Youthology, “Let Shanghai Be Seen, Let the Cry for Help Continue” 

Youthology, “Let Shanghai Be Seen, Let the Cry for Help Continue”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Youthology is a Chinese marketing company that attempts to connect brands to young people and young people to brands, and as a part of their business publishes articles on youth issues on their blog.  During the covid lockdown in Shanghai, Youthology asked their Shanghai readers to share their thoughts and experiences, and I translate those snippets here.  There is of course considerable information already available about the lockdown, much of it visual and quite shocking, and this text confirms that people in Shanghai are well aware of what is happening, despite the lockdown and despite propaganda efforts to put a positive spin on things.   

I find the observations interesting for what they reveal about the texture of life in this moment of crisis in Shanghai, and how young people are dealing with it.  The observations are organized around the themes of food, pets, and isolation, but also the WeChat groups that have spontaneously sprung up as locked-down buildings and neighborhoods attempt to deal with the frustrations and challenges of the situation.  Like young people—or just people—anywhere, these young people in Shanghai are alternatively self-absorbed and selfless, angry and resigned, bored and ready to move on.
 
Translation

Food:  Seeking joy in the trials of not being able to get food
 
@ZYxiatalk
 
Just one day away from an entire month at home.
 
There are confirmed cases in my building that have been quarantined elsewhere, as well as eight families who tested positive and are now in home isolation.
 
The first time I got worried was on March 30. I was so busy at work that I had no time to pay attention to covid. At the time, I gave my parents a call and they reminded me to stock up on pickled vegetables, eggs, and instant noodles.  So I opened the delivery app on my cell phone, selected a few things and hit “send,” but the message came back either “item not available” or “store closed." This happened five times, and I suddenly started to panic…Then I clicked on the Taobao and JD apps,[2] to learn that the rice noodles, yogurt, and pre-cooked rice dishes that I had ordered on March 20 had still not been shipped...It seemed like I was not going to receive them before they locked down my building.
 
I panicked again when I realized I really didn’t have much to eat at home. Since I don’t know how to cook, I have been in the habit of buying pre-cooked meals and instant noodles, and I still had a few of these. On the night of the 2nd, I figured out that even if I only ate one meal a day, my reserves would only last until the weekend. So for every day of the Qingming Festival,[3] I ate only one meal a day, and spent the rest of the time lying down or sleeping so I wouldn’t burn any more calories. Oh yes!  The first day of the holiday was also my birthday, but of course there was no way to buy a cake. Sadder still was that my only meal that day was noodle soup with a little bit of vegetables and sausage...
 
Similar to the shortages that made the news and got everyone's attention, the neighborhood where I live was having backups, so the residents took the initiative to buy things on their own.  However the building manager and the security guards refused to let them be delivered, and they piled up at the door, where no one could get them. Our building has had positive cases for a long time, but the message has consistently been: don't buy things on your own, don't add to the government's problems, buildings where people have tested positive can’t expect to have things delivered.
 
@zongcheng
 
In March, the price of food went up like crazy, and what normally costs 20 or 30 RMB (approx. 3 to 5 US$) went for 80 (approx. 13 US$).  Supply couldn’t keep up with demand, and the grocery stores opened at six in the morning and were empty by the afternoon.  We figured out a worst case scenario, and decided we needed to stock enough supplies to last two weeks or even a month.  Having enough food has become a security blanket for ordinary people. During the epidemic, cooking has become a kind of survival strategy, because you never know when you will have to isolate, so if you know how to cook and have stocked up on supplies, you feel a little better.
 
My girlfriend and I compared the shelf lives of different vegetables. Carrots, radishes, potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes…We see what the Internet says, just for fun, but we do our own experiments too.  For example, we put some tomatoes in a plastic bag, some in the refrigerator, some in the shade, just to see which last the longest.  If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
 
Once Puxi locked down, we had to stay home, but we still got up at six every morning to look for food online.  Hema was closed, so we tried Dingdong [these are both grocery stores], and when that didn’t work, we signed up for a membership, which costs 30 RMB (approx. 5 US$) for three months.  The membership buys us half an hour of shopping, and we got Classy-Kiss yogurt, spinach sprouts, Suzhou bok choy, purple-skinned garlic, organic snail noodles, and frozen fatty beef rolls. We could not get organic spinach, organic lettuce, Japanese tomatoes, chicken wings, or meat and shrimp wantons, all of which were out of stock.
 
It’s like living on a timer, and getting up at six makes you think of boot camp.  The streets outside are empty, the neighbors are still squabbling, there hasn’t been a peep out of Instagram [lit. “Little Red Book,” a Chinese equivalent of Instagram] for ages and Weibo is dead.  The ambulance’s siren seems especially loud, because it need not share the stage with anything else.
 
After listening to the property owners yelling at people for “not being considerate enough,” I realized I was back in the neighborhood. This means that not only do I know the number of people living in the building and the WeChat address of the building manager, but I also know that property owners and tenants are treated differently.  So, when you get confused because they are talking about sharing “vegetable bags” on WeChat and you get nothing, it is because you are a tenant, not an owner. And when you plead on WeChat that everyone receive equal treatment, there will surely be an old lady who rushes to tell you, "Be considerate, not selfish!" But if she’s the one who doesn’t get her vegetable bag, she says “That’s my food!  Why didn’t I get my food?!”
 
Joining in these WeChat discussions was a practical lesson in getting in “better touch” with my neighborhood. Illustrating that I did not abandon my “studies” during isolation, I did "fieldwork" in my neighborhood,  which brought a bit of fun into my otherwise boring life. The neighborhood gave duck legs to the owners but not to the tenants, and the tenants complained and called for equal treatment. Some people said that we should make allowances for the neighborhood workers. The tenants said these are two separate questions, and no one wants to be discriminated against. Someone else said to look at the big picture, we should just hope covid goes away, and not worry about whether we got duck legs.  The tenants insisted on respect, and the workers brought more duck legs.  A peacemaker came out and said that this is hard for everyone, and we should make allowances for one another. The next day, an old lady criticized the tenants for not understanding the difficulties of the property owners, using words that some felt were improper, but when they pointed this out, the old lady told them “it is disrespectful to interrupt!”
 
According to my statistics, the most frequently occurring words and phrases in our WeChat group are:  "things are hard, thank you, victory, positive test result, consideration, and don’t make more trouble for everyone."

@qiudaoyu
 
One cabbage costs 25 RMB (approx. 4 US$) at the grocery store.
 
This morning, I spent 40 minutes between 8 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. repeatedly pressing the Hema checkout button, because I read somewhere that it would eventually work if I kept pressing it.  After I came to, I couldn't believe it.  My God, 40 minutes, an entire class period, and I did nothing, just pressed the button over and over.  If only I had this kind of energy in math class.
 
Then I searched for “buying food” on Weibo, wondering if this might be a solution, I saw a post that said: "It appears that I can’t buy food because my life abilities are low, and I did not stock up; I’m too slow in the way I go about things, which means I’ll never get any food; it’s because the place I live is too low and the community doesn't send enough food; my status is too mean, and I have no way to get food." It was painful to read, and while I had not berated myself in the same way, during the 40 minutes I spent pressing the Hema button, I felt a certain kinship with the person.  Surely I was trying hard enough, because I got up at 5:58 a.m. although I hate getting up early, but I still didn’t get any food.
 
When I was in line for a covid test at noon, I checked my phone and found a post to a friend group that had been sent earlier: "It's not your fault that you need to get up at six o'clock to get food, and it's not your fault that you can't get food even if you get up at six o'clock. The trials of an era are never the fault of an individual.  I hope everyone can manage their emotions.  Let’s take a deep breath."
 
I wanted to forward it to the guy whose message I read this  morning.
 
Isolation: Locked up like a caged animal
 
@qilin
 
Shanghai Putuo District, 24 days isolated at school, self-paralysis.
 
My anxiety comes from a contradictory psychological experience.  On the one hand, I feel like a caged animal at the mercy of my school’s arrangements, both reasonable and unreasonable, mechanically going through my days at life’s lowest possible level.  At the same time, when I compare myself to the vast numbers of people who can’t get food or medical treatment, I’m embarrassed because it seems I really have nothing to complain about.
 
Yet I can't help but worry; this time I have shelter, but what about the next time? What would I do if I were without shelter? My anxiety is more directed toward the future, or toward the emptiness that the future might bring. In the face of such anxiety, you can only practice denial by losing yourself in work or study, to the point of obsessing on the work at hand, in the hopes of grasping a feeling of “living in the moment.” If you are so anxious that you can't sleep, then don’t sleep, and instead read science fiction novels or watch science fiction movies, something that redirects your attention to the universe. 
 
@zheyi
 
I have been in isolation at home for 20 days, but I had a short break in the middle to go to the store to buy food, and the price for a cabbage was 25 RMB (approx. 4 US$).
 
In fact, I was actually quite happy with the fact of staying at home, but during this period I felt unusually bad in a psychological sense.  At the same time, I am well aware that there are any number of people in this city in worse circumstances than I am, and the pain I felt as a survivor is so slight as to be hardly worth mentioning. 
 
So I argued with myself, wondering why it is that people use the very lowest standards in terms of imagining the demands they put on life, but at the same time I feel desperate and guilty for suffering at a moment when, at least temporarily, I am in good shape, I have plenty to eat, and neither my work nor my overtime situation has been affected. 
 
I tweeted out these mood swings and their consequences, and someone on the Internet who had no idea what I was talking about wrote back over night, saying:  “let's not use comparisons to deny the validity of pain .  Pain is pain, take care of yourself.”
 
@Ihadalittletodrink
 
Shanghai Changning District, school locked down for 24 days, building locked down for more than ten days.

I’m not worried only about daily life anymore, but also about the fact that I am starting to feel numb. When school was first locked down, I could still move freely about the campus, and I could see that when the sun was out, the students were having picnics, playing guitar, reading, playing murder mystery games, playing soccer. It seemed like everything was very normal except there was no delivery. Looking back now, whatever anxiety people were feeling then was below the surface.
 
I suddenly developed an addiction to instant noodles—even though I usually don’t have instant noodles more than five to ten times a year—and I wound up visiting the Education Supermarket[4] a lot, and eating a lot of snacks at night, but it was always hit or miss. Sometimes the shelves would be empty, and then the next day they would be full again, with unopened boxes piled up in the narrow aisles. At the time, I used to post pictures and to tease my friends. For about ten days, I lived solely on instant noodles, exploring various flavors with different kinds of marinated eggs and sausages.
 
Then one day, the sun was shining and I got up early to finish washing my piles of dirty clothes, and after airing out my quilt I decided to go to the cafeteria to get some food.  On my way back I saw a lazy kitten. I realized that my addiction to noodles during this time was a kind of revenge eating.[5] At the same, my routine was chaotic and discontinuous. A steaming bowl of instant noodles was, to some extent, my spiritual opium. I was using the noodles to compensate for my routine that was completely out of sync with the cafeteria’s hours.
 
One night, the school notified everyone that there had been some sort of problem with the testing, and after I hurried back to my dorm room the building was completely locked down.  Now I could no longer hide my anxiety and fear, and I stopped pretending that the school lockdown had not had a major impact on my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I also discovered that my period was two weeks late. Now I just don't know when I'll be woken up in my sleep for a covid test, when my heart will beat abnormally fast after waking up from a dream, when the lockdown will finally end—and my knowledge about the world all comes from unreliable rumors. 
 
Pets: A major source of stress
 
@Summer
 
Day five of being unable to leave the house.
 
Because I like being out in the world, at 2:00 a.m. on the night when they were locking the city down at 3:00 a.m., I left my neighborhood at 2:00 a.m. to walk my dog. During the days right before the lockdown, I spent a couple of hours delivering groceries to old and new friends all over town.

I don’t worry about what would happen to me if I test positive, but I worry every day what would happen to my dog, whether it would be “disposed of.”  Talk of “culling” pets sends a chill down my spine, because it treats pets as if they were objects, and not family members, or even life itself, for some people.  This makes no sense at all.  It’s as if the great crisis of the pandemic truly affects all of “humanity,” but leaves animals behind.   When the entire Internet is blowing up because of the precarious situation of babies in Shanghai, do you dare talk about your dog? There seems to me to be a great deal of uncertainty in the methods people are using to try to save their pets, and in recent interactions with security volunteers I have come to understand that they too are in a tough spot, and their usual warmth and friendliness have suddenly disappeared…I can’t imagine they will leave me a way out, so everything is up to fate (for both me and my dog).[6] 
 
@fanxi
 
My main anxiety during epidemic is my cat, and next is the humanitarian disaster the epidemic is creating. 
 
One night, I learned that my building would be locked down for testing.  Thanks a lot for the 2 + 7 [two days home isolation, 7 days restricted to the neighborhood]. That night, I began to worry frantically about what would happen to my cat if I tested positive, and all sorts of realistic and painful possibilities flashed through my mind.  I realized I might lose my cat, that she might be culled, or if lucky she might stay in the apartment, where she might starve to death or be poisoned as a result of the sterilization…Everything depended on luck, but I knew I couldn’t count on luck, and that if one of these “what ifs” came to pass I would really fall apart.
 
That night was the most stressful. After they did the tests, they madly disinfected the building entrance area, and I started asking for help from people in my local WeChat group, and quickly gathered a lot of information.  I spent the evening on the phone calling any relative or friend I could think of, and put together three possibilities in case the scenario “I or my roommate tested positive” actually came to pass.  I added a young lady I don’t know from the pet support group as someone who would take my cat, identified as a back-up a pet store owner from a store I often went to and who people said good things about in comment sections.  At the same time, I also contacted two friends nearby in case the first two people also wound up locked down or in quarantine.  I was almost ready to take them my cat even before the text results came back. 
 
Finally the test came back negative, and I felt as relieved as if I’d been spared the grim reaper.
 
@miaoxiang
 
I have a friend with positive cases in her neighborhood, and she has a pet.  She was worried that if she tested positive, her pet might be “disposed of,” so she started looking for a someone to keep the pet, and got in touch with me.  My first reaction was to help her out, but after talking on the phone, I hesitated, because I thought I would worry that if she tested positive, then her pet might be sick too, which might infect our two pets.  Also, I don’t live alone, and there are people in my house who are not vaccinated, so all of this might affect them…
 
So my decision at that time was, let's try to get answers to some of these questions and see how authorities are going to handle things.  I asked her to make me a backup contact person, so that if she tests positive and needs to deposit her pet somewhere immediately, I can go pick it up to avoid it’s being put to death, and then figure out where ultimately to lodge it, or how to get it back home once everything is disinfected.  But I would not take the pet before a positive test result...But I still felt uneasy with this, fearing that there might only be one chance, because I might get locked down too, and if I couldn’t leave my house then the pet’s very life might be directly affected by me because I did not make a timely decision.
 
This is only one small example, and perhaps is not terribly representative, but what I want to say that everyone is making contradictory decisions like this at the present moment, in the course of which some people inevitably wind up being “selfish” and becoming indifferent people, which is the last thing our society needs, and everyone is afraid of becoming one of these people or running into one of these people.
 
But where can we find courage?  The courage to not make "selfish" decisions in the moment?  The courage to take more risks, to have more empathy and concern for other people’s dilemmas?  Does the courage come from personal goodness and generosity, or from somewhere else? I don't really know the answer, but I do know that calling on our courage is not enough, nor is our basic goodness enough. For example, under the extremely resource-poor environment and system of the Nanhui quarantine center,[7] everyone becomes an animal that only looks out for themselves, so where is the compassion? Such an environment and system can only bring out the "evil" in human nature.
 
Rupture: Reality and the Internet are equally fractured
 
@kongtiaoxulun
 
Changning District, Shanghai
 
14 days isolated at home (with two outings to buy food), lying flat and angry. 
 
My anxiety comes from my anger at the lousy government, and not from my personal circumstances. I’ve got enough to eat and drink, I live by myself and consume little, and I can play games at home, so I could go on like this indefinitely. But this is because I am lucky and have nothing to lose:  no children who might be dragged off into quarantine by themselves at any moment, no relatives who need dialysis or chemo, no elderly parents who do not know how to use their cell phones to get food, no dogs and cats who might suddenly die at any moment, no factories that cannot pay taxes or wages, so no worries about any goods rotting in the warehouse…So as long as there is no sudden loss of water or electricity or damage to electrical appliances at home, life can go on as usual. But for other people to whom any one of these things happen, it’s a catastrophe. I try to relieve my anxiety by staying offline as much as possible, because after five minutes online I’m angry all day.  The internet is full of lies designed to cover up what’s really going on, and I don’t really want to talk about it.

@xiaoli
 
Putuo District, Shanghai, home isolation for nine days, doing my best to stay normal.
 
I wasn't anxious at the beginning because I've been in isolation before. This was in Beijing in 2020, which was the worst year of the epidemic. 2021, I was quarantined in Shanghai for more than one round of 2+12 [two days of home isolation, 12 days restricted to the neighborhood]. So, when the isolation started, I really wasn't all that worried.
 
On April 1, delivery services stopped, but at that point I thought to myself, maybe it's just for a couple of days. However, things didn't get better, and on April 5, yesterday, when the results of the lockdown of Puxi were supposed to come out, I finally realized that things were far more serious than I had imagined, and my phone was blowing up with news. Because I've been eating a lot of chili oil and noodles lately, it aggravated my ulcer, and I really started to panic. I try to carefully distinguish my emotions, so I’m not angry per se, but I really fail to understand how things have turned out this way, it is beyond my imagination.
 
Perhaps I am indeed a bit of a coward, in which case a really brave person might try to figure out the ins and outs of the situation, and decide on some way to express themselves and take action. But for the moment I'm just focusing on my daily life. From last night until now, I've been keeping myself busy through work and study.  I turned off the notifications for several neighborhood WeChat groups, and only looked at them from time to time.  I bury my head in the sand so as not to hear the sound of weeping, whether it comes from far away, next door, or from myself.  I want to avoid getting overemotional, because the pandemic has already taken too many things from us, and we need to fight to keep what we have right now. 

@meiyangyang
 
Baoshan District, at home for six days, gradually losing vitality.
 
The feeling of being cut off started even before the lockdown, on March 29th, three days before the lockdown of Puxi.
 
My WeChat group was already filled with panic about not being able to buy food in Puxi, and on the Internet there were even videos of fights in the grocery stores. Although my fridge was full, I still grabbed my shopping bags and went out. When I got to the farmers' market, I was surprised to find that there were plenty of vegetables, quite a lot of meat, and still a good variety of fruits.  On my way home, I saw many elderly people standing in a long line in front of a dim sum store, as is often the case in Shanghai. What I noticed, though, is that there shopping bags were not overflowing like mine was.
 
I was confused, because it seemed as if there were a great distance between the online world and real life. I rely on the Internet for information, but the information comes with extreme emotions.  Real life seems more harmonious and measured, but that is because there is a lot you can’t see.  Trying to find the middle ground has left me perplexed.
 
Then came the story of the older women workers kicked out of their homes,[8] multiple incidents of people dying, cats killed because of the virus…This series of tragedies has continued until today, April 7. In addition to the incidents themselves, I am also very concerned about the role and attitude of netizens. If you pay attention, you will note that the comment sections fill up first with inhumane and extreme statements, and only later do friendlier and more rational voices appear and eventually take the high ground.
 
Chatting with friends, we realized that we can’t find answers to all of our questions in our online bubbles, because the online world seems to be divided into two camps in a sort of intellectual or cultural war, while I and a lot of people who do not look too much different from me occupy opposite ends of the spectrum.

Expectations:  Expectations from the world turn into “destruction”
 
@ Ihadalittletodrink
 
“Our answer to the world:  Cats and Dogs

Our expectations of the world:  Destruction”[9]
 
This is a joke that my friends and I used to share. This epidemic has not only shattered my image of Shanghai, but also activated my deep sense of pessimism. I often can’t help but think that we should just let the world destroy itself, because it is already hell.  There is a lot of time when I just need to "go crazy" (google “crazy literature”[10]) to resist the emotional pressure resulting from the collision between my reason and the world’s absurdity.

We talk a lot, but always avoid the things we really need to talk about.  We also do a lot, but we are like ants running away from the Buddha’s feet.  Being pessimistic is nothing to be ashamed of, and chicken soup and big words will not persuade me otherwise.  You know, my friends, that we never wanted eternity or greatness, but only peace, health, a peaceful sleep—it would be enough to make life a little better.
 
@Carol

The things that this epidemic has revealed about society that makes me feel the most hopeless are the obvious gap between rich and poor and increasing class divisions.  The "elites" living in high-end real estate next to the Huangpu River live in a completely different world from the "ordinary people" in their old and cramped dwellings, both in terms of living area and access to goods.  The pandemic has put squarely before our eyes the income and power inequalities between rich and poor.  So what people are saying online is that their dream is to make enough money to live in the high-end neighborhoods.
 
But from the perspective of the healthy development of society as a whole, this is clearly not the way to go.  If what everyone in society wants is to climb to the top and leave current reality behind, then this will be a cold society, without hope.  When it is time to tackle difficult challenges together, the people of a society should join their strength to resolve the issue, and should engage in collective reflection—surely this is the way to maintain a society’s bottom line?  This is how we protect those old people living in the back alleys who don’t know how to use cell phones, so that these marginal people do not starve to death in 2022.  (What kind of society tells young people who can't get food to blame themselves for being incompetent, for not having resources or connections, or makes old people who can't use cell phones apologize for causing problems? This leaves me speechless).
 
 I saw something else that made me think:  quarantine hospitals are looking for cleaning staff, whom they will pay 1200 RMB a day (approx. 190 US$), as long as they work for at least one month.  Someone I work with, a big wig that lives by the river, goes in together with his neighbors to have refrigerated trucks bring food to their building, and the cheapest seafood meal is 1750 RMB (approx. 250 US$).  It makes you sad, that the worst off among us do the hardest work for the least money, and everyone expects to better themselves through the money they earn, but a 12-hour day at the quarantine hospital does not earn enough to pay for the other guy’s meal.  What is there to say?  There’s no hope, let’s burn it down.
 
It seems like people have lost faith in society.  In the past we abandoned the idea of being citizens of the world to build our own prison behind a wall of nationalism.  But now we don’t know what to tell people who are getting kicked in the face where to put their faith.
 
@velvet

A long time ago, I read about a movie called "The Platform," which is about a 333-story vertical giant prison, in which food is delivered from top to bottom by a moving platform.  The inmates at the top obviously have access to the most food, and as the platform moves down, it is likely that everything will have been eaten. In order to survive, the inmates kill one other, and those at the top may well spit on the food, while the elderly, women, and children become completely vulnerable groups and are ruthlessly abused.
 
When I saw this film, my feelings were that the story was cruel and cold, but I never thought that I would see it come to life.  But here we see corgis and kittens ruthlessly slaughtered, working women driven out of their homes, critically ill patients and pregnant women without doctors and medicines, the elderly and the disabled unable to buy or receive food...each one more cruel and cold than the other.  I can’t help but weep, get angry, or even curse.
 
When a friend confided in me that “everyone has their 168 RMB (approx. 26 US$) bag of grievance vegetables 冤种蔬菜包, but I don’t deserve a single vegetable,” I felt like crying.  I feel like no matter how hard I work to help how many people, it does no good.  I detest this age where everyday people have to beg repeatedly for help, nor do I want to invest in extravagant dreams that tomorrow will be better than today, or next year better than this year.  Because the fact of the matter is that “we thought that 2019 was the worst year, but it may turn out to be the best year of the next ten.”
 
@AA
 
Changning district, Shanghai, home isolation for 19 days (2+2+2+7+5+1, the version where I never leave the neighborhood)
 
I guess I’m pretty lucky, in that “desperation” always seemed to belong to things coming from news far away, while in my part of the world there is anger and silence, which for the moment I feel to be better than desperation.
 
My building is fairly cautious.  At the outset they followed the lead of the neighborhood and locked down for three periods of two days each.  During the last two-day lockdown, somebody tested positive, and the whole compound locked down for a week (so we created a WeChat group). Right after this came the five-day lockdown of Puxi, during which I had absolutely no opportunity to go out to buy food.  We had more or less enough to eat, but virtually none of the old people in our neighborhood know how to order food on their cell phones, and after the Qingming holiday we were in the situation of “we don’t know how long the lockdown will go on” and “the neighborhood committee and the property owners have disappeared without a trace,” so on the initiative of the residents we put together a collective purchasing group.  

Since I have lived with my grandparents since I was little, I particularly sympathize with old people, and went out of my way to help some old folks in the group buy their food, and I even cooked for some of them.  And because no one had any experience with group buying, I helped to design the online purchase form, with the number of our building as the image (the neighbors all called me “tech support”).
 
But in fact, doing this things brought me no sense of achievement, and what happened was that more and more old people started to seek me out and ask for help, to the point that it got in the way of my work.  There was even an old lady I had an argument with in the past because she mistakenly thought my dog had shit all over the place.  I started to wonder if my “good deed” was really good.  Was I not “aiding and abetting the wicked,” making some people increasingly reliant on others? 
 
For the moment I’m okay for food and drink, and I have some extra time, and my dog is healthy and happy, so I can do these “good deeds.”  But if anything about this changes, how long can I keep it up?  I’ve been observing my neighbors’ behavior over the past few days, and while there are many who are responsible and volunteer their services, there are others who do nothing but stick their hand out.  Some talk a good game but when it is time to work shut up and sit on the sidelines, while others constantly suck up to the people who started the group…Sometimes I really think, “to hell with it!”
 
Notes

[1]青年志, “让上海被看见，让“求救”被延续,” published online on April 8, 2022. 

[2]Translator’s note:  These are online retail stores, the rough equivalent of Amazon.

[3]Translator’s note:  The traditional “tomb sweeping” festival, where everyone is meant to clean the area around their ancestors’ place of burial.

[4]Translator’s note:  This appears to be an on-campus 7-11 that also sells school supplies.

[5]Translator’s note:  “Revenge eating” is perhaps like “make-up sex.”

[6]Translator’s note:  This is a play on words, since the word for “dog” can also mean “unworthy” or “mean,” as in the English expression "a dog's life."

[7]Translator’s note:  This center has been widely derided for its disorganization and lack of supplies.

[8]Translator’s note:  The reference is to older women workers who were working at some distance from their homes and were not allowed back into their buildings after lockdown.  See here for more information (in Chinese).

[9]Translator’s note:  This is surely an Internet reference, but I could not locate it.

[10]Translator’s note :  This refers to the practice of sending over the top messages online, suggesting that you are about to become insane.  Apparently this started when someone was trying to get a refund online and eventually was driven to distraction and sent such a message, after which they immediately received the refund.  See here for more information (in Chinese).