Life starts to look normal where pandemic began

InShanghai, restaurantsand bars inmany neighborhoods are teeming with crowds. In Beijing, thousands of students are heading back to campus for the fall semester. In Wuhan, where the coronavirus emerged eight months ago, water parks and night markets are packed elbow to elbow, buzzing like before.

While the United States and much of the world are still struggling to contain the corona virus pandemic, life in many parts of China has in recent weeks become striking ly normal. Cities have relaxed social distancing rules and mask mandates, and crowds are again fifi fifi fifi ll in gt our is ts it es, movie theaters and gyms.

“Itnolonger feels likethere is something too frightful or too life-threatening out there ,” saidXiongXiaoyan, whoworks at a paint manufacturer in the southern province of Guangdong.

Xiong, who described the restrictions put in place to combat the virus as“su ff ff ff ff ff ffo ca ting ,” recently visited a movie theater for thefifirst timesince the outbreak

“When the lights turned dark, I felt I had returned to my normal life,” she said. “I couldforgetabout everything outside and have my own spiritual world .”

The return to normal cy has made China an outlier in the global economy.

The United States is facing a potentially long and painful recession, as some places have re imposed restrictions to contendwitha surge incases thissummer. Severalcountries in Europe have been experiencing fresh outbreaks, putting additional pressure on an already weak economy. By contrast, China has been slowly recovering in recent months, and its factories are humming again, although its growth is still weaker than before thepandemic, andjob losses are signifificant.

It is a stark turnabout from the early days of the pandemic, when China was the epic enter of the outbreak and the authoritarian government imposed sweeping lockdowns. Across thecountry, lifecametoahalt andthe economy crateredas people were forced to stay at home and shops largely shut down, except those selling essential goods.

InWuhan, the streetswere all but deserted, except for government vehicles and delivery drivers ferrying food and supplies. Hospitals were overrun with patients as nervous residents with cough sand fevers sought treatment. A sense of anger and anxiety permeated the citywhile residents grappledwitha rapidlymounting death toll and uncertainty about when the lockdown would end.

Despite a delayedresponse and early mis steps by the government, the recovery in China points to the success of the extreme tactics. After months of travel restrictions and citywide testing drives, locally transmitted cases of the virus in China are near zero, according to off iffi ci al data.

OnSunday, Chinareported no new locally transmitted cases for the seventh consecutive day. The 12 new infections it reportedwere all imported, bringing China’s totalnumber of confifirmed cases to 84,951, with at least 4,634 deaths. In the United States, nearly 5.7million people have been infected and at least 176,200 have died.

Now many Chinese cities are once again hosting large events, though with some limits on crowd sizes, after months when such gatherings were banned entirely.

Qingdao, a seaside city in eastern China, is holding its popular beer festival this month largely as planned( face masksareoptional). Shanghai recently held a gaming convention that attracted thousands of enthusiasts.

Many people are resuming old routines, with some modififications, hopeful that the worst has passed.

China’s leaders, hoping to bolster the economy, are eager forpeople togetbacktowork and start shopping and traveling again.

But they are also taking a cautious approach, requiring movie theaters and tourist sites, for example, tooperateat half-capacity. Toget into banks, restaurants and other public venues, residentsmust submit to temperature checks andshowdigital codes verifying that they are healthy and have not traveled recently to areaswhere there have been clusters of new cases.

Authorities continue to restrict travel in the Xinjiang region in western China, where an outbreak last month prompted a lockdown. China still prohibits most foreigners from entering the country, for fear that they could bring the virus.

There have been out breaks in recentmonths, but in each case the response was swift. When Wuhan reported six coronavirus cases in May, breaking a streak of more than a month without any con fifi rm ed infections, the city launched a plan to test all 11 million of its people. And when a new cluster emerged inBeijing in June, authorities quickly reimposed some lockdown measures to contain it.

While China is not the only placewhere restrictions have eased — Taiwan, for example, has kept the virus under control for months — the semblance of normalcy has become a point of national pride and fodder for the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

The state news media is pointing to the return of large gatherings and classes as evidence of China’s superior response to the virus, especially compared with the United States andotherWestern countrieswhose offifficials are still dealing with large outbreaks.

When photos circulated worldwide in recent days showing thousands ofpeople swimming shoulder to shoulder at a pool rave inWuhan, prompting some criticism overseas, Chinese commentators were quick to defend the party. Global Times, a staterun newspaper, called the reaction to the photos “foreign sour grapes.”

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said the world should pay more attention to China’ s e ff ff ff ff ff ff or ts to control the outbreak.

“This re fl flec ts a strategic victory achieved byWuhan and the Chinese government in fifififighting the virus,” he said at a regular news brie fifing Thursday.

China could still face a COVID-19resurgence, experts warn, especially as the weather cools andpeople spendmore time indoors.

“They still need to be cautious,” said DavidHui, director of the Stanley Ho Center for Emerging Infectious Disease sat the Chinese University of Hong Kong .“Mass gathering sand mass celebrations should not be encouraged.”

Some Chinese residents are worried that the public is becoming too dismissive of the virus.

Cheng Ailin, 59, recently visited a gorge inGuangdong that was crowded with tourists. She saidshewas shocked to see thatmost people were not wearing masks.

“There were no control and prevention measures,” she said. “If therewere a coronavirus case, the consequences would be unimaginable, and the trouble would have no end.”