In response to the recent COVID-19 surge in China, the regime has locked down mega city Shenzhen, Jilin Province, and Dongguan city, Guandong Province, and put travel restrictions on many places. Under the extreme pandemic controls, China’s citizens shared their plight with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times.
In the past few days, the number of COVID-19 cases in Beijing has continued to rise. On March 16, Beijing authorities once again issued travel restrictions banning people from risk areas entering Beijing. Several young women, who live in Yanjiao and travel to and from Beijing every day for work, were trapped on the bridge between Beijing and Yanjiao on the way home, as both cities suddenly implemented travel restrictions. They had to stay on the bridge overnight in the freezing cold and no help from authorities.
“Energy Girl YMC” posted on mainland Chinese social media Weibo, “At 2:23 a.m. on March 16, if I hadn’t experienced it myself, it would have been hard to believe that such a thing really existed. Because of Yanjiao’s ‘epidemic prevention policy’ banning entry, we are not allowed to enter Yanjiao. I want to return to Beijing, but people from Yanjiao are not allowed to enter Beijing. So I’m trapped on the bridge between Beijing and Yanjiao. There are several other girls there who have been trapped for more than 6 hours.”
At 7:59 a.m., she called 110 (emergency number in China) again and asked, “If no one cares about this matter, am I going to freeze to death on the bridge?”
She wrote in the post: “Now it is not a pandemic prevention issue, but a problem of people’s livelihood. I will not be able to live now.”
The post attracted the attention of a large number of netizens, but was subsequently banned from reposting and commenting, and was later deleted. At present, her Weibo account has been cleared.
Another netizen who commutes every day between Suzhou and Wuxi in China’s eastern province Jiangsu encountered a similar situation. On March 15, the netizen “Miayooo__” posted, “I got on the expressway from Suzhou without any inspections or notice. Then when I tried to get off the expressway in Wuxi, I was told that I would need a 48-hour nucleic acid test result, otherwise I would have to go back the same way. Then I called Suzhou, they told me to get off the expressway there also needs a 48-hour nucleic acid test certificate otherwise I cannot get off either.”
The netizen said that he called related governmental departments and they all shirked any responsibility, and that he was stuck on the expressway in his car all that time. Finally, someone posted in the comment section telling him an exit of the expressway which doesn’t require nucleic acid test certificate, and so the netizen could get off.
Since March 14, Jilin Province that has had 24 million people under lockdown. Many people say they cannot get their medicines when they need it.
Zhang Xiaoli (pseudonym), a villager in Qinjiatun Town of Siping City, Jilin Province, suffers from depression and needs to take medication daily. Recently, her medicine ran out, but because of the lockdown, she couldn’t get the pills, which made her very anxious.
She said that without the medicine, she would relapse. So, she contacted the town government for help and was told, “we can do nothing about it. There are many people in the town who need to take medicine and are running out, and they are all hanging in there.”
On March 13, Shenzhen announced a seven-day lockdown. All residential communities were closed. Due to the sudden escalation of prevention and control, some takeaway delivery riders are forced to sleep on the streets and cannot return to their homes, even when they have official entry and exit documents.
Liu Fei (pseudonym), a delivery person from Daxin New Village, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, told The Epoch Times on March 17, “The village was closed without notice, and the gate of the village was blocked, and then all of us couldn’t get out.” The villagers are only allowed in, but are not allowed to go out again. The delivery riders who live in the village either stay outside the village so they can still do deliveries, or go back home and stay in.
Many of them and their families depend on the income from the delivery work. In order to continue to work, the riders have to sleep on the streets. “There is a saying in Shenzhen that people are not afraid of the pandemic, but are afraid of not having a job,” Liu said.
