We lived in Beijing from August 2020 to August 2023, and until the day the doors of China suddenly opened again, we only saw Beijing behind a facemask and a QR-code. It was by the end of my weirdest month ever, November 2022, we saw the zero-tolerance policy, we thought would never be abandoned, suddenly change so radically it made me dizzy. After years of fearing the brutal consequences of the virus (forced hospital isolation for anyone who got the virus, also small children), of living with irregular school closures and shop reopenings, regular to daily covid-tests, uncountable scannings (x10 per day), after years of not being able to leave China to visit family back home, after long periods we could not even leave Beijing without being unable to send the children back to school for two weeks, after an awful lot of misery and lockdowns but also special moments with friends, suddenly and totally unexpectedly the gates of China opened. Omicron had escaped, and became unstoppable. You have to know that by the end of 2022, in Beijing, as soon as you were identified by your meta-data as a close contact of a close contact of an infected person, you had to isolate yourself at home (alarm on the door and red code in your health app), for at least a week. If you were as unlucky to wait in line for a covid test, and the person in front of the person in front of you tested positive, you were found and had to isolate. Millions of people were stuck at home (alarms on the door) as quarantine facilities (read additional container camps) became filled up with infected people. Omicron blew through the hardly vaccinated population like an unleashed storm. So in December, public life came to a standstill, as we all got it. We sent pictures of our positive covid-test and reassured ourselves and each other we were still at home. For the first time in three years, we were not taken to a hospital or isolation facility as everything was full and everybody was ill. It was surrealistic. The streets were empty. Shops closed as the personnel got ill. Taxis, busses, restaurants, everything stopped. After a week, we started to get better and Beijing started to breathe again. We hardly believed what had happened but we ran out into the city I had to rediscover. I wanted to find back time I had lost permanently.
Human brains are not made to remember itching stitches of pain. They leave us a but a vague impression of it, a memory. We remember it hurt much, but we don't feel the real actual pain over again, they focus rather on healing by bringing back the fun and the warmth and the togetherness we felt during these years. I am not scared of the painful memories as I have so many good ones to counterbalance the losses, but I fear the day I forget how it was to live through the 0-covid years in China. I want a sharp photograph of how it was before the mild wind of forgiveness gently rubs off the sharpest edges. I want to hold on to the colors and the smells of fear as I want to witness how it was and how it all grew into me. Now back to the city I have to share with the domestic tourists - The Forbidden City will never be that empty again...
(Kindly contact me via the form if you want to use a picture).
(Manuscript in Dutch in preparation)
(Kindly contact me via the form if you want to use a picture).
(Manuscript in Dutch in preparation)