Shanghai lockdown

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After two months of a gruelling strict lockdown, Shanghai has emerged a changed city, some residents say. During the 65 toughest days, some were reduced to begging for food and pleading for access to their young children from whom they’d been separated. The regime wasn’t just brutal, some claim, it was largely fruitless, as the omicron strain of Covid continues to spread now. What’s more the economic fallout for China’s commercial capital, and key supply chains across the country and internationally, are only gradually becoming apparent. What’s the legacy of Shanghai’s zero-Covid experiment? Producer and Presenter Ed Butler Studio mix by Neil Churchill Production coordinators Iona Hammond and Gemma Ashman Editor Penny Murphy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What does this make you think?
0:07.0	How does it make you feel?
0:12.0	This eerie sound comes from the voices of hundreds of Shanghai residents.
0:17.0	Back in April this year they were protesting from their high-rise buildings about one of
0:21.8	the harshest lockdowns that any major city has experienced during the COVID pandemic.
0:28.0	Within minutes their protest was interrupted by a drone blasting out aerial instructions
0:36.2	from the government.
0:39.0	Stop shouting and singing it tells people, control your desire for freedom.
0:46.2	My name's Ed Butler and in this edition of assignment on the BBC World Service I'm
0:50.2	going to be looking back at the last few extraordinary months in China's most popular city.
0:56.8	What really happened in Shanghai?
0:59.2	What's the legacy?
1:00.2	And what did it feel like for those who lived through it?
1:04.4	I'm not very sure about what our life would be in the future because it's just not what
1:10.8	we're used to have.
1:13.3	What if there's another wave of virus?
1:16.4	What if that's more severe than COVID?
1:20.2	Do we have to go through this all over again?
1:25.6	Shanghai, it's a massive urban sprawl, a port, financial centre, factories and suburbs
1:32.1	home to some 25 million souls.
1:35.5	It's the beating heart of China's modern tech-driven economy.
1:39.6	At the start of this year two years into the pandemic most Shanghai needs might have assumed
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.