You forget how long you've been quarantining here in your boarding school. You walk to the badminton court to take the COVID test — the tears well up when the nasal swap invades your nose, leaving the familiar wooden cotton scent. You head back to the dorm around midnight and are woken up by the RA at 6:30 in the morning, the usual time for school. Your jaw drops when you see the day students in sleeping bags on the gym floor, and your teachers there, too. You can't believe they have spent a night there, the night when the bed becomes a luxury.

       "What the fuck are they doing?" You and your friends loudly complain.

       You ask the first teacher you see how long you need to stay at school. "Maybe a few days. We are still waiting for the notice," she responds. At 3:00, your homeroom teacher starts to assign day students to your dorm room. They stand there listening, emotionlessly. It's better to sleep on your dorm's floor than the gym floor anyway. But the announcement at 5:00 renders his meticulous planning a joke. You can leave after an additional mouth swab that night. The announcement calls it "dynamic adjustment," a rhetoric they invent to defend their insane policies. They won’t admit they are bad. But, still, you just follow it if that is what is best for you all. Plus, you have no choice.

       It's just going to be a few days, right? It's just going to be a week or two before you return to school, before life goes back on track. Back in 2020 when COVID started in the winter, the policy worked — for the whole two years, no one around you got infected. It was the only two months when you can take classes in bed. But it's 2022 now. That shit is over. You want to roll your eyes at anyone who mentions the pandemic again.

       A positive COVID case has been identified in your school on March 10th, 2022, and you are told 7+7 this time: 7 days at home and 7 days not attending mass events. You wonder what can possibly happen. In the worst case, you'll just get infected. So what? It's just a big flu.

       Your dad picks you up from school that night. And for the next 7 days, he works from home and your mom seeks refuge in a hotel near her office in order to avoid being quarantined with you. You get up at 7:30, brush your teeth, wash your face, enter the class, and see your classmates and teachers' faces online, then you can have breakfast during class. You get this sense of déjà vu. You travel back in time, to two years ago when you first experience this, the quarantine when your social life is on a computer.

       A grey door censor is quietly attached to the bottom of your door one day. It doesn't make any sound when the door opens and closes, so you decide to ignore it when you pick up your take-outs. Nobody has said anything. Another day someone in a white hazmat suit knocks on your door. Everyone calls them Dabai, which roughly translates to Big White, also the name for Baymax in China. "Open your mouth," Baymax finds you and wants you to do a mouth swab. The Baymax is protecting you, so you can stay in your own room, your own world.

       Your room isn't that big. Probably the same size as a dorm room. Light green walls, a table with a shelf that holds souvenirs you buy when you travel around the world like the Eiffel Tower Statue from Paris and Harry Potter's Elder Wand from Universal Studio in LA, a closet that contains a chaotic amount of clothes, and a wooden bunk bed you used to climb up and down when you are a kid. Many teachers in the online class have thought you are taking the class from a dorm. You live on the fourth floor, and you have a large window that allows you to observe the world. Now you are 17 and you have stayed there for your whole life. You are used to calling this place home.

       You can't tell people enough about how much you love living in the city. How McDonald's is just a 3-minute walk away from home, how you switch to another shopping mall every time you hang out with friends, and how the streetlights always make the city bright enough to guide you home no matter how late it is. It's hard not to love a place when it has seen you in a stroller. It has seen you tumbling and skinning your knees when you first learn roller skating. It has seen you meeting new friends, and saying goodbye. It remembers your most precious and miserable memories. It's a place like no other.

       Your mom comes back home on day seven. You text her you want to go out for dinner that night. "Are you serious? Do you know how many schools are locked down right now? There are so many positive cases in the city now. Do these restaurants even open?" She sends you news, pictures of schools being shut down. "I don't care! Let's go out and have dinner," you send her a screenshot of a Xinjiang restaurant's website, saying it is open today. She smiles when she sees you. She listens to your complaints about the school and your 7 days at home. "This is crazy, isn't it?" She knows she can't stop you from going out.

       Almost the only guests there, you end up sitting in that restaurant, eating lamb chop. The lamb chop, a meat that has perfect balance between fat and lean, is grilled to a perfect crispiness. When you dip it in cumin and bite into it, the aroma of juice mixed with fat bursts in your mouth. It is a delicious meal, but you eat hurriedly. Maybe it's not the best time to eat out now. When you walk out of that restaurant, you are surprised by what you see. The bakery that used to have a daunting line only has two or three people inside now. The gelato vendor stands there boringly as no one buys his ice cream. You and your mom are the only two people on the escalator. You have waited for seven days, and now you don't even need to wait in line to get anything. You have only seen a shopping mall empty like this in movies before the zombies come.

       You don't go out often after that day. A city without a crowd is daunting. Now you set the alarm to eight just to enter Zoom, then keep sleeping until you need to switch to the next class. People start to turn off their cameras; your teachers eventually turn off their cameras too. You have a soft and thick latex mattress that makes you feel like sleeping on fluffy white clouds. You can stay in your bed for the whole day, and only drag yourself out of bed when you need to pick up the take-out at the door.

       One Saturday morning at 8:00 your parents wake you up. The entire compound needs to do a COVID test. Two Dabais are downstairs under a canopy tent. Some of your neighbors become volunteers, knocking on your door to get you downstairs. But it's a Saturday morning. You just want to be in your sleepy bed, cradling a huge pillow as your sole company in your sweet dream where you can close your eyes and breathe. Your mom ruins your dream. She gets you out of the room, waiting in line surrounded by the scent of disinfectant just to get another mouth swab you already know is going to be negative.

       An ambulance comes into your compound that Sunday, quietly approaching the building without a siren or light. Then your compound is locked up. You need to go all the way to the shelf by your compound gate to get your take-outs, and now anyone can't leave the compound. Your mom calls the government helpline, confirming someone in your compound gets COVID. You are informed your seven days are extended.

       Since then, you have started to pay attention to the government posts on the number of infections each day. You hear the news that all people who get COVID are sent to centralized shelters, large temporary buildings with thousands of beds. You are fine with going to these places. You hear they provide free food and Wi-Fi — everything you need to survive. "Absolutely not! It's just a messy place you can't even take a shower," your mom says, looking at you seriously, "it doesn't look like a place for people to live. Besides, I'm not sure if I can do my work there." Another day she sends you a video of a boy and a girl around 10 years old with their masks on, aimlessly sitting on the typical white bed in the shelter among many other patients. They are wearing your school's uniform. "Oh, poor kids who get COVID in our school," you sigh. You start to realize COVID is not far away from you. Real people around you are infected this time. Beds are full in the hospital and there are people dying. At night when you toss and turn on your bunk bed, you can't stop thinking what is happening right now? It's so peaceful for 2 years, and suddenly you are all locked up at home. Things get messier and crazier this time; they all hit too quickly. You don't know what to do. You don't know how to feel.

       An official news conference video comes out near the end of March. A disease control expert on TV responds to the idea that Shanghai should be locked down for a few days. "No, we can't. Shanghai as a city is not just for the people of Shanghai, but it also shoulders important social and economic functions of our nation. A Shanghai lockdown could and even have global consequences!" That woman has a stern voice that reminds you of your elementary school Chinese teacher. People like her seem to be a reliable authority you can depend on in an age when people on the Internet are touting that salt water prevents COVID. She's an expert speaking in the government news, a person with the most "ethos" in your English teacher's words. She gets your trust almost effortlessly.

       It turns out that woman is just full of shit. It's only 5 days before the government announces that the city is going to be divided in half starting in April, each locked down for four days. Another expert makes an apology, saying they are unaware of the speed Omicron spreads.

       A week before the lockdown, your compound is temporarily unlocked. You and your mom go to the supermarket, trying to grab any grocery you can get to prepare for the lockdown, like what everyone else does in the city. It's just like magic that everyone is out of their home in the supermarket now. When you walk into the supermarket, you get this New Year vibe. Crowds of people encircle the vegetable section. The staff reloads the vegetables on the aisle and the next second they are gone. After an arduous search, you find some overpriced sushi and salmon that are not yet taken, and your mom grabs some unpopular vegetables. It's just four days. You should be fine.

       You are wrong. Your mother is wrong. That expert is wrong. The news is wrong. Something is wrong. You are all wrong.

       You wake up on April 1st, look at your phone, and find out not a single restaurant is open at the moment, not even for take-outs. You tell yourself 4 days isn't too bad. Turning on the TV, a news channel immerses you in the live streaming of the city under lockdown. Streets without a single person. Waterfront that used to be full of tourists taking photos, the city center that is always crowded with cars and people going to work, the tunnel your mom has to drive by every time you go to her office, and fancy skyscrapers that you can't even name. Nothing alive now but the voice of the reporter. You feel like you are in a dream. You feel like it must be the end of the world.

       A chicken, a bag of cellophane noodles, a bok choy, a baby cabbage, 2 carrots, 2 cucumbers, 2 tomatoes, and 10 eggs. You receive these from community workers on April 3rd. The package from the government. "That's not bad," you send photos of the package you receive to your friends. Your friends receive a package of different food. Then you start to realize the package you receive varies from street to street. Isn't it like a blind box you get from POP MART? The government seems nice. It's just 4 days of lockdown and they are giving you a food package. There is no need to worry.

       4 days have passed. The compound is still in lockdown. Now you can't see that woman on TV. A new group of experts appears with a new policy, and a new narrative, "now we are putting every compound into three categories, and two categories still need to be in static management......"

       You start to hate these experts because they never keep their promises. They tell you 7+7. They tell you there will not be a lockdown. They tell you it's just 4 days. Now they make up a new phrase "static management" which translates to lockdown. You hate they are always changing their plans. You hate to see the infection still grow exponentially every day. You hate there are still no take-outs. You wonder if it's all worth it.

       Your parents are equally bad at cooking, but you can sustain your life as long as there is food. But one day you find out you start to run out of food when you still can't get out of here. Nobody teaches you what to do. No class at school prepares you for life before the end of the world. Your mom starts to look for grocery delivery online. You all are chilled at first, believing the packages will come and rescue you again soon. But days have passed, and you still haven't received anything else from the government. You start to get worried, well your mom mostly, thinking about what your family is going to eat tomorrow. You are literally ready to knock on your neighbor's door and ask if they have any food left. She paces back and forth, texting her friends what she should do, luckily, someone tells her about an online grocery delivery that still works but only releases food for purchase at 6 a.m., so your mom puts everything your family may need into the shopping cart the night before, gets up at 5:50, and tries to check out whatever she can get for your family to eat every day. You still can't believe that this is the reality, a reality you haven't seen on everyday news. But at least your mom finds tricks to survive. On a good day, you can even have fried chicken wings for dinner.

       In mid-April, bulk order groups begin to emerge in your compound. Some of your neighbors somehow manage to find a way to get a steady supply of groceries every day if they gather enough people to order a large amount at a time. They send the link out in the WeChat group of your compound, asking if anyone needs groceries. Your mom fills out the link, putting your room number and the items you need on the group chat. Then the person who starts the bulk order, one of your neighbors, is going to send you the groceries to your door. Later they even form bulk order groups for take-outs like KFC, Shake Shack, and Taco Bell. There may only be 1 take-out bulk order each week, and by the time you receive them, they'll already be cold. But it's better than nothing.

       You live in a large compound of five thousand people, large enough for you to get enough people to start a bulk order. It's fortunate to be surrounded by people who bond together for their most basic need for food, the need to survive. You wonder what happens to the smaller compounds that don't have enough people to start a bulk order. Are they just going to starve and knock on other's doors for food? You wonder what these experts are doing. What do they eat? Do they give a shit about your experience? Why do they never talk about these things on TV? Why can’t they give you an exact date — the date for all these shits to end, the date to be free again.

       You start to have the habit of walking in your compound, the only place you are allowed to go during the lockdown. You go downstairs at least once every day, just to see the trees that are evergreen, pedestrians that are walking on the road, and cars parked along the road that have lost their mobility. You start this spontaneous, aimless walk that lasts between 15 minutes to 3 hours after class, on a sunny afternoon, or late at night. At nights when the streetlights are on, your mom will ask you to go for a walk with her. Most times you walk, sometimes you run. You make yourself tired, so you temporarily forget. You make yourself sweaty, so you think you are still alive. You make your heart race fast, so the world slows down. Sometimes you look to the outside of the compound during your walk. It is the most familiar place and the farthest place. You wonder how five thousand people in your compound can simply be kept out from the world by this shabby gate, how you see the outside clearly but never escape, and how three feet away feels like another world.

       You prefer to lie on your side in the bunk bed when you are back in your room spending time on your phone. Sometimes you Facetime your friends, chatting for hours until you sleep. But more often you watch complaints and frustrations flooding through these platforms. It's hard not to notice these cries, the desperate cries of people in the city. Your friends send you them. Your parents send you them. Random people on the Internet are spreading them. They beg for food to survive, they stand up and protest building temporary quarantine areas near their home, and some of them recklessly break free from their compounds seeking to regain their rights to walk around. Dabais, the police inside the white protection suit, violently put them down on the cold hard ground. Dabais don't like you when you are loud and unhappy. But you can't stop the people. They are shouting "We don't want COVID testing. We want FREEDOM" on the streets. They are screaming to the air in the middle of the night on the balcony. They are banging their pots and pans non-stop like they come right from a madhouse. They are making noises. They are making trouble to protest.

       "Is this even real?" you speak into the silence. No one answers. You don't know them. But you see it, and you remember. They are inside your screen; they may just be a few miles away. And they will vanish like smoke in the wind within hours.

       In these days of quarantine, your parents send you lots of news and videos in your family's group chat. And you stay in your room and read about these people's stories, and they become "Unable to view this content because it violates regulations" when you click the link again. Almost everything is blocked these days, one by one. Protest videos, people's anecdotes about the lockdown, the music video "Do You Hear the People Sing?", at last even WHO's video suggesting Zero Covid is unsustainable. Only the good things are left online.

       "It's a war we'll win." The news still repeats this narrative every day. Dabais works days and nights, diligently helping people doing the COVID test. Residents cooperatively follow Dabais' instructions, being in line to take a throat swab. Truck drivers deliver groceries from provinces across the country to save this city. Experts gather to design a plan aiming to fight this war. The city enters its dormant state, peaceful and quiet. All of these become so fake at some point, a Disney cartoon series that always has a happy ending.

       "At least we have something to eat," your mom tries to offer some comfort. Yes. At least you are safe. At least you are allowed to stay in your room and survive. You may pretend those shits don't exist. What can you do? You are literally stuck in your room. Some nights you turn on your VPN to cross the firewall, wondering how other parts of the world view your lockdown. They portray your home like hell. People are dying. Endlessly violent conflicts between police and people, disastrous consequences brought by the lockdown, and evil conspiracy of the Communist party — "a political experiment that Xi uses to stay at his place," the news reporter says.

       "Show us what's on YouTube," your mom says. Unlike you, she doesn't need to know how to set up the VPN and pay 50 dollars a year for it to search for the answer to your AP class homework on Google. "Well, they are basically saying our country is doing bad," you reply and send the video to your family's group chat.

       You want to say something, you want to defend your city. It's not that bad. But what they are saying is not untrue. The miserable people are here, somewhere in the city, praying for the salvation of the world. A flame starts to burn in your body. It makes your room unbearably hot and stifling on an April night. In these sleepless nights, you can hear nothing but the seldom yowling of feral cats that live in your compound. You can't tell if they are angry, painful, or they are in estrus. But they are loud. You learn to stay up late lying in your bed in the dark, nothing bright but your phone screen. You keep scrolling TikTok down and down until your eyes close themselves, until melatonin forces you into a dream, until you feel cold again.

       The patient number still grows exponentially every day although everyone is at home. One morning in May, a group of Dabais come to your compound. They put up metal sheets, the ones commonly used in construction sites, one by one, to fence one of the compound gates. You become the animals in the cage. "Seriously? They are really crossing the line this time," your mom exclaims. The metal sheets have transformed the city's landscape overnight to something you've never seen: almost every compound in the city is fenced. Sometimes when you wander around in your compound you walk to the gate and observe them closely. These white, tough walls block the view of trees and buildings outside of your compound. There is something in you that wants to get out so bad. It wants you to climb over these hard sheets and walk on the streets on your own in the middle of the night until someone in the white hazmat suit finds you and arrests you, and you will say fuck you to their face.

       But you just end up walking back to your room. It is a new normal you have to learn to live with now.

       Your hair grows long in these days: it blocks your views and takes forever to dry. One night before the shower, you look at yourself in front of the mirror. It has been three months since the last time you've been to a barbershop. The grease flattens your hair, making it heavy and too close to your skin. You can't stand your hair anymore. You are drowning inside its grease. So, you take a scissor you use to open packages, and you cut, cut, cut, until you feel fresh, until you can breathe again. You make a whole mess. The hair is all over the basin. Your mom laughs when she sees the back of your head. It's uneven. Some hairs are shorter than the others. And you know a part of you is gone with the hair when you wash it away. A barber who volunteers to cut everyone's hair in your compound also laughs when she tries to rescue your hairstyle a few days later.

       Your family gets quieter these days. Your mom tries to find online videos that teach her how to make better dinners for the family, and your dad seems to be more interested in his own work and the stock market. But your study and the lockdown are always the two hot-button topics on the dinner table. They always ask you about things that are going on in your classes and what's happening in Shanghai according to the Western media.

       The people's cries in the city never stop. They are just getting louder and louder day by day. More and more people are rushing out of their homes into the streets to protest. They are in Shanghai, Beijing, and everywhere. Facing rows of police, now without their white hazmat suits, they take their phones out, turn on the cameras, and record everything. When the police arrest someone, the whole crowd angrily shouts, "Release that person." The police become calmer this time. They don't dare to arrest the whole crowd. Instead of holding signs, the crowd holds up blank papers in the air. The blank paper doesn't say anything yet says everything.

       One day in May, the news says the quarantine will end on June 1st, with no strings attached this time. You develop the habit of doubting everything the news says. Maybe the protest works. It's really over this time. A friend who lives in your compound texts you that she successfully gets out of the compound at midnight that day. The metal sheets are finally gone. You can now walk out of your compound without worrying about being arrested. You are officially free.

       You finally step out of your compound the next morning. It has been so long since the last time you come out and walk on the street. But the outside is no big difference right now. The city digests and moves fast. Passengers, cars, trees, it seems like nothing has changed. It seems like you've only been in your home for two hours. The city has a fast metabolism. At night, nothing unhappy has its place to stay under the skyscrapers and their iridescent lights. But sometimes you watch these tall buildings and start to wonder what these modern buildings have to do with you. You are not allowed to enter most of them. They are merely decorations of a barren land that used to be a poor fishing village.

       None of the shopping malls are open yet. They need time to prepare for this sudden reopening. You find an open KFC. It only offers chicken sandwiches and chicken wraps. You stand there under the scorching sun in June, waiting for 15 minutes to get KFC, and then you carry the chicken roll and eat it on your way home. But it's still the same: It's still the same crusty fried chicken that is a little bit salty. It's the same black pepper you smell when you eat the chicken. It still feels hot when your mouth touches it. Nothing has changed but you.

       All things start to get back to normal in that unusually hot summer, except you still need a COVID-negative result to go anywhere. But people are happy to have their normal life back. They are tired of the quarantine, and they've adjusted quickly. The official finally gives up the Zero Covid policy. They lose track of the number when you are released. They remove all the canopy tents and no longer require the testing in the winter. Your family gets the Covid in December. What a shitty season you think. You have a rough night and two days of fever, and that's it. It's way less terrible than you think. You start to get better immediately after you take a sip of mango pomelo sago take-out. The yogurt's coolness blending with the sweet and sour of the mango soothes your body and mind. You rest for two days, then your life continues. You heal and, inadvertently, you start to forget.

       You forget how you feel during the lockdown. You forget how you survive those three months. You forget what you do in these trying times. You forget what other lies the experts have told. You forget the cries from far away. You forget what you forget.

       But you still like to walk around sometimes. After dinner, when buildings in the city are competing whose lights are prettier, you try to walk to a place as far as you can. It's just sometimes when you walk a long time to a place very quiet, to a street you can no longer recognize, you feel you are out of breath; you feel you are covered with sweat. You are flustered; you are suffocating.

       It's all just a bad dream inside your head.