That’s a bit of an exaggeration. After the Great Wuhan Lockdown ended the city was badly wounded. (I actually thought it would take a decade to recover, it looked so bad.) Fewer than a third of businesses (small or large both) were open. Shopping plazas were death zones. Most restaurants were closed. It was like someone shivved Wuhan straight in a lung.
A combination of factors (including Wuhan’s “FUCK COVID-19!” spirit) brought most of this back. The government held a “conference call” (read: net.delivered speech) that told major employers if they laid off people they would find themselves nationalized. (This I heard from my boss who was in the conference call.) There was also the freeze on all economic activity during the lockdown: no rent to be paid, mortgages were frozen, etc. (This I saw with our own mortgage here.) All of this (and more) worked together to bring the city back from the brink. Relative normalcy started to return by … call it June. (Local) schools opening in Mid-September (a bit late) was another sign of normalcy’s return. But it wasn’t until universities re-opened in early 2021, after Spring Festival, that something approaching full normalcy was restored.
Since then it’s been pretty much life as normal here in Wuhan, aside from a brief period of contact tracing, plus a city district being closed down, for a few weeks in August of 2021 because of a Delta outbreak. (They shut down a district and clamped down contact tracing because of 12 cases.)
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. After the Great Wuhan Lockdown ended the city was badly wounded. (I actually thought it would take a decade to recover, it looked so bad.) Fewer than a third of businesses (small or large both) were open. Shopping plazas were death zones. Most restaurants were closed. It was like someone shivved Wuhan straight in a lung.
A combination of factors (including Wuhan’s “FUCK COVID-19!” spirit) brought most of this back. The government held a “conference call” (read: net.delivered speech) that told major employers if they laid off people they would find themselves nationalized. (This I heard from my boss who was in the conference call.) There was also the freeze on all economic activity during the lockdown: no rent to be paid, mortgages were frozen, etc. (This I saw with our own mortgage here.) All of this (and more) worked together to bring the city back from the brink. Relative normalcy started to return by … call it June. (Local) schools opening in Mid-September (a bit late) was another sign of normalcy’s return. But it wasn’t until universities re-opened in early 2021, after Spring Festival, that something approaching full normalcy was restored.
Since then it’s been pretty much life as normal here in Wuhan, aside from a brief period of contact tracing, plus a city district being closed down, for a few weeks in August of 2021 because of a Delta outbreak. (They shut down a district and clamped down contact tracing because of 12 cases.)