Day: July 5, 2022

The last time I wrote about the April 2022 Shanghai Lockdown was April 7th, one week in (for me). It’s now April 20th and the lockdown continues, so it’s time for an update.

It’s not the Cultural Revolution all over again

First of all, I’d like to address some of the negative press the lockdown has received. I’m not enjoying this lockdown and I don’t think that government has handled it well (either in the big decisions or in the execution), but there’s still exaggeration in the western press, so I want to call it out.

This account is from the Guardian (April 19, 2022):

In the past few days, neighbours start to denounce each other in our WeChat group. Some days it was about who didn’t get a PCR test, other times it was about who tried to sneak out for food. In my friend’s compound, neighbours even start to call the police when they see someone getting downstairs or talking in a group.

I can see the uncanny resemblance between being “positive/suspicious” now and being “intellectual/bourgeois” in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution.

OK, so of course this writer’s experience is different from my own. My compound might have had it easier (although my own building was fully sealed when a positive case was discovered on another floor). I have never had COVID. I’m not alone; I’m at home with my family, and all of us are doing OK mentally.

But this comparison to the Cultural Revolution really is over the top. And my experiences with my neighbors have been the exact opposite: rather than turning on each other and “denouncing” each other, relations have turned from chilly and distant (the unfortunate default in this city) to warm and helpful. I’ve honestly never felt closer to my neighbors. We’re just pulling together to make sure we all get food, can take care of our kids and pets, etc. When the one household had a positive case, no one in the building WeChat group reacted angrily. I saw nothing but positive support.

You can hear me discussing this situation on the You Can Learn Chinese podcast below (full episode is on SupChina here):

Q&A: Robots and Food

Finally, a little Q&A from an email (shout out to April!), because I’ve heard this question multiple times as a result of reports in American media:

Q: Do you see the robot dogs walking thru town asking you to stay in-doors? (saw this on YouTube).

A: No, no robot dogs (or robots of any kind). I’ve heard there are drones monitoring, but haven’t seen any myself. It’s not widespread.

Q: How is your food supply? Do you have enough food or is it delivered?

A: We have plenty of food, although we don’t have a lot of freedom to choose it. We just group order (with the other people in our building) whatever we can get when we can. Still, plenty of milk, eggs, rice, meat, etc. (Bread and fruit sometimes run out, though.)

Lockdown Changes

As of yesterday (April 19th), restrictions were loosened on both my building and on our apartment complex as a whole. We can’t leave our compound, but we can go outside again. (This is a huge plus for those of us with kids and dogs!)

It’s actually a lot like things right before the lockdown… the kids are still doing school from home. The biggest difference is that I still can’t go to the store or have most things delivered. So group buy (团购) is still the norm for getting food. (Epermarket is getting a lot of business from me this month!)

But even deliveries are starting to open up a bit. Hema (盒马) has apparently resumed deliveries to some areas, although it’s impossible to get an order in before they sell out. I hear that some restaurants and shops are resuming individual delivers (without the group buy minimum order of 1000+ RMB).

We’ve been doing tons of testing in April, both in the form of self-test antigen kits and nucleic acid PCR tests administered by others. that finally seems to be calming down too.

I’m expecting home schooling and work from home to resume for weeks still, but I’m holding out hope that regular deliveries will resume before too long. There’s hope!

The post Shanghai Lockdown 2022: the Neighbors appeared first on Sinosplice.

Looking at the steps I’ve taken over the past month, it’s pretty easy to see three phases:

1. Before the lockdown: I was getting good at averaging at least 10,000 steps per day.
2. April 1st: the lockdown begins.
3. April 19th: the strict lockdown (as a result of a positive case in my building) is lifted, and we’re allowed to go outside within our compound again.

We’re not sure when we’ll be able to leave our compound again (or when any shops will be open again), or when regular personal deliveries (non-group buys) will resume.

Meanwhile, there’s talk of a lockdown coming to Beijing…

The post The Shanghai Lockdown, in Steps appeared first on Sinosplice.

This was floating around Chinese social media recently. If you’re at least intermediate level, take a look. It might take some time, but you should be able to slowly start making sense of these “characters”:

My first reaction was “what the–?? I can’t read this.” But within 10 seconds I was deciphering certain characters, and pretty soon I had read the entire thing.

I won’t post the electronic answer here, but if anyone wants it, I can leave it in the comments.

The post Chinese Distorted: a Reading Challenge appeared first on Sinosplice.

Here’s another pun for ya, in the context of the Shanghai 2022 Lockdown:

This one is pretty beginner-friendly!

20饿饿年 (èr-líng-è-è nián)

Key to this pun is that pinyin “e” sounds very much like pinyin “er” in many dialects of Mandarin, especially Taiwanese Mandarin. It doesn’t sound as similar in Beijing Mandarin, but the pun still works.

Fortunately, most of us are not actually starving during the Shanghai Lockdown, although some residents are certainly having a harder time than others. Although I’m currently on Lockdown Day 41 at home and can move freely around within my compound, many others in Shanghai are well past Day 50 and are totally stuck indoors, plus have to do daily testing (which I no longer have to do).

P.S. More advanced learners should be sure to check out the Advanced Readings in Chinese (ARC) special Shanghai Lockdown meme edition #1 and special Shanghai Lockdown meme edition #2. (If anyone wants a more thorough analysis of any of those memes here, let me know.)

The post Year 2-0-e-e appeared first on Sinosplice.

I was surprised to see this on the Capri-Sun I ordered for my kids:

No Chinese for the name “Capri-Sun,” but the Chinese reads:

为 你 打 call
wèi nǐ dǎ call

I’m always wary of investing too much time into new Chinese slang, because a lot of it falls out of usage very quickly. 打call, however, seems to be withstanding the test of time.

Just for fun I asked my 10-year-old daughter (who attends an all-Chinese school) if she knows what “打call” means. She didn’t. She guessed it meant “to make a phone call.” This is a common guess among Chinese people that don’t know the term, so don’t feel bad if that’s what you thought too. Plus there’s that “hang loose” hand symbol which seems to reinforce the incorrect “make a phone call” interpretation.

“为你打call” simply means “to support you,” or “supporting you” might sound better in this context. Even though some Chinese people don’t even know it (mostly kids and old people; my wife knew it) It’s a slang term I feel is worth knowing, since it’s been around over 5 years already and has not disappeared yet. Plus, as you can see, it’s still appearing in companies’ marketing efforts.

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Oh, and for more info on this use of 为, as always, check the Chinese Grammar Wiki.

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