Unlike many friends of mine who boast themselves as proud Shanghai citizens, I don’t have an unconditional affection to this city. Partly because I grew up in a suburban area where the downtown dialect wasn’t even my mother tongue. But I find Shanghai a lovable place for many reasons. The convenient modern life, the efficient system, people’s autonomous adherence to rules — both legally and morally, and most importantly, the freedom that allows you to do almost anything making dreams come true.
Those are the merits that created this metropolitan mega city. Those are the merits that gave birth to the countless high-rises, gigantic elevated highways, ultra-long subways and many more miracles in this city.
But it recently came to me that the most important merit, the so-called freedom, is no more than a well-observed but never openly elaborated “agreement” — between the people and the city governors. It is a balanced relationship that has been working effectively, until over three weeks ago. That balance has been preventing the governors from sorts of absurdities that harm the economic development, and forcing the authorities to work down-to-earth to serve the people and the market. It deprioritizes ideological problems, so that people from all over the world can devote themselves to their pursuit of wealth, self recognition, and eventually, better lives.
That freedom is, however, illusive. Many foreigners say that they love Shanghai because it is different. Many locals say that they don’t want to work and live in Beijing because Shanghai is different. The reality: it isn’t.
The freedom which makes the myth of a unique, westernized, open-minded Shanghai is only there because of the mercy of the top guys. It is not taken for granted. When something imminently subversive overrules the situation, everything else can be abandoned, at all cost.
The epidemic control is not a scientific issue; it is a political movement to remove imminent threats. For that sake, the shining, magical and lovable metropolis in your heart is nothing but a phantom.
Like the barren land left by a tide, what we have been seeing during the past weeks are the naked truth when all the untold rules, the seemingly existed freedom, are no longer there. What was shut down was not the public transportation, the business centers, the food courts and groceries. What was deprived was the core spirt, the bone and blood of the city.
Hearing about the devastating tragedies these days, I started being shocked, angered and upset, but now only indifferent and ostrich-like. No matter how cruel it is, this is the reality, the elephant in the room. As an individual, the only thing you are requested is obedience.
It is time to wake up from the Shanghai dream.
Undoubtedly the lockdown will come to an end. But my hometown is never going to be the same as before. Ironically, it perhaps never changes, except for the way I feel and understand it. One day when I look again at the glittering lights in the nights, and smell the coffee in the air, I will always feel the pain.