A Shanghai lockdown nightmare
An elderly man declared dead
Until the body bag starts moving
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
Just when you thought the Shanghai Covid lockdown couldn’t get any crazier, this happened.
Workers at a Shanghai nursing home were about to take a dead body to a funeral home, only
to discover that…he’s not so dead.
He’s alive!
Did you see that?
He’s alive!
Don’t cover him up again!
Well that is some real nightmare fuel.
Especially when you consider that most people in China are cremated.
There’s another video of this that seems to be taken by people in an apartment across
the street.
Here’s the “oh crap, what do we do now” moment.
And then they wheel the not actually dead guy back into the nursing home, while he appears
to be still zipped up in the body bag.
Now I saw this video over the weekend, but didn’t repost it at first because I wasn’t
sure if it was real.
But it’s been confirmed.
“The district government responded to the incident on Monday, saying in a statement
the elderly man was now in a stable condition.”
I hope he has no idea what almost happened to him.
But don’t worry, because the important thing is that people are being punished for this.
“Three officials have been removed from the district's civil affairs bureau and social
development office, and the head of the nursing home has also been removed.”
I don’t know what the social development office has to do with this, but sure.
A doctor also had his license revoked and is under investigation.
At least that makes more sense?
But here’s the best part of a terrible story.
“The funeral home reportedly praised its employees for noticing the person was still
alive, and rewarded them with 5,000 yuan [750 dollars] each.”
Good job, funeral home employees, for noticing the dead guy was still moving!
Here’s a bonus.
So there’s been some mismanagement of the Shanghai lockdown.
And people have been getting fed up.
Some people have been banging pots and pans in protest.
These were being posted on WeChat last week to encourage people to protest.
To get around censorship, they were disguised as messages about attending concerts.
People are upset because they haven’t been getting enough government resources.
But the Shanghai authorities know how to solve that problem: blame the protest on foreign
forces.
Attention residents, attention residents, according to the relevant departments, foreign
forces are inciting Chinese residents to protest the pandemic control work by organizing a
so-called ‘banging pots music festival’.
This is a conspiracy started by foreign forces.”
Yes, foreign forces are telling Chinese people to bang their pans together.
How insidious.
I’m not sure the Chinese regime is going to be able to blame every protest on foreign
forces, though.
Like this one that happened on the night of May 1st.
The people have no food to eat.
They think it’s unjust.
They’ve been locked down for 45 days.
Many people don’t have food to eat, now they’re out here rebelling.
How is the Party managing things?
This is happening in Jiwang, Shanghai.
If they don’t handle this, it’s going to turn into a riot.
I think it’s fair to say that things aren’t going great right now in Shanghai.
But Shanghai authorities are about to turn things around.
I’ll tell you how after the break.
Welcome back.
Great news for Shanghai!
After a four-day lockdown that lasted well over a month, Shanghai finally reached zero
Covid over the weekend.
And by zero Covid, I of course mean zero Covid cases outside quarantined areas.
That’s how the Chinese Communist Party is now defining zero Covid, since they can’t
actually reach zero Covid.
They’re calling it “zero Covid at the community level.”
You’ve got to hand it to the Communist Party.
They’re really good at changing definitions to make it sound like they’ve won.
Imagine if you could do the same.
“Honey, I’ve reached zero dirty dishes at the dining room level.
They’ve all been moved into the kitchen to quarantine for two weeks.
You’re welcome.”
What “zero Covid on a community level” really means is anyone who tests positive
will be immediately hauled away to a quarantine camp.
Even if they have to break down your door to do it.
That was part of a viral video circulating on Chinese social media this week.
Police broke down the door and took a woman away to a quarantine camp.
She was resisting because she was waiting for the results of a second PCR test.
The police told her they were allowed to take her anyway, and also threatened her for recording
them.
Police: Don’t record video with your phone and then edit it
Women: We’re not.
We’re recording everything.
Police: If an edited video gets online and creates problems, you’ll face consequences
After she was put in the quarantine camp, she tested negative.
We’ve shown you some of the tough conditions in the quarantine camps before.
But Reuters recently interviewed a Shanghai resident named Kumi Wu who was transferred
to three different quarantine camps.
In one particularly dirty facility, she had to re-use bedding that had already been used
by people who had been moved out of the camp.
“I asked an uncle where his quilt came from and the uncle told me to go to another room
to find a bunch of quilts that were used by people who had been moved elsewhere.
He said 'you can go and see which quilt is clean but now there’s nothing we can do,
no one cares about us'.”
That sounds like a great way to keep spreading Covid.
But hey, these people are already in quarantine, so it doesn’t matter!
Thanks to the quarantining, six districts in Shanghai officially reached “zero Covid,”
which meant that people could finally go outside!
Theoretically.
Despite the drop in infections, more fences were erected at some residential blocks in
Shanghai on Monday.
Footage filmed by Reuters also showed streets largely devoid of pedestrians and traffic.
Like many things in China, the reality on the ground is different depending on where
you are.
Some apartment complexes let people go outside their apartments, but they weren’t allowed
to leave the complex.
Others gave people passes to go outside the complex, but only one person per household
could go outside for four hours at a time, every other day.
And they made good use of that time.
Here’s footage of people lining up around the block for…Sam’s Club.
Hold on, doesn’t Shanghai have a Costco?
I thought they were supposed to be better than this!
But enjoy Sam’s Club while you can, everyone, because authorities reported 58 new cases
outside quarantine again on Monday.
Which means the lockdown isn’t over yet.
Hold on, I have a great idea on how to end the lockdown for good.
Move everyone from Shanghai into quarantine camps!
All 25 million of them!
Even if they’re testing negative for Covid.
Because every negative case is a potential positive case .
And the good news is, once everyone in Shanghai is in a quarantine camp, then they can lift
the lockdown.
Everyone who’s not in a camp can go outside again, and the Chinese Communist Party can
declare victory!
Ok, sure, that means no one is allowed to go outside, since everyone is in quarantine,
but the important part is the Communist Party wins!
Obviously that’s a joke, because it’s too ridiculous even for—what’s that, Shelley?
Chinese authorities are sending people who test negative to quarantine camps.
Because the police told them there were too many positive cases in their compound.
“The virus-negative group were sent to a quarantine site containing hundreds of single-room
prefab cabins in neighboring Anhui province, [250 miles] away.”
According to AFP, this has happened in multiple housing compounds.
People who don’t have Covid are being moved to other provinces.
That’s…brilliant!
If there aren’t any people in Shanghai, then there’s no Covid in Shanghai.
Thanks, CCP.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from a member of the China Uncensored 50-cent
army: a fan of the show who supports us on the crowdfunding website Patreon, or our exclusive
social media community on Locals.
Biglake asks on Locals: “are lockdowns political or is there really a medical emergency in
China?”
Well Biglake, lockdowns are absolutely political.
From the beginning, the pandemic has been political for the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s been using the pandemic to push its own propaganda about how the Communist Party
is handling Covid better than any other country in the world.
And especially better than America.
They’ve put a lot of their political legitimacy on the line.
And the Zero Covid policy comes from Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself.
Because Xi is trying to cement his rule over the Party this year, he can’t admit any
weakness.
And he can’t afford a large Covid outbreak in China, even if it’s the milder Omicron
variant.
His political rivals in the Jiang Zemin faction would use it to take him down.
So the Chinese regime is not going to stop the lockdowns.
And it’s going to use its propaganda to convince people that China’s lockdowns are
for the best.
Like this article about how China's dynamic zero-COVID policy benefits the world.
Yes, China is sparing no efforts in “safeguarding people’s lives and well-being.”
By locking people up in their apartments without enough food or in quarantine camps with used
blankets.
A lot of people fell for this propaganda back in 2020.
But I don’t think they’re going to fall for it this time.
But what do I know, I’m just a hostile foreign force.
Thanks for your question, Biglake.
And for being a member of the China Uncensored community on Locals.
If you haven’t joined us on Locals yet, come check it out for exclusive content like
livestreams, and perks like me answering one of your questions at the end of each episode.
Learn more at chinauncensored.locals.com.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.