Milk of human kindness seeing city through tough time
"Wait, here's your milk," a security guard called to me from outside the front gate of our residential community in suburban Shanghai on a drizzling morning on Friday.
I turned around and found she was running to catch up with me, a big waterproof food delivery bag in her hands.
"Thanks!" I said. "It's so nice of you."
"The community courier delivered it to the security guard office at dawn," she said, smiling.
"Oh really? I didn't expect it," I said.
Local milk delivery service was suspended without notice on Thursday, the first day our neighborhood was put under a two-day lockdown as part of the citywide "grid screening" to sift out possible COVID-19 carriers. I did not bother to call the courier for a check, because I trusted him and thought he might also be under quarantine.
I went to the front gate to actually fetch vegetables ordered from a local food delivery platform. Because of the quarantine, all ordered food had to be put outside the gate. The security guard patiently rummaged through piles of food bags while I stood inside the gate. She eventually found my stuff ― three heavy bags of vegetables ― and gave them to me. The moment I was ready to leave, she found my milk bag ― something beyond my expectation.
Back home, I opened the milk bag and found that our community courier had neatly packaged Thursday's and Friday's orders together. What a pleasant surprise! Instantly I felt my understanding of and trust in the courier well-requited.
It was this kind of mutual trust and understanding that has helped people go through rounds of quarantine in a calm and civilized way.
For two days in a row, nearly 1,000 residents in our neighborhood queued up for nucleic acid tests on time and, despite a considerable waiting time, people politely kept a one-meter distance from each other. I shot a short video of my neighbors patiently waiting in the rain, and it went viral thanks to many friends who shared it.
Residents in our neighborhood in suburban Shanghai keep a one-meter distance from each other in a line for nucleic acid testing on Thursday.
Shanghai Observer, a leading news portal in Shanghai, published a commentary a few days ago, calling for a hats-off salute to citizens for their "silent" contributions.
It wrote: "The citizens of Shanghai are adorable because they treat the health of their own and others seriously; they are respectable because they act from the greater good of society."
To this I would add: Everyone is adorable and respectable because we understand and trust each other. We trust not only our couriers and security guards, but also myriad dabai ― doctors, nurses and volunteers in white protective suits ― who work around the clock in order to nip the virus in the bud. Many dabai even slept on roadsides so as to answer any emergency call.
Unlike previous rounds of outbreaks in the city, in which there were clear, linear clues about who had infected whom, this current round, which began earlier this month, features sporadic spreading without a single clear source.
A citywide lockdown might be the "easiest" thing to do, but Shanghai has chosen a more difficult way: large-scale "grid screening" on a gradual and graded base.
Why? Shanghai, as the world's largest container port and China's leading international airport, simply cannot afford a complete lockdown. It's not just about Shanghai itself; it's about the country and the world as well.
Yicai, a major business news portal, reported on Wednesday that the suspension of one international flight may well cause a production line in nearby Suzhou City to ground to a halt.
In such a difficult time, Shanghai citizens have demonstrated a strong sense of calmness and a high spirit of cooperation, because we know we must fight as one, and because we know we can count for our health and life on so many dabai and other fellow citizens, who go all out to care for us ― more in deeds than in words.
