Ten Days in Xi’an
The extraordinary account by acclaimed independent investigative journalist, Jiang Xue, detailing the unprecedented lockdown of the city of Xi’an.
“Ten days in Xi’an” has been called the Xi’an version of “Wuhan Diary,” by Chinese novelist, Fang Fang. Similarly, investigative journalist, Jiang Xue, documented the spiral of her city, Xi’an (with a population of more than 13 million residents), into complete lockdown.
Jiang observes that the real tragedy is not the deaths from the spread of COVID-19, but from the hardships and emergencies strict lockdown led to – such as access to medical help (for high-risk pregnancies and existing conditions) curbed by the order to stay in. Food and other necessities weren’t in short supply, she says, but lack of access as a result of restrictions plunged people into crisis.
The government took on an impossible role in the pandemic lockdown that Jiang says the restoration of market order was far better equipped to cope with.
Published on January 4, 2022, “Ten days in Xi’an” is a log of Jiang’s daily experiences under lockdown posted to the WeChat social media platform. It’s life there drew millions of views and more than 2,000 messages in response. But a life short-lived. The piece was scrubbed from WeChat four days after it appeared. On January 5, the very next day after Jiang’s post went viral, two policemen knocked on her door, warning Jiang not to write again. The many articles supporting “Ten days in Xi’an” were also deleted and the account that posted her log was shut down permanently two weeks later.
Jiang explains she did not write her account in anger, which she kept under control. Her wish was to release “a few words of truth” about “people in pain desperate to hear authentic voices,” and to ensure the suffering of many had not been in vain.
Those experiences were erased in China. But Jiang’s “Ten days in Xi’an” nevertheless took flight and has found its voice beyond the country’s borders. Read those voices and carry their lessons forward when you follow Jiang’s journal, presented here as a series over the next six days.
[The two words shown below mean “freedom”].
Episode 1
Originally posted January 4, 2022 on the WeChat account “MoCunGeWu”(默存格物)
Translated by Andréa Worden, courtesy of China Change and Probe International
The loudspeaker in the community rang again, repeating over and over, calling for people to go downstairs to take a PCR test. The queue was long. The girl who administered the tests vigorously slapped her plastic gloves with disinfectant after each one. I smelled the icy smell and imagined that the cold had frozen her hands badly.
This is December 31, 2021. The last dusk of the old year, twilight is about to fall. Looking out from the balcony, the street was deserted. There are no more busy evenings in the city, and the deadly silence feels absurd and a little fearful.
First day of lockdown
On the afternoon of December 22, the day Xi’an’s city closure order was announced, I plodded away in silence working on a manuscript at home in the southern suburbs, and vaguely felt that the epidemic had become serious. Some restaurants in front of my home were sealed a few days ago, and the convenience store in front of the house stopped accepting express delivery the day before, making life inconvenient. After three o’clock, Suixi, a friend of mine, left a message on WeChat, saying that I should go buy some vegetables and stock up on food, and that the supermarket would be closed soon. I believed her, she is a veteran NGO worker, and has a lot of experience in remote disaster relief. So, I went out immediately.
As soon as I got to the supermarket, I discovered that something was wrong. Although the press conference that day had not yet been held, and the evening shopping had not yet begun, people’s shopping carts were full. I decided to buy more. I wouldn’t be able to carry everything on a shared bike, so I ended up taking a taxi to go back.
Sure enough, at the 5 o’clock press conference, a “city closure order” was issued. Although the government said, “material supplies are sufficient,” people had already begun panic buying. Because I had already bought some things, I was calm and at ease. After I returned home, I went out for a walk. Along the way, I saw a large crowd of people gathered at the entrance to Shajing Village in the High-Tech District. The outside perimeter of the entire village, about two or three hundred meters along the road, had been completely separated off by green boards.
I walked across the road from the overpass to get a better look. Only then did I find that there was a store that was open for business, which was inside the boarded-up perimeter but was still brightly lit for the moment. I stood on the steps of the overpass and greeted the shopkeeper. He told me that Shajing Village had been urgently locked down in the afternoon, and that the store would have to close soon, too.
Hundreds of people gathered at the entrance to the village, all wearing masks, standing shoulder to shoulder, with no other protection. On the side of the road, there was a police car with its lights flashing, and there was no one in the car.
A young woman who had bought a bunch of things, put her plastic bags down on the ground carelessly, and was squatting and playing a video for her family. A middle-aged man, leaning on his bicycle, looked worriedly at the crowd. He told me that things were just fine when he went out to work in the morning, but when he came back after getting off work at 8 o’clock in the evening, he found that the village was closed, and he could not enter. He told me that his rent was 500 yuan.
I know that kind of housing. Just after I graduated 20 years ago, I lived in an urban village1 and had about 10 square meters and no bathroom. I cooked in the corridor, with poor lighting, and it was dark.
Two sanitation workers, carrying plastic bags in their hands, had probably also bought some daily necessities. Standing in the crowd, their yellow cleaning uniforms were very conspicuous. I asked them, and they said that when they went out to go to work at four or five in the afternoon, they could still leave their homes, but when they returned at night after work they couldn’t get back in.
Many years ago, I reported on sanitation workers, and I know that they can only rent in urban villages, because they have equipment such as carts and brooms, and even if they could afford to rent in multi-floor buildings, they cannot live in them. In those days, Huangyan Village, near the newspaper office, was a gathering place for sanitation workers. Later, the whole place was demolished and a multi-storey building was built, and they also lost a place to stay.
I stood by the side of the road with them, feeling their helplessness. The older one was timid, for fear of saying something wrong. The young man was constantly smiling and nodded to me from time to time. Behind the mask is a dark face, and I can feel the warmth of his smile.
Suddenly, there was a commotion in the crowd where the isolation boards conjoined, as if a crack had opened. I heard people say that the leaders of the village are currently in a meeting and are still waiting to speak. The two sanitation workers also hurried over, and then after a while, dispersed in disappointment. Looking at my phone, it’s almost ten o’clock in the evening. People gathered here, waiting in the cold wind, for at least two hours.
A few days later, I saw something online about a young man living in an urban village who could not get anything to eat because of the lockdown and was so hungry that he wailed. I am reminded of this lockdown night. I don’t know if this man also lives in Shajing Village, where there are tens of thousands of people, also shut out from the village that night, bewildered.
I then went to a few other places, and headed home; the streets were empty by that time. On Jixiang Road, gaudy red lanterns hung all over the sycamore trees by the roadside. Someone was standing on the side of the road, carrying large and small bags. On Gaoxin Road, Little Wu, a young delivery guy on a motorcycle, was rushing to deliver the last meal before midnight. He said that although the city is locked down, people always have to eat, some restaurants in the mall should be open, and there’ll be orders that need to be delivered. He was smiling as he spoke.
At that time, we did not expect that this “closed city” would develop in such an extremely hasty and unexpected way. On this night, those who were blocked at the door of their homes, those who were rushing to buy goods in the supermarkets, pregnant women, sick people, postgraduate students, construction workers, urban homeless, tourists who were passing through Xi’an … may have underestimated the disaster that this “closed city” would bring to them.
And those who pressed the “pause button” for this city, those who hold power, did they ever think about how they would affect the fate of the 13 million people who live in this city? If this isn’t something bigger than the sky, what else possibly could be?
Tune in tomorrow for Episode 2 of “Ten days in Xi’an”
Urban village is a special term in China. There are several concepts: housing complex, unit and community. In China, most residents live in a housing complex or apartment complex, most of which is a group of buildings, high-rise in particular, developed and managed by the same company. A building, such as an apartment building, can be divided into several units. Typically, the residents of a unit share the same gate and staircase. Several housing complexes in a certain region form a community, which is under the management of government workers. Basically, the urban village is run by a committee of villagers, but the government also sends workers to the village to exercise managerial duties. Though the urban village is much larger in size and has many more people (than the housing complex), it is still treated as a “community” by the government. When Xi’an was lockdown, all housing complexes were closed, and the residents were banned from entering or leaving. In some housing complexes, the residents were prohibited from leaving their homes, and no one and no activity was allowed in the yard of the housing complex. Even the gates of all units were sealed.