The song, Grocery Shopping, mourns empty shelves and fights in supermarket aisles and is directed at footage of residents crowding around market stalls or queuing for PCR tests. “Set the alarm, wake up, fight for food,” the lyrics say. “Order this tofu, but the sauce is gone.” The song’s release comes as Shanghai authorities extended some lockdown measures and the city reported a record daily number of cases in a frustrating outbreak across the city. China is in the middle of the worst pandemic outbreak due to the highly contagious Omicron variant. Shanghai records most of the cases, with the outbreak of the city still topping. He reported 5,656 asymptomatic cases and 326 symptomatic cases for Tuesday, up from 4,381 new asymptomatic cases and 96 new cases with symptoms the previous day. In response, the city has split in two, with four days of lockdowns and massive test runs starting Monday for one half and Friday for the other. However, late on Tuesday, authorities announced lockdown measures in some areas of the currently vacant department. The southwestern district of Minhang has announced that public transportation will be suspended until April 5, and residents in some western districts have been notified by housing committees that they will be barred from leaving their facilities for the next seven days. “We express our warm thanks to all the residents! “We will resume normal life soon, but in the coming period we urge everyone to adhere to the pandemic control measures, not to concentrate and to reduce movement,” a Reuters news release said. A message on social media also circulated that areas of Puxi would be closed from Wednesday, a claim that was rejected by the authorities as “rumors”. For weeks, Shanghai authorities have vehemently denied rumors that there were plans for a lockdown, arresting at least two people for spreading false information. Then, on Sunday, the plans were sharply reversed with the announcement of separate quarantines for the city of 26 million inhabitants. Shanghai residents have expressed growing frustration with the measures imposed on the city, especially the lack of food in supermarkets. Residents reported an increase in the cost of fresh produce, with jokes in group conversations about empty supermarket shelves soon forcing them to eat community bushes. The elderly have reported difficulty with the technology required for online ordering. Amid the limitations and shortcomings, the rap, released on Monday by artists CATI2, PJ and Keyso, has become a hit in the city. Shanghai lyricists sing about food quarrels, people wake up early to order food just to find the ingredients exhausted, and delivery guides are all busy. In another section, PJ describes escaping from one lockdown to being trapped in another. “Considering it was a great idea to use music to cheer up the people of Shanghai and banish the negative atmosphere on the internet, the three of us started right away,” PJ told Sixth Tone. “We chose the vegetable market as a topic, because it is the challenge that most sums up this outbreak. I have been to the supermarket many times to buy food and each time I saw people picking up the shelves clean. “It was even worse than when they bought groceries before the New Year.” There is growing dissatisfaction with China’s zero Covid policies and the consequent lockdown in cities and provinces, as Omicron challenges China’s usual methods of restricting outbreaks. Combined with the fear among officials of punishment for failure, harsh and hasty measures have in some cases proved to be painful and even deadly. In a repeat of the January lockdown in Xi’an, where at least one man died and a woman was expelled after being barred from hospital, refusal of medical care is again a concern in Shanghai. Media reports have described patients undergoing dialysis – who receive life-sustaining treatment about three times a week – who have been barred from many hospitals. A Shanghai nurse died last week after being barred from hospital after suffering an asthma attack. Such denials run counter to government policy, which has only asked hospitals to suspend general outpatient services. Additional research by Xiaoqian Zhu
