A NYU professor living in Shanghai said his family was becoming "collectors" as he tried to survive the closure of the COVID-19 city without starvation.
"Access (to food) is a problem. Somehow, we have become hunters," said NYU-Shanghai professor Rodrigo Zeidan in an April 11 interview with The Hill. "We had to find ways to manage our food supply - and we do not speak Chinese."
He added that his family was able to earn a living by meeting other people in their heritage community so that they could "go and buy as much as we can from anything" and trade with neighbors to get other necessities.
"It's an exciting social event, coming to a city where it's not our country and trying to live in a flexible way," Zeidan said.
Zeidan told The Hill that the prolonged closure of the area surprised him and many Shanghai residents.
"Life went on as usual under those circumstances everything changed," he said. "We did not have time to prepare and four days turned into five, six, and seven. And that is the situation we are in right now."
He said the Western view that Chinese citizens do not protest was wrong and that there was a lot of frustration on the ground.
"This is the way people express their concerns in China. They are not protesting against the central government, but it is the way you are keeping local politicians," he said, referring to videos he saw in Shanghai protesting against health care. workers uploaded to Chinese social media platforms, and then tested.
"The protests you see, this is part of how the Chinese people are holding themselves accountable for their political system - to the best of their ability, as this is not a democracy," Zeidan said.
Shanghai went into total lockdown on April 5 to suppress rising COVID-19 prices, in line with its COVID-zero policy. Since the city's closure began, the city has seen an increase in dissatisfaction among its 26 million inhabitants.
Videos have emerged of neglected children being left homeless after being forcibly separated from their parents, a policy the city government has protected. Also shocking are the videos on social media that seem to belong to Shanghainese residents shouting out the windows as lockdown closes.
Shanghai recorded 22,342 19 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total number of infected people in the city to nearly 227,000 since March 1.