The Chinese regime sealed residents’ homes in Xi’an on Jan. 8, but didn’t arrange for a reliable food supply, residents say. After being locked down for almost three weeks, they are lacking in food and on the edge of mental breakdown.
The Chinese regime has claimed the COVID-19 outbreak in Xi’an has been under control since Jan. 5. However, the regime upgraded the control measures and Xi’an residents still can’t leave their homes even on Jan. 11.
“I had never been diagnosed with COVID-19. Why did they seal my door?” Cai Jiaying (pseudonym), a resident at Rongshang Compound, Changyanbao Community, Yanta district in Xi’an, told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Jan. 9. “Our residential compound has been locked down for 21 days. … In the beginning [of the lockdown], I consoled myself. I was disappointed days later, and then felt hopeless and despair. This morning, I went crazy.”
Cai said that she and her husband had only bought a little food successfully in the past three weeks, and didn’t know when they could buy some more.
“I’m worried that we won’t have anything to eat soon. We don’t dare to fill our stomachs. We go to bed after a meal at 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. every afternoon. We sleep more to save food,” Cai said. She said that the family only had a small bowl of rice, 11 pounds of wheat flour, seven cups of instant noodles, one bamboo shoot, and a little bit of meat at home. “The food can feed us for at most one week.”
Other Xi’an residents told The Epoch Times similar stories in phone interviews.
Continued Lockdown
On Jan. 11, Xi’an authorities announced that nine communities in the city were downgraded to low-risk regions where people have few chances to contact COVID-19 patients, and 44 others still remained high-risk or medium-risk regions.
The regime didn’t mention how many communities there were in the city, nor details of the lockdown policies in different risk regions.
On Jan. 10, local authorities announced another standard to divide the city, called “Closed Zone,” “Controlled Zone,” and “Prevention Zone.” In general, residents in closed zones aren’t allowed to leave their homes no matter how healthy they are or how urgent their need to go out.
The regime said that zones could be downgraded if no resident in the zone was infected with the CCP virus or had contact with COVID-19 patients in the past 14 days, and all residents tested negative within 48 hours.
Livelihood in Xi’an
Being locked down at home or in a dorm, Xi’an residents are suffering.
“We don’t know how to obtain food [after the regime sealed our home’s door]. We only have a few cabbage leaves at home,” Xu Qianru (pseudonym), a resident at Changyanbao community in Yanta district told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Jan. 9. “We kept on calling the residential compound’s management company, but nobody answered the phone.”
Xu’s apartment was sealed by the management company on the evening of Jan. 8. She learned from her neighbors that all apartments in the compound were sealed. “Several thousand families in our compound are sealed at home like us … Our lives are really difficult,” Xu added.
“We had eaten all our stock [in the past weeks during the lockdown], and we can’t buy anything. Do you [Xi’an officials] want the over ten thousand residents [in the compound] to die of starvation?” Yang Hai, a resident of Hengdacheng at Dazhai road, Yanta district, complained in a video posted on social media platforms on Jan. 8.
The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, is the virus that causes the disease COVID-19.
Yang shared photos of the residential compound, which showed that the regime locked the doors of the residential unit by using iron wires and sealed the apartment doors by using paper.
“Do you [officials] treat us, the people, like animals?” Yang criticized. “We can’t receive any materials [food] after the doors are sealed!”
College students in Xi’an have been locked down in dorms since late December last year, and aren’t allowed to leave the building, not to mention go home even though some of their homes are in the city.
“We have six ladies sharing one room … We stay in our twin-over-twin bunk beds for most of the time during the day,” Fu Hua (pseudonym) told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Jan. 8. “We study different majors and have different class schedules. [Since the lockdown began,] we take online classes at the dorm, and we can’t avoid interfering with each other.”
Fu said that she felt frustrated about the lockdown. She would even prefer to be sent to a quarantine center for 14 days if the regime would allow her to go home after the quarantine.
By Nicole Hao of the Epoch Times,
