Coronavirus: a Wuhan dissident’s lockdown has lasted nearly 400 days and counting
- Zhu Tao’s anti-state sentiment has alienated his in-laws and neighbours, he has been detained, subjected to surveillance and censored
- As he self-quarantines, bracing for another wave of infections, he wonders how it’s possible that people are carrying on with life as usual
One year after lockdown, Wuhan has long since sprung back to life – but Zhu Tao remains bunkered in his 14th-floor flat, spending his days doomscrolling through news, playing virtual soccer on his PlayStation and feeling China is teetering on the brink of collapse.
He has blown thousands of dollars, his life savings, stockpiling beef jerky and chocolate bars, bottles of water and sacks of rice, masks, alcohol and disinfecting wipes, and a US$900 solar panel.
“I’m in a state of eating and waiting for death, eating and waiting for death,” Zhu said, with a buzz cut he trimmed himself, since he does not dare to venture out to the barber. “People like me might be the minority, but I take it very seriously.”
Zhu, a 44-year-old smelter at the city’s state-run iron and steel works, is well outside the mainstream in China. He is a hard-boiled government critic, an on-and-off demonstrator, a supporter of the Hong Kong democracy movement.
He and others willing to publicly air such views are ridiculed, dismissed or silenced. They are a minority in an increasingly authoritarian and prosperous China, where there is less tolerance for protest and less appetite to do so.
