34 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST17, 2020
stimulus policies remained modest: in-
stead of offering American-style cash
payments to many citizens, the Chinese
government preferred to give entre-
preneurs some space to figure out their
own solutions. In Chengdu, city offi-
cials allowed venders to set up stalls on
the streets. Such venders were common
in the nineties, before campaigns were
launched to make the city more orderly.
Now the stalls reappeared all at once,
and the evening crowds in my neigh-
borhood reminded me of how Chengdu
felt more than twenty years ago.
Many venders told me that they had
been laid off from low-level jobs in fac-
tories and other businesses. But even
people with stable work often found
their salaries reduced. In May, when I
flew to Hangzhou, an Air China flight
attendant explained that she and her
colleagues were paid according to flight
hours, and that she now received the
minimum—a quarter of her normal sal-
ary. For pilots, the reduction could be
even more severe: one man who flew for
Hainan Airlines told me that for two
months he received less than ten per
cent of his usual wage. I had many such
conversations, but people usually said
they were fine, because they had savings.
They also had low expectations with
regard to stability. The Chinese middle
class was still too new to feel compla-
cent, which was one reason they put
away so much cash. And they were ac-
customed to sudden shifts in policy or
circumstance. In Hebei Province, a stu-
dent named Cathy profiled an entre-
preneur who owned a small business
that originally distributed liquor. Chen,
the entrepreneur, had seen his sales
plummet after 2012, when the Party
banned using public funds for banquets
and other entertainment, as part of a
nationwide anti-corruption campaign.
In response, Chen switched to a less
corruptible substance: milk. He success-
fully redefined himself as a milk dis-
tributor, but then, when the coronavirus
arrived, everything collapsed again. Chen
embarked on two months of ten-hour
days riding along with his delivery crews,
talking to the owner of every store on
his route. He developed a series of clever
promotions that, by the beginning of
May, had increased his sales to their
highest level ever. “In fact, I’m very grate-ful to the epidemic,” he told Cathy. “If
not for that, I probably never would
have gone to the shops with the sales-
men again.” Throughout everything, he
hadn’t changed his company’s name—
it still contained the word “liquor.” Cathy
asked if this was a problem for a guy
who distributes milk. “They don’t look
at your name,” Chen said. “They look
at the things you do.”W
hile officials seemed to have faith
in the economic resourcefulness
of citizens, the approach to public health
was completely different. Very little was
left to individual choice or responsi-
bility. The lockdown had been strictly
enforced, and any infected person was
immediately removed from his or her
household and isolated in a government
clinic. By early April, all travellers who
entered from abroad, regardless of na-
tionality, had to undergo a strictly mon-
itored two-week quarantine in a state-
approved facility.
I occasionally saw the Chinese term
for social distancing—anquan juli—on
official notices, but I never heard any-
body actually say the phrase. Certainly
it wasn’t practiced in public. Once the
lockdown ended, subways, buses, and
trains quickly became crowded; during
my trip to Hangzhou, I flew on an Air-
bus A321, and all of the hundred and
eighty-five seats were occupied. When
I interviewed people involved in busi-
ness or diplomacy, we shook hands
like it was 2019. Pedestrians still spat
on the street. Mask-wearing remained
mandatory indoors and on transport,
but otherwise little had changed about
human contact.
My daughters’ third-grade class con-
sisted of fifty-five students, a number
that, when school resumed, was reduced
to fifty-four—one girl got stranded
with her family on vacation in Cyprus.
There was some attempt to separate
desks, but, with so many people in a
modest-sized classroom, any distanc-
ing was a game of inches. Students
entered school through a tent tunnel
equipped with a body-temperature scan-
ner. A sign in the hallway listed lyrics
to a new song:
Returning to school, what can we do?
Don’t be afraid, listen to me.
Wear a mask, study well.
It’s possible to protect both me and you.“Work really piled up while I was gone.”