Zihan (he/him) is majoring in Communication. He spent 10 years living in Shanghai, where he and his friends opened a record shop to support the Shanghai indie music community. He founded a label and creative group that organizes music parties in underground clubs and aims to combine the local gallery and music scenes. He is also a graphic designer who completed an internship with Shanghai Fashion Week in 2024, helping to promote their social media accounts. Zihan plays drums in a midwest-emo band and conducts research on Shanghai's experimental music scene, building an archive of its history.
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I would say I have a lot of things to say about this topic, because I am also a victim of the quarantine. My point could fall in the middle of either supporting quarantine or banning it. Quarantine is necessary at first because everyone is afraid of the unknown. As two years pass, we have to evaluate the economic cost that quarantine brings and the benefits of quarantine. I have heard a lot of people lose their jobs during quarantine. If the Covid 19 is diminished, there will still be a bunch of unemployed people, and social welfare will keep declining. Therefore, we need to pursue ways to improve the highest social happiness. It does not mean just keeping people alive, but living with a good quality of life.
Being from New York City, I witnessed varying views of COVID regulations. There were those who respected the guidelines and even took further measures to ensure safety. However, there was a larger population who felt the guidelines were inhibiting their freedom and completely disregarded the saftey protocols. I think that this topic is extremely interesting because at the height of the pandemic, I would criticize the people who wouldn't follow regulations but now I see how they might've viewed it as an attack on the democracy.
I can resonate with Zihan’s experience. I have been through Shanghai’s lockdown. Staying at home for weeks and doing all the COVID testing was a horrible experience. During Zihan’s presentation, he mentioned protests happening in Wulumuqi Street. That’s where I lived, meaning protests were once so close. I could strongly sense people’s desires for freedom and personal rights as government decisions restrict people’s autonomy. Therefore, I see a clear debate between government legislation and people’s free will, making it a meaningful topic to analyze.
I'm from a smaller town, which is generally quite progressive and favored more substantial restrictions due to COVID-19 (a longer lockdown). However, our school district in particular had a sizable resistance element of parents who believed schools should reopen quickly. For this reason, we went back to school in person less than a year after the lockdowns were initiated in the US, around mid-January of 2021, which I believe is far quicker than even other districts in the greater Madison area. I wanted to ask, did, in your experience and knowledge, do the protests that you mentioned have much bearing on the decisions of the government regarding the lockdowns in Shanghai?
One important angle to consider is how lockdowns didn’t affect everyone equally. While some people could work safely from home, others, like essential workers or those in unstable housing, faced much harsher realities. In many ways, lockdowns exposed and even deepened existing inequalities. So when we talk about rights and freedoms the angle about whose freedoms were protected, and whose were sacrificed should be considered as public health measures need to be fair, not just effective.