Shanghai coronavirus: 13-year-old Chinese boy survives home alone for 66 days with pets after parents trapped in lockdown
- The boy’s parents were stuck in Shanghai after the city went into lockdown at the beginning of April
- While the boy was able to care for himself and his pets, his parents said the house was in a filthy state when they returned
The boy’s parents travelled to Shanghai on February 28 to seek medical treatment for his father and were only allowed to return to their home in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, eastern China, at the end of April, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.
The teenager had been living at home by himself for the past two months. Besides attending online classes, he cared for his pet cat and dog.
After staying in a central quarantine facility for another week, the couple were finally reunited with their son last Friday.
The boy’s mother, surnamed Zhu, said she found her son and the two animals had grown fatter during the couple’s absence.
She said in March, she organised food deliveries for the boy. But for several weeks in April, the service was suspended as residential communities in Kunshan were put under lockdown as a measure to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
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Concerned about her son’s well-being, Zhu said she cried while speaking with him over the phone.
“He was very optimistic. He even reassured me, saying: ‘Why are you crying? There’s nothing to worry about. You can teach me how to cook,’” she said.
Community management workers were able to help by sending boxed lunches to the boy every day.
On weekends when the boy did not have online classes, Zhu would teach her son to cook simple dishes.
“I had hoarded some supplies before I left home, such as hand grasping cakes, a kind of wheat flour-made food, half-cooked, chicken steaks and chicken wings,” she said.
“When he got bored with pre-prepared meals, he asked me to teach him how to cook.”
The boy also cleaned the cat’s litter box, walked the dog and bathed the two animals.
However, while the boy was able to care for himself and his pets, the same could not be said for the general state of the family home, according to his mother.
Zhu said when the couple returned home last week the house was so dirty and messy that: “There was no place for us to even put our feet down.”
“But I didn’t get angry at all. Instead, my heart ached for him,” she said.
“My son is generally very lazy and I believe many of his peers do better than him in terms of being independent.”
“What I must praise him for is that he has managed his situation well over the past two months. He never complained; instead, he often comforted us. He is much stronger and more optimistic than we previously thought.”
Shanghai’s coronavirus case numbers have exceeded 600,000 as of May 7, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which broke out at the beginning of March. Officially, 547 patients have died from Covid-19 since the most recent outbreak.
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On Monday the city reported 322 new Covid-19 infections and 3,625 asymptomatic cases.
