As China launches the most stringent lockdowns since the first Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan two years ago, Jeremiah enters his second week in lockdown mode in his Beijing apartment. David and Jeremiah exchange personal accounts and analyses of their own experiences under China’s official “Zero Covid” directive.

Topics include the inconsistent and sometimes baffling lockdown protocols, incessant PCR testing, and administrative policy snafus as municipal governments, district authorities, neighborhood committees, and residential property management companies cooperate or clash to implement the constantly-evolving top-down Covid-19 mandates. 

We are also joined once again on the podcast by Zhang Yajun, former journalist and communications specialist co-host of the WǑMEN PODCAST, an English podcast featuring Chinese people’s daily lives from a female perspective. Yajun shares her insights into the increasing sense of frustration of Chinese people under the Covid-19 restrictions, the anxieties and complaints that reverberate in social media, the gaps and breaches in the monitoring and control system, and class differences in the level of hardship and sacrifice experienced under lockdown restrictions.

For additional background information, check out these social media posts:

Jeremiah’s Twitter feed account of his lockdown experience.

(Done as an epic fantasy of orcs, ogres, goblins, and trolls)

Shane Learning’s Twitter account of his quarantine experience in Shanghai