On the third day of Shanghai’s lockdown, she told me: I’m pregnant. For the next two months, she slept for 18 hours a day, as our child grew in her womb; after a bit of fiddling around, we got permission to go to the hospital for ultrasounds and checkups. Some days, I could leave our compound, and I’d take long walks through the deserted streets of downtown Shanghai, April 2022. Should I leave, should we go home to the United States? On these walks, it sometimes occurred to me that Shanghai during lockdown was pretty similar to my hometown: lots of trees; not many people in the streets; fresh, clean air; not much to do. I did my best to secure her healthy food; I got a delivery of vegetables, unspecified in content, and opened it to find 8 kilograms of lettuce. Later on, I managed to snag a bag of 40 eggs while we were in line for a COVID test. Throughout, at times when I felt impatient or angry, our son helped me to calm myself down. Don’t be a source of negative energy, I told myself; right now, she needs your support. In the end, our unborn son kept us both sane through the experience.
I’ve lived in Shanghai on and off since 2008; at different stages in my life, it’s given me the money to pay off student loans, adventures and excitement, and a path into a steady and fulfilling career. In 2022, Shanghai presented me with a family. I talked with friends about what we should do next, and authors that I publish; Cheng Li told me that he thought I was smart to be in China, now and in the future; there is still a lot of promise, as a new sort of country emerges. In person, China feels different than the one I read about in global media; a society struggling to find its own way, searching for a more equal and ecological society. Around me in Shanghai, friends from China’s new middle class embody this truth; they don’t always love everything that happens in China, that’s not the point; they are living and working to let China grow.
I read in the newspaper that expats were fleeing Shanghai, and so we decided to upgrade to a bigger apartment; the prices, I hoped, would be lower. Turns out that Shanghai’s real estate market hadn’t heard the bad news; we got a pretty good deal, but nothing special.