has been locked down in response to a massive outbreak of coronavirus. We expected this outbreak to play out much like it did in 2020, but we were dead wrong. It’s much worse.

The Shutdown of Shutdowns

For the past two weeks across the entire city of 30 million people, we’ve all been confined to our houses and apartments, unable to leave our buildings.

For our apartment building, this has meant hazmat suit-wearing volunteers bringing anything we order from the gate to our front door and picking up our trash every night. While this was an adventure in the beginning, it became a whole lot less fun as our cupboards and fridges emptied and one by one suppliers began shutting down.

At first, it was much like last time. Essential businesses kept running, and anything we ordered came within a few days. But this time, almost nothing is open…