Yesterday evening, a sudden notice to lock down our building went out in the community group. The reason: a neighbor of ours had taken part in a pooled nucleic-acid test together with a group of people elsewhere, and their tube came back positive, so we were immediately put under temporary lockdown too. In the three years since the pandemic began, this is the first time we have faced a building lockdown. Back in May, when Beijing’s outbreak was severe, we were also told to stay home as much as possible, but that time the building was not locked down; if we had wanted to, we could still have gone anywhere in the city. This time it is different—we are not even allowed out of the building.Compared with many people who have been locked down for a long time, we are the lucky ones, but Beijing’s outbreak is spreading fast this time, with the daily new count still rising rapidly, so whether we continue to be this lucky is hard to say. Today I took some time to stock up on food, making preparations for a possible lockdown ahead. The refrigerator is packed full, and on the balcony I have put away a good amount of longer-keeping vegetables such as napa cabbage, radishes, winter melon, carrots, and potatoes. Quite a few neighborhoods around us have already had outbreaks; even if our own community escapes one, I do not plan to visit the market often, to avoid bringing unnecessary risk to my child, who is in his senior year of high school.This morning I had planned to keep the child home from school, but just before seven the community announced that the building had been unlocked, so I let him go to school as usual. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission issued a notice last night requiring primary and secondary students in all grades except the senior year to stay home and attend online classes. The school has asked us parents of senior-year students to keep life as simple as possible, going only between work and home, so as not to add risk to our children. Our child is at a critical stage, and under the current epidemic-prevention policies we dare not engage in any other activities.The last time I went out can be traced back to November 1; since then, apart from work, I have basically stayed home reading. But because of long hours at a desk, my cervical spine cannot take it; lowering my head to use the phone or computer always triggers cervical discomfort, so I have had to rely more on audiobooks, do housework and exercise at home, and read less with my head down.Beijing reports its outbreak twice a day, morning and evening; every time a community-level infection is reported, a batch of buildings is locked down. I do not know when we will be locked down again, or whether the next lockdown will be as lucky as this one, lifted after just a single night. I have prepared for the worst, ready at any time to be sealed in at home or sent to a quarantine facility. Because even if we can control ourselves, we cannot control our neighbors in the same community; they are not parents of a senior-year student and may not be willing to constrain their behavior as we do. So what kind of life we live tomorrow depends entirely on luck.My feelings are complicated, with every flavor mixed in, hard to put into words. The weather over the last few days has been overcast, and that sort of weather makes one’s mood even more oppressed. Fortunately I can still distract myself with audiobooks and watching Jin Yong’s wuxia adaptations, so I have not sunk into prolonged melancholy.After three years of fighting the pandemic, I have almost forgotten what normal life used to look like. From time to time I feel an urge to go back and live in the countryside; my elderly father there has, after all, been carefree all along. But I have to think of my child: I cannot let his education be interrupted, nor let him grow up in an environment without familiar friends. So I can only occasionally daydream about the good life of retiring to streams and woods; once the daydream is over, that is that.For now I can only hope the pandemic soft-landings soon; perhaps it will not be long. The year ahead may feel extraordinarily hard, but I believe that ahead of the sickened tree ten thousand trees are turning green, and that the day when the spring river warms will surely come.