Life, work springing back to normal in Songjiang
The Songjiang District Administrative Service Center reopens.
A sanitation worker disinfects a tram car.
With Shanghai lifting its citywide COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on June 1, residents of Songjiang started their outdoor activities while paying attention to personal protection.
Traffic and human flow became dense through the gate of He Jing Tian Yue residential area of the Songjiang's Guangfulin Subdistrict. Residents went out for work and construction workers returned to the neighborhood to resume their work. Property management staff set up a desk and sent them each a cup of free warm soybean milk.
Around the entrance of the suburban district's Zhaoshang Wet Market, residents queued up, maintaining a distance of 2 meters from each other. They scanned the venue code and registered through the digital sentinel, an all-in-one machine for health code scanning, ID verification and temperature check, before entering the market. Some of them went shopping for fresh meat to make zongzi, glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves for the Dragon Boat Festival holiday.
"It's our first day of operation since the lockdown was lifted, and above 80 percent of vendors have resumed work," said Chen Hongqiang, chief of the wet market. "We disinfect the market twice a day and provide the venue code and the digital sentinel for pandemic prevention."
At You Mi Restaurant in Pujiang River Source Scenic Spot of the district's Shihudang Town, a dozen workers returned early in the morning. The chefs were cooking a pot of bean curd soup and some workers were making zongzi, which they intended to send to the village's elders as a Dragon Boat Festival gift. As the number of tourists grows, the restaurant is becoming busy like before.
"As the restaurant still doesn't offer dining-in service, customers can order food through our WeChat applet. The restaurant is thinking about developing more dishes," said Chen Jian, general manager of Shanghai Sierteng Nanxiaojiang Catering Management Co to which the restaurant is affiliated.
At a traffic monitoring center of the Songjiang Public Security Bureau, Wu Chenwei, a public security officer, was supervising traffic flow.
"Traffic peak in the morning occurred at around 8am," said Wu. "Traffic flow has returned to 50 percent of normal in downtown Songjiang today."
While neighborhoods and scenic spots are returning to normal, industrial parks and companies are also functioning vigorously.
Tian Ye, a Shanghai resident who lives in Putuo District and works in Lingang Songjiang Science and Technology City, resumed work at Prismlab on June 1.
"Everything about the company is back to normal," according to Tian, who had been working from home since April.
"Supported by the industrial park and district officials, we've resumed work for 41 days. Our performance in May rose by 30 percent year-on-year," said Hou Feng, chairman of Prismlab.
The majority of the more than 2,000 companies and about 20,000 workers of Lingang Songjiang Science and Technology City have resumed work so far.
Some small- and medium-sized companies are on track of regaining normalcy, too.
At Shanghai Aike Gas Measuring and Controlling Equipment Co, technicians were restarting precision machining equipment.
"All staff members have resumed work and our sales channels and logistics have returned to normalcy," said Zhao Zhuoshi, general manager of Aike.
People shop at a local wet market.
