On the 51st day back in Shanghai, I finally experienced the lockdown, within my neighborhood. There is no way to pass through these med people, aka DaBai, so I stay at home, looking out the window at the hazy rain and fog, and involuntarily reciting the poem - liberty and love, these two I must have, etc.
I don’t know when I became the type of people I once disdained the most: these who are keen to comment on politics and ideology on the internet, aka keyboard politicians. If I had to look into it, it might have started in March or April this year, when I was in the UK, while at the same time Shanghai was experiencing a lockdown. I didn’t feel it physically, but I was always with my homeland mentally. I woke up every day to look at the articles my WeChat connections shared but failed to read the original text; to read the gossip spread in group chats; to look at the comments of Chinese bloggers on Twitter; to put myself in the shoes of my family and friends at home and compare them with my life in the UK; and it was always time for lunch after the routine.
Too many days like this, and when I talk to friends about topics such as covid policy, freedom and democracy, I inevitably output negative ideas. Not only that, but when I browse over so-called “little pink” comments in the forum, I occasionally reply with half refutation and half mockery. Sometimes I get mocked back, or counter-mocked. This is when I feel bad for their ignorance, close the app, tell myself that I do not have spare time to argue with them.
I have, somehow, discovered that a prerequisite for becoming a Keyboard Politician is having a lot of spare time. While I was excited to be involved in the Urumqi movement, some of my classmates and friends were busy with work and some with school, and only a handful of them were really interested. The active ones were all as idle and carefree as I was, sort of graduating and not quite graduating, sort of working and not quite working.
I believe that most people can only see life as it is right now and don’t have a broader perspective on the situation of the nation or even the future of humanity. But in reality what really matters to people is still what they will eat for dinner and what they will do tomorrow. Last month I was in a small town in Zhejiang, where most of the people were middle-aged or elderly. No one was wearing masks, no one was protesting or chanting, and life was as peaceful as it was before the epidemic. People are content with the moment as this is the way they’ve always lived.
It doesn’t really matter how many Xinjiang people are actually having their mobile phones censored, how many university students are being forcibly transferred and quarantined, how IP privacy on Chinese social media is being exposed, or how sensitive topics or even words are being banned, as long as one is not worried about food and clothing, one can still dance in the evening, one can hang out with friends on holidays, and one can watch followed TV shows and series. It is only when one’s life has suffered a real loss, a loss that is intolerable, and when one cannot build empathies with the call of the state, that one becomes discontented and speaks out, even though the voice is huge likely to be unseen on the Chinese censored Internet.
The idle are fighting for their rights, the live-life-to-the-fullest are paralysed with anxiety. No one will always be idle, but there will always be idle people.
— Dec 3, 2022