April showers brought no May flowers to the city of Shanghai. In the quest to contain the re-emergence of Covid-19 in April 2022, 25 million residents were forcibly confined to their homes in a stringent city-wide lockdown. Having claimed success in containing outbreaks through imposed lockdowns across China since 2020, and despite the passage of time and global shifts in attitudes towards the pandemic, the Chinese government pressed on with a zero-Covid policy. Even just a single case meant confinement was repeatedly extended this spring, by an additional 14 days at a time. The two-month lockdown sent the metropolitan area into a state of paralysis. Steel fences and barricades dissected main roads to sever passage, gates to residential areas were locked, and police and security guards were deployed to surveil housing blocks. The city once again fell silent. The parks where older people would practise tai-chi together, the squares where strangers would meet to dance, and the streets where parents would gather to pick up children from school, were either lying empty or used as graveyards for foam boxes left behind by government-arranged deliveries of basic supplies. With essential shops and hospitals predominantly shut until June, we rationed our food and drinking water while the local authorities played God. Due to their social and financial status, or because of the severity of their illness, certain populations were treated with priority, given more medical attention and food aid. What began as a mission to annihilate an infectious disease derailed into an abusive control of bodies and space.
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