The Neighborhood Watch Group

Anna, from Russia, moved to China eight years ago. She says the lockdown was "surreal in a way," because she lives with an illusion of having basic human rights. The neighborhood committee is doing their jobs 'in the only way they were taught to do it,' Anna adds.

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Episode notes

This week on Sinica, we proudly present Episode 1 of the newest season of Strangers in China: Lockdown Part 1: A day in the life.

The 2022 Shanghai lockdown came to Clay’s neighborhood early and caught him off-guard. Struggling with his mental health, Clay documents how lockdown works on a granular level giving listeners an audio tour of his neighborhood as it plunges into the uncertainty of all the minutiae of day-to-day life living under the control of the apparatuses that shut down an entire city for several months. The boredom, the stress, the terror. He documents clashes with local bureaucracy and the ingenuity of the people of Shanghai who had to live through these dark and strange times. Clay ventures out into a city as it’s about to enter the full city lockdown and gives listeners a sense of what a city looks like before it's irrevocably changed.

Music credits:

Csus

https://soundcloud.com/csus

Moss Heim-

https://soundcloud.com/mossheim-experimental/cutup-test-cycle-7000

Trey

https://soundcloud.com/tristan-phipps-1/trance

Jaies

https://soundcloud.com/jaiess

Bary

https://soundcloud.com/bary_is_cool

Ginger pitcher