Post-Quarantine Week 2: Start of mass testing and first lockdown

With the rising number of cases in Shanghai, my office went into work-from-home mode on Monday. I had already gone into the office in the morning, and our office manager had ordered a lot of lunch boxes for everyone, so I got to take home some free food. Just for perspective, we went into work-from-home mode because there were 4 symptomatic cases and 34 asymptomatic cases reported in all of Shanghai today.

At first it seemed kind of fun. For lunch on Tuesday, I ordered something I had had my eye on back at the Tianlin Hotel. I was debating whether to order my own delivery, or choose the hotel’s meal service package. I ended up choosing the meal service, but I thought maybe it would have been interesting to try different restaurants. One of these was this peppery beef soup and chive and egg pan-fried buns, which looked so appetizing in the Eleme app.

Well, the soup was way too peppery for me, and was a lot of thick liquid.

And those pan-fried buns were so doughy. I made the mistake to order a couple other things, but they all turned out to be variations of fried dough (in fact the thing on the right is a mess of pure fried dough pieces). So some things are not as good as anticipated, and this made me feel good that I made the right choice to go for my hotel’s meal package, which were always delivered on time, relatively hot, and well-balanced.

Monday evening I had buffalo chicken wings! From a package of middle piece wings - the part that Chinese people love.

And I had salad, topped with leftover fava beans from Suxiaoliu. Salad was one of the things that I wish I had had in quarantine.

On Wednesday, I went to the gym in the morning. This is highly unusual for me! But I was worried about maybe getting locked down later (some people were already getting locked down) and missing out on exercise. Plus, working from home meant I could come home to shower and change, rather than do it in the office, which is a lot less convenient. I noticed people were kind of crowding around the entrance of the community. I hurried past and bought my jianbing 煎饼 before it was too late, and then came back to see what was going on.

Yup, sure enough, we were told that as of March 16, we could come in, but couldn’t go out. And we’d have to stay at home for 48 hours, leaving only to do PCR tests. Well, I was glad I could get my workout in!

I came back inside to eat my jianbing.

After breakfast, a lady came around to tell me I had to do the PCR test, and where to go - she showed me the text message she received on her phone. This lady turned out to be the leader of our building’s entryway 楼长. I asked her, tomorrow do we do the testing at the same time? No idea. This became an ongoing theme - no one has any idea of what, when, or why, only instructions to carry out some order.

The notice said that we should register for our PCR tests in advance in the Health Cloud mini app. But not surprisingly, the system was down because all of Shanghai was trying to register at the same time.

I decided to go after lunch, since I had meetings in the morning. For lunch, I had one of the wontons I had bought uncooked from Suxiaoliu, the ones with fish in them (黄鱼馄饨). I then topped with some greens and leftover bamboo shoots.

I still had my delightful strawberries.

In the afternoon, I went over to the apartment building right over the subway station to do the first test of the two we were supposed to complete in 48 hours.

It was my very first time at a China-style mass testing site. The person in the blue gown on the left is holding what looks like a credit card machine - she used that to scan our QR codes generated in the Health Cloud app. Then she told us where to stand.

We lined up in groups of 10, then the person in the front of the group got a vial, and then we all proceeded to the tents in the middle. There, all 10 of our swabs went in the same vial! This mixed batch testing is used for when they figure everyone is negative, because if the vial is positive, they need to re-test every one of the 10 people.

The next day I reheated these egg frittatas that I made in the muffin tin, along with salad.

I then dutifully went to the testing site, even though it was kind of rainy outside. I got there, and the guard of that apartment building to me that the testing people hadn’t shown up. Huh? I thought we were supposed to get two tests in 48 hours?

(Picture below of flowers, on my walk back to the apartment - Shanghai is just full of flowers in the springtime)

I was going to go to the Xiangyang Park, where I thought there might be testing going on, for our obligatory testing. But I passed by a sign that said, that on account of the weather, the PCR testing for our area was postponed. What?? Wasn’t 2 tests in 48 hours supposed to be the method to clear us from this lockdown? But it’s not important enough to stick to the schedule?

Well, the next morning at around 8:15am, the entryway leader came by and showed me another message on her phone. We were to go to Xiangyang Park to do a PCR test. The testing site here was much more extensive, but empty.

After following the signs to do a loop, you could go to any tent to have your code scanned and get swabbed. Still mixed batch testing here, I think. It was a very quick in and out.

This evening, the gates were padlocked. There was a new notice. We were to stay at home for 48 hours. Now the 48 hours was starting? I thought we had just ended the 48 hours! I calculated though, that this new 48 hours would last until Sunday, so I could return to the office on Monday.

This evening, I had the other serving of wontons from Suxiaoliu.

These had shepherd’s purse and shrimp in them (春荠大虾馄饨).

Well I was told again to do a PCR test. But I thought we were locked down now? No, we could still leave to take PCR tests. There was something also very dehumanizing about this, being herded around and having pre-recorded loudspeaker messages repeated over and over again: maintain 1 meter social distancing, show your PCR test QR code… You can click on the screenshot below to see the video on YouTube.

Once again, it’s that inhuman, slightly dystopian feeling where you’re just doing what you’re told.

After my morning PCR, I had a kind of a brunch, with those egg cups, dragon fruit and mango, and the Frosted Flakes I’d kept all the way from the second-to-last morning at the Residence Inn, when I finally had a look at their breakfast offerings. I was saving this for a treat!

This being a Saturday, I did a baking project. I made corn and millet muffins: 5 with manuka honey, and 7 with cheddar and scallion. They were both really good! The honey one was actually pretty sweet, while the cheddar and scallion was just super indulgent - crispy around the edges and lusciously greasy!

I had the cheddar scallion muffin with a chili I made with TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) and black soybeans, and topped with cheddar.

On Sunday, I made pancakes from my Birch Benders Keto mix (which I had brought over in 2020), and added in goji berries!

For lunch, I wrapped cod in prosciutto and baked them (came out a bit dry), fried up some pea sprouts, and reheated a cheddar-scallion corn muffin.

These reheat beautifully in the toaster, getting crunchy all around the exterior, while the bits of cheese in larger chunks on the inside get melty. This was such a good muffin - I had two of them in fact!

In the afternoon, entryway lady came around to tell me I had to go to another testing site at 3pm to do the testing. So at 3pm, I went downstairs, and then the entryway lady yelled for me to stop and wait for some paperwork. Everyone in the building had gathered around the stairs in this confused state, so finally she said that we could go back to our apartments, and one person said that she would knock on everyone’s doors to when entryway lady had her paperwork to give us, to save entryway lady from having to go up and down the stairs again..

Turns out we were waiting for these papers that were kind of like permission slips to go get our PCR tests!

Today, our testing was at this office building’s courtyard.

They really transformed this into a mass testing site! (A few days later this would all be empty, and I’d be here with my gym crew doing a workout!)

For dinner, I had a pizza with sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, mozzarella, and egg.

And I finished off with yogurt, dragonfruit, and that Nature’s Path grain free granola. It works a lot better like this, than eating it plain as a snack.