Ten Days in Xi’an: Episode Four
Episode 4: “The government still doesn’t realize that their administrative power can’t solve everything.”
Acclaimed, independent journalist Jiang Xue documents the spiral of her city, Xi’an (with a population of more than 13 million residents), into complete lockdown.
4. People’s Self-help
From December 28 to December 31, for at least these four days, most people in Xi’an can rely only on self-help. When it comes to buying vegetables and the necessities of life, that is the only way to get food to eat.
Some friends from other cities were curious and asked if express delivery was available. In fact, around December 21, express delivery in Xi’an had already stopped, and people could not shop online from other cities. After Xi’an was locked down, some online shopping platforms circulated on the WeChat group, saying that they could deliver food during the epidemic. But when I placed an order, I found that as long as one’s residence was in Xi’an, food could not be delivered. The commonly used “Hema” [delivery service] always said “the courier guys’ schedules are full”. I finally found the “Everyone happy at home” service, and ordered some food, but two days after paying the bill, there was no sign of activity, so I canceled it.
In the live stream of the government press conference on December 29, the comment area was overtaken by people writing “difficulty in buying vegetables”; as a result, the comment section was promptly shut down.
I had a discussion with a few friends in a volunteer group. They had all participated in various disaster relief work and had rich experience. They all said that it was too difficult to help out in Xi’an at this time. At the beginning of the lockdown, they organized thousands of volunteers online and offline, but they were unable to play a role. The government has one uniform approach, shutting down all communities, thus making it very difficult to obtain a pass. Volunteers can’t leave their place of residence and go to the frontline to serve. This is also a situation they have not encountered for many years.
In fact, it is easy to think that we, the residents of the community, are lucky; most of us generally have a little surplus food at home, so we won’t go hungry right away. The most tragic is the old communities, urban villages, construction sites and other people in the city’s “three neglects”.[1] It is unimaginable that those young people who work in the companies on weekdays have become one of the groups that has found it most difficult to eat after the city was closed. They don’t usually cook, so they don’t have cooking utensils, and some live in their offices. At this time, the restaurants outside were closed, take-out stopped, and they couldn’t even leave through the main gate of their rooms and offices. Even instant noodles soon became a rarity.[2]
On the evening of December 30, the temperature was below zero. In a small online group, a friend left messages, after returning from delivering meals to homeless people on the street. This friend is enthusiastic about charity and public welfare and has cooperated with others for more than 10 years as if it were just one day, dedicated to providing food for the destitute living on the streets of Xi’an. These days, he prepares food for the homeless at the factory he owns in the southern suburbs and then sends it into the city, delivering 185 hot meals in one night. Because he has a pass, there is no obstacle.
Before the closure of the city, I participated in this friend’s activity and gave the homeless a cotton-padded coat. I know that they usually spend the night at the city’s banks, under the ATM machines and other places to shelter from the cold. Now that the city is closed, on the one hand, they have been driven out, and on the other hand, because there are no people on the street, whether it’s begging or picking up rubbish, their circumstances are grim; there’s nothing for them. It was destined to be an extremely difficult winter for them.
Mr. Li, a kind friend of the author, feeds the homeless every two days. He has a paper pass that allows him to move around freely.
The vegetables delivered by government staff are limited in amount and variety.
People in lockdown at home had to undergo PCR testing everyday for COVID-19.
On New Year’s Day, I chatted for a while with Ms. Zhang, who finally had some free time to talk. She has been working for a public welfare organization for more than 10 years. She originally provided services to the disabled and devoted herself to community work over the past three or four years. During this epidemic, she has tirelessly cooperated with the community, linking up resources, and participating in many relief activities.
Ms. Zhang told me that it is very important for community neighbours to engage in self-help when faced with extreme situations such as city closures, to take care of special-needs groups such as the elderly and children living alone, and some urgent needs, such as the special needs of the elderly, children, and those who have nothing to eat and drink, etc. In some extreme emergencies, neighbours helping each other can solve the problem; when big crises strike, self-reliance and self-help within the community is indispensable. But in the current situation communities can’t do these things because people in a community cannot interact with each other. It is as if they lived on isolated islands. In this, non-profit organizations (NGO) could play a role, working to cultivate and build communities. But now, more often than not, this type of work is prohibited by the government.
Speaking of the current situation where it is difficult for people to get food, she likened it to everyone being fenced in and then “being fed” (like in the zoo) by government workers. Imagine how this is possible in a city with tens of millions of people.[3]. In a big community of 20,000 people there are generally no more than ten local government staff or community workers and they can’t even complete all the various administrative tasks. She lamented that most of the community workers that she recognized were young women, and many were also mothers. These days, they can’t go home at all. They are overloaded. Many people sleep on the floor in the office, which makes her feel “distressed”.
“The government still doesn’t realize that their administrative power can’t solve everything. Just like this epidemic prevention, the local government workers are working hard day and night, to what effect?” We chatted, and before I knew it, an hour had passed by.
Originally, it used to refer to the southern district of Tianjin (City). At the end of the Qing Dynasty, when the Japanese and French Concession in Tianjin was first opened, the area was still desolate, the consulates of Japan and France had no jurisdiction, and the local government in China also ignored it, so it was called the “three neglects” area. Today, it generally refers to places or things that no one cares about. In the case of Xi’an, the “three neglects” refer to the places where the government’s management is not in place and social services are zero or not sufficient. Typically, the urban fringe region, communities in which the vulnerable groups live, and the border areas of urban districts are seen as such areas.
Basically, these young people live in better communities not the vulnerable communities. While working in offices, they became used to ordering online or eating at the company’s canteen. But with the city closed, they couldn’t do either, so they had difficulty eating: they wanted to cook for themselves but had no cooking utensils; they had money but were unable to find food to order food online.
Xi’an has an official population of 13 million. This number does not include the unregistered, “floating” population.