In a video that has gone viral on social media, residents of Shanghai can be heard screaming from their balconies and windows as the city continues to be under a strict lockdown since 5 April.
Considered to be the financial hub of China, the city of more than 25 million people reported almost 25,000 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 on Sunday.
A video was tweeted by US-based Dr Eric Feigl-Ding which shows Shanghai residents screaming, presumably unable to cope with the effects of the lockdown.
"Residents in #Shanghai screaming from high rise apartments after 7 straight days of the city lockdown. The narrator worries that there will be major problems (in Shanghainese dialect – the predicts people can’t hold out much longer – he implies tragedy)." Ding wrote on Twitter.
The lockdown that has been imposed by the government is so strict that people are even prohibited from leaving their homes to buy food.
Ration supplies have been dropped and food delivery services are also extremely limited, according to local reports.
Ding further went on to explain the meaning of "yao ming le" and "yao si", expressions that could be heard in the screams of the residents.
He wrote, "'yao ming le' & 'yao si' – both expressions mean 'life and death' but they also more literally mean 'asking for death'. Narrator eventually implies shit is gonna hit the fan soon if this continues."
The video has been viewed around 1.4 million times. The Twitter thread, in detail, talks about the struggles of Chinese people in Shanghai.
In one tweet within the thread, Ding asserted:
"Are people going hungry in Shanghai? Yes. Many people down to one meal a day. You can see here people rationing their vegetables into meal chunks. Dialogue is in Shanghainese, so it’s legit – checks out."
In a bid to control another outbreak of the coronavirus, China has been rigidly using a 'zero COVID' strategy.
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