2022.07.05上海封锁中的秘密英雄们

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“They are there but you’ll never see their faces”: The secret heroes of Shanghai’s lockdown
For two months, a shadowy network of volunteers delivered necessities to the vulnerable. Then it vanished

Jul 5th 2022

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By Don Weinland

Jeff Lau, an it worker in his mid-30s, lives alone in a large housing complex on the outskirts of Shanghai. In late March, as the west side of the city prepared to go into a four-day lockdown in line with China’s zero-covid policy, he began stocking up on food. A dozen eggs, 36 packs of instant noodles and several bags of apples would be more than enough to get him through the isolation period, he reckoned. Then, suddenly, shop fronts were boarded up. The gates of residential communities were locked. Some were even welded shut. And they weren’t reopened after the announced period of quarantine had elapsed.

Like many of the city’s 25m inhabitants, Lau felt a deep sense of unease. Weeks earlier, the southern manufacturing hub of Shenzhen had been shut down for a week in an attempt to rid it of Omicron, a highly transmissible variant of covid-19. Before that, with little warning or preparation, a cordon sanitaire had been imposed on the entire city of Xi’an in the west of China, lasting for weeks. In Shanghai, health authorities were reporting thousands of cases each day, far more than in previous outbreaks. Locking down a city the size of Shanghai was unprecedented.

Hospitals routinely denied admission to anyone without a recent clear covid test. Some died outside emergency rooms

Within days it became clear that the local government didn’t know how to keep people fed. Lorries loaded with provisions were stuck in traffic jams at the city limits. Videos circulated online of rotting vegetables offered to residents by the government. Message boards on social media filled up with pleas for life-saving drugs. The rich and well-connected generally fared better, though not always. Even some financiers reported problems finding food.

The rules were severe. Most residents were not allowed to set foot outside their flats and the government gave no indication of when the measures might end. The shutdown of Shanghai would carry on by and large for the next two months.

Before the lockdown, Lau had noticed an elderly woman, who lived alone in a neighbouring building, scavenging for bottles in rubbish bins. He worried that she might starve. When he contacted the authorities responsible for his neighbourhood, he was told that there was little he could do unless he joined a state volunteer corps to help distribute food.


He signed up immediately and was given a number of book-keeping tasks. It was hard to see how this work would help those around him. He tried to reach the elderly woman at home to check up on her but a covid case meant that her building was cordoned off. Lau realised that if he was going to support people through the lockdown, he would have to do so outside the government bureaucracy.

One of Lau’s colleagues set up a simple website in a day and a half. Those in urgent need of supplies were able to post requests on the site. People in a position to help would contact the person directly. Helpers might find a box of vegetables or identify a delivery driver with a rare clearance pass that allowed them to be on the road. Volunteers helped ill people find doctors to treat them. The original team who founded the site acted as managers, checking every couple of hours to see that requests were being met.

Data about the users were kept to a minimum, in an effort to keep a low profile. Only basic contact information was available on the site. This was removed as soon as a problem had been addressed. Direct interaction between parties occurred offline. This protocol kept as much activity as possible out of view of the state.

The migrants had been abandoned on a building site and their employer stopped providing them with instant noodles

Lau requested that 1843 magazine use an English name instead of his given name to avoid retribution from officials. As he told his story he often paused mid-sentence to consider exactly how to describe the unfolding of the crisis without sounding pejorative. When pressed on details he sometimes noted that he could not say any more because it would “cross the line”. It has become increasingly risky in China for people to talk disparagingly about officials, especially when speaking with foreign media.

Asmall group of colleagues spread the word among friends. Lau contacted university students and members of a local hip-hop dance troupe. The response was enthusiastic. Within ten days of the start of the lockdown, the website was receiving hundreds of requests, mainly for food, and the number of people willing to help began to swell. Lau worked 12-hour days to stay on top of the influx.


One strength of the network, Lau believes, was the care people took when recruiting other volunteers. Lau knew the small group at the start. But it became standard practice not to reveal secondary contacts. As the chain of connections spread through Shanghai, volunteers maintained strict anonymity beyond their closest colleagues. They also kept online interactions to a minimum, allowing the network to maintain some security in one of the world’s most surveilled metropolises. This meant that people with influence – doctors, professors and mid-tier officials – were willing to sign up and help.


As the team searched in vain for staples such as cabbage and peanut oil, it became clear that the distribution of resources was severely unequal. Lau eventually identified a shop in his district that had access to more fresh vegetables and meat than others. “They had some kind of back-channel,” he says. This was a common phenomenon during the lockdown: many residential communities were bereft of food; others seemed to have it in abundance.

By mid-April, the crisis had intensified and the network was making life-or-death decisions. A group of 16 workers who lived in a single, small flat posted a request for food. (Such cramped living conditions are common in Shanghai for migrants or workers in the gig economy who can’t afford the high rents.) Many of them had gone hungry for days. Local authorities would typically provide a flat with a single parcel of food, roughly the size of a standard suitcase, regardless of how many people lived there. Lau’s network was able to get the workers more necessities.

A couple in their 80s were both suffering from cancer: one of them had four days’ supply left, the other six

The scarcity of medicine soon became even more pressing than that of food. Psychiatric drugs and those for cancer and other life-threatening diseases were in high demand. Shanghai has some of the best hospitals in China but in the worst days of the lockdown many of the chronically ill were not allowed to leave their compounds. Even when people managed to get out, hospitals routinely denied admission to anyone who didn’t have a recent clear covid test. Some died outside emergency rooms.

There were pleas for food and medical treatment across the city, both on Lau’s site and more widely on social media. One man in Shanghai’s Minhang district wrote on a public message board that his father, who was suffering from late-stage sinus cancer, had made an appointment at a clinic to receive specialised treatment. “He needs targeted therapy but the residential committee says there’s no way to work this out.” The old man was forbidden from leaving his compound because he couldn’t get his covid-test results in time. He begged for a solution. “The cancer is developing rapidly…Please help!!!”.

The prolonged closure of a city, with millions of people secluded in their homes, breaks the bonds of human connection. Experience is no longer collective. Only the authorities are in a position to formulate an overarching narrative. The one presented by China’s Communist Party describes competent officials, orderly services and the generosity of the state. Few outside the system have been able to see at first hand the turmoil that took place. As Lau and his team fielded pleas for help, they caught glimpses of failures that the government tried to keep hidden.


There were repeated instances of corporate callousness. At one point a request came in from a dozen construction workers, migrants who had been abandoned on a building site that was no more than an empty lot. Lockdown was imposed as they were erecting for themselves a small temporary shelter with a plastic roof. The group remained prisoners on the site, unable to leave even in search of food. Their employer stopped providing them with instant noodles but Lau’s couriers kept them going.

As the lockdown dragged on into May, videos of suicidal residents began to circulate on social media. A number of videos, shot on mobile phones, showed people clinging to their balconies, poised to jump, as they shouted unintelligibly to the uncaring world. Many of these scenes ended with a jump and an audible thud, followed by screams that echoed around the tower blocks.

A couple in their 80s, both suffering from cancer, posted a request on Lau’s network for palliative drugs. One of them had four days’ supply left, the other, six. Without the medicine they would suffer excruciating pain. They told Lau that they were prepared to climb to the rooftop and jump to their deaths if they couldn’t get the pills. With some trouble the network found doses for them. But when the time came for delivery, authorities told the volunteers to stop meddling. Whatever Lau knows of this couple’s fate, he is not willing to say.

As the lockdown dragged on, videos of suicidal residents began to circulate on social media

Lau himself attracted attention from those in power. He received phone calls from the police and other civic bodies, who told him that his website was illegal and asked him to shut it down. The website began receiving frequent distributed-denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers send torrents of internet traffic from many different sources to overwhelm the site. Lau won’t speculate who was behind the attacks. They weren’t particularly damaging, but Lau started to spend more on cybersecurity. He reckons that people with financial and political resources, hidden deep within the network, helped keep the site from being closed down by authorities. “They are there but you’ll never see their faces,” he says.


As the lockdown was eased in early June, traffic returned to Shanghai’s streets. Shops and restaurants cautiously reopened. Lau’s network, no longer needed, quickly disbanded. Digital records were deleted. The website now bears only a note thanking participants.

Lau is cheerful and energetic as he describes his work. The network grew to more than 1,000 volunteers and delivered more than 6,000 parcels during the 55 days it operated. It assisted more than 1,600 elderly and ill people. He has not seen the woman he originally set out to help, who was rooting through the bins, though he has heard that she survived the crisis.

But his attitude towards his city has changed. “We’ve been hurt so much here,” he says of Shanghai. “We don’t know what’s next.” He is planning his own escape from China. Xi Jinping, China’s president, has said that the Communist Party’s “dynamic zero-covid” policy will remain in effect until “final victory” is achieved. The next time Shanghai goes into lockdown, one of the city’s anonymous heroes may no longer be around to help.■

Don Weinland is China business and finance editor at The Economist

illustrations: klaus kremmerz



"他们在那里，但你永远不会看到他们的脸"。上海封锁中的秘密英雄们
两个月来，一个由志愿者组成的阴暗网络向弱势群体提供必需品。然后它消失了

2022年7月5日


唐-韦恩兰报道

刘杰夫(Jeff Lau)是一名30多岁的IT工作者，独自住在上海郊区的一个大型住宅区。3月下旬，当城市西区准备根据中国的零污染政策进入为期四天的封锁状态时，他开始囤积食物。他估计，一打鸡蛋、36包方便面和几袋苹果将足以让他度过隔离期。然后，突然间，商店的门面被封了起来。居民区的大门被锁上了。有些甚至被焊死了。而且，在宣布的隔离期过后，它们也没有重新开放。

像该市2500万居民中的许多人一样，刘晓明感到一种深深的不安。几周前，深圳南部的制造业中心被关闭了一周，试图摆脱Omicron，一种高度传播的covid-19变体。在此之前，在没有任何警告或准备的情况下，中国西部的整个西安市被强行封锁，持续了数周。在上海，卫生当局每天报告数以千计的病例，远远多于以前的爆发。封锁像上海这样大的城市是史无前例的。

医院通常拒绝接纳任何最近没有明确的病毒测试的人。一些人死在急诊室外

几天之内，很明显，当地政府不知道如何让人们吃饱。满载物资的卡车被堵在城市边界的交通堵塞中。网上流传着政府提供给居民的蔬菜腐烂的视频。社交媒体上的留言板充斥着对救命药物的请求。富人和有关系的人的情况一般较好，尽管并不总是如此。甚至一些金融家也报告说找不到食物。

规则很严格。大多数居民不被允许踏出他们的公寓，政府没有说明这些措施何时会结束。在接下来的两个月里，上海的封锁基本上会持续下去。

在封锁之前，刘先生注意到一位独居在邻楼的老太太在垃圾桶里捡瓶子。他担心她会饿死。当他与负责他所在社区的当局联系时，他被告知，除非他加入一个国家志愿者团队，帮助分发食物，否则他几乎无能为力。


他立即报了名，并被安排了一些记账的工作。他很难看出这项工作对他周围的人有什么帮助。他试图联系家中的老妇人，以了解她的情况，但一起贪污案意味着她的大楼被封锁了。刘意识到，如果他要支持人们度过封锁期，他就必须在政府官僚机构之外这样做。

刘的一位同事在一天半内建立了一个简单的网站。那些急需物资的人可以在网站上发布请求。有能力提供帮助的人将直接与该人联系。帮助者可能会找到一箱蔬菜，或者找到一个拥有罕见的通行证的送货司机，让他们可以上路。志愿者们帮助生病的人找到医生来治疗他们。创建该网站的原始团队充当管理者，每隔几个小时检查一次，以确保请求得到满足。

为了保持低调，关于用户的数据被保留到最低限度。网站上只有基本的联系信息。一旦问题得到解决，这些信息就会被删除。各方之间的直接互动发生在离线状态。这一协议使尽可能多的活动不被国家看到。

这些移民被遗弃在一个建筑工地上，他们的雇主停止向他们提供方便面。

Lau要求《1843》杂志使用一个英文名字而不是他的名字，以避免官员的报复。当他讲述自己的故事时，他经常在说到一半时停顿下来，考虑如何准确地描述危机的发展，而不至于听起来有贬义。当被问及细节时，他有时会指出，他不能说更多，因为这会 "越界"。在中国，人们贬低官员已经变得越来越危险，特别是在与外国媒体交谈时。

一小群同事在朋友中传播这个消息。刘晓明联系了大学生和当地一个嘻哈舞蹈团的成员。反应很热烈。在封锁开始后的十天内，网站收到了数以百计的请求，主要是关于食物的请求，愿意提供帮助的人数开始激增。刘晓明每天工作12小时，以应付大量涌入的人群。


刘认为，这个网络的一个优势是人们在招募其他志愿者时的谨慎。刘在一开始就认识这个小团体。但不透露次要联系人成为标准做法。随着关系链在上海的传播，志愿者们在最亲密的同事之外保持了严格的匿名性。他们还将网上互动保持在最低限度，使网络在世界上监控最严密的大都市之一保持一定的安全性。这意味着有影响力的人--医生、教授和中层官员--都愿意报名参加并提供帮助。


当团队徒劳地寻找卷心菜和花生油等主食时，很明显，资源的分配是严重不平等的。Lau最终确定了他所在地区的一家商店，该商店比其他商店能获得更多的新鲜蔬菜和肉类。"他说："他们有某种背后的渠道。这是封锁期间的一个普遍现象：许多居民社区没有食物；而其他社区似乎有大量的食物。

到4月中旬，危机已经加剧，网络正在做出生死攸关的决定。一群住在一个小公寓里的16名工人张贴了一份食物请求。（这种狭窄的居住条件在上海很常见，对于那些无法负担高额租金的移民或打工者来说。） 他们中的许多人已经饿了好几天了。地方政府通常会给一个公寓提供一个食品包裹，大约有一个标准行李箱那么大，不管有多少人住在那里。刘的网络能够为工人们提供更多必需品。

一对80多岁的夫妇都患有癌症：其中一个人只剩下4天的供应量，另一个人剩下6天。

药品的匮乏很快就变得比食物更紧迫。精神病药物以及治疗癌症和其他危及生命的疾病的药物需求量很大。上海有一些中国最好的医院，但在封锁的最糟糕的日子里，许多慢性病患者不被允许离开他们的院子。即使人们设法离开，医院也经常拒绝任何最近没有明确的病毒检测的人入院。一些人死在急诊室外。

全市各地都有关于食物和医疗的请求，在刘的网站和更广泛的社交媒体上都有。上海闵行区的一名男子在一个公共留言板上写道，他的父亲患有晚期鼻窦癌，已经在一家诊所预约接受专业治疗。"他需要有针对性的治疗，但居委会说没有办法解决这个问题。" 这位老人被禁止离开他的院子，因为他不能及时得到他的covid测试结果。他恳求得到一个解决方案。"癌症正在迅速发展......请帮助！！"。

一个城市的长期封闭，数百万人被隔离在家中，打破了人类联系的纽带。经验不再是集体的了。只有当局能够制定一个总体性的叙述。中国共产党提出的说法是：有能力的官员、有秩序的服务和国家的慷慨。很少有体制外的人能够亲眼看到所发生的动荡。当刘晓明和他的团队在现场寻求帮助时，他们瞥见了政府试图掩盖的失败。


屡次出现企业冷漠无情的情况。有一次，十几个建筑工人提出请求，他们是被遗弃在一个建筑工地上的移民，这个工地不过是一块空地。当他们为自己搭建一个带有塑料屋顶的小型临时住所时，他们被封锁了。这群人仍然是工地上的囚犯，甚至无法离开去寻找食物。他们的雇主停止向他们提供方便面，但刘的快递员让他们继续工作。

随着封锁时间拖到五月，居民自杀的视频开始在社交媒体上流传。一些用手机拍摄的视频显示，人们紧紧抓住自己的阳台，准备跳楼，同时对这个无情的世界发出难以理解的呼喊。其中许多场景以跳楼和可听到的砰砰声结束，随后尖叫声在塔楼周围回荡。

一对80多岁的夫妇，都患有癌症，在刘的网络上发布了一个请求，要求提供缓和药物。他们中的一个人只剩下四天的供应量，另一个人则是六天。如果没有这些药物，他们将遭受极大的痛苦。他们告诉Lau，如果得不到药，他们准备爬上屋顶，跳楼自杀。经过一番努力，网络为他们找到了药片。但是，当交货的时候，当局告诉志愿者们不要再插手了。无论刘晓明对这对夫妇的命运了解多少，他都不愿意说。

随着封锁时间的拖长，居民自杀的视频开始在社交媒体上流传

刘墉自己也引起了当权者的注意。他接到了来自警方和其他公民机构的电话，他们告诉他，他的网站是非法的，要求他关闭。该网站开始频繁收到分布式拒绝服务攻击，黑客从许多不同的来源发送互联网流量洪流，使网站不堪重负。刘易斯不会猜测谁是这些攻击的幕后黑手。这些攻击并没有特别大的破坏性，但Lau开始在网络安全方面花费更多。他估计，隐藏在网络深处的拥有财政和政治资源的人，帮助使该网站不被当局关闭。"他说："他们就在那里，但你永远不会看到他们的脸。


随着6月初封锁的放松，上海的街道上恢复了交通。商店和餐馆谨慎地重新开张。刘的网络不再需要了，很快就解散了。数字记录被删除。网站现在只有一条感谢参与者的说明。

在描述他的工作时，Lau表现得很开朗，精力充沛。该网络发展到1000多名志愿者，并在其运作的55天内交付了6000多个包裹。它帮助了1,600多名老人和病人。他没有看到他最初要帮助的那个在垃圾桶里翻找的女人，尽管他听说她在危机中幸存下来。

但他对自己城市的态度已经改变。"他在谈到上海时说："我们在这里受到了很大的伤害。"我们不知道接下来会发生什么。" 他正在计划自己逃离中国。中国国家主席习近平说，共产党的 "动态零容忍 "政策将继续有效，直到取得 "最终胜利"。下一次上海进入封锁状态时，这个城市的一个无名英雄可能不再在身边帮忙。

Don Weinland是《经济学人》杂志的中国商业和金融编辑。

插图：Klaus Kremmerz