Tuesday, 25/02/2020, brings out a beautiful, sunny day in Shanghai. Temperatures have climbed all the way to 25 degrees, marking the warmest day for Shanghai in 2020. The Spring Festival is long time gone, but the streets, subways (see video) and restaurants in Shanghai remain empty.
The Spring Festival is the biggest holiday in China as the Chinese and some other countries of the same religion and beliefs celebrate their New Year. This year, it’s all about the sign of a ‘rat’, one of the 12 signs they worship. In this honor, the biggest migration in the world happens each year in China, lasting for 10-14 days. During this period big cities become completely empty. People move to their homes, where their roots originate. Basically everyone, no exceptions. They dedicate great importance to this – to spend time at their homes with their loved ones – until work calls them back.
Now, 23 days after the Spring Festival officially has ended, empty streets, roads, public transport, schools, closed restaurants, bars and parks can still be seen in Shanghai (and all over China). Traditional red ornaments, lanterns and symbols honoring the ‘rat’ sign are still hanging from the fronts of buildings, entrances and street lamps all over the city. There is no one to take down the New Year’s decoration and store it for next years to come. Usually vibrant streets full of laughter, singing, dancing and other entertainments are pushed in silence. Few people who can be seen on the streets and in grocery shops, which are the only ones left open, look with distrust and fear over the face-masks, as well as the protective goggles. Security guards with laser thermometers and disinfectants, guard, measure body temperature and do inventory at the entrances of every bigger shop and compound, for everyone who wants to enter. This is happening basically in all areas where a large number of people is concentrated. Only residents of particular compound, having normal body temperature, are allowed to enter into neighborhoods they live in, while the rest: the couriers, food delivery services and visitors are not. These can only reach the outside of the main entrance of the compound or a building. Scenes that reminiscent on an apocalypse a little and were not expected by anyone.
The reason, of course, is a new, quite unknown, 2019-nCoV virus (coronavirus). The virus has badly shaken, not only China, which is the most impacted and where it all began, but has affected the rest of the world as well. There are many theories and conspiracies as to how this outbreak came out, but what exactly gave rise to it and what the truth is, only few people probably know. What is known – virus has already caused many infections and deaths, as well as economic downturn, fear, panic, hysteria and even the anger that drives racism. The medias are full of all kinds of news, mostly negative ones, talking about the number of dead and infected every day, no one really mentioning that over a third of those infected in China have already been cured so far. No doubt about it 2019-nCov is a ‘tricky one’ and something humanity hasn’t deal with before. After a month, no one still quite knows, how severe virus is and how exactly it behaves, even after it has already been cured.
I don’t want to spend too much time writing on the virus itself. Everyone shares their own opinion about it. Some are frightened to death, some on the other hand do not pay much attention to it. Many rely on the fact that only flu, in the same period, required a lot more sick and dead than new controversial virus had, thinking it is something we should not panic too much, but still be responsible and careful about.
We all might have to accept that the new virus will become another seasonal pandemics and part of our lives in the future.
Daily statistic for Shanghai: 1 new infected on the day, 20.02; 334 infected since outbreak started: 199 of them cured and 2 people died
However, Tuesday, February 25, 2020 is also a day when, after an unpredictable one-month period and many upsets and changes in my plans duo the virus outbreak, I somehow feel more positive for the future. The sun that finally showed up has a lot to do with it, I am sure. But, the fact I am traveling back home only a few hours from now, has even greater impact on it. Slovenia, here I come…