Moving My Vegetable Plot from the Western Hillside Back to the Balcony

Today I gave up the lease on that small rented vegetable plot at the foot of the hills, because I have a foreboding that my city may come under considerable pandemic-prevention pressure in May–July. My child will enter his senior year of high school after this semester; I must try every means to lower the risk of viral infection, so as not to drag him down or delay his future.

Too many people come and go in the shared garden, and many take no preventive measures. The garden rental company's management is lax; the company's own staff set the example by not wearing masks, and repeated complaints have brought no improvement. I can understand it: after fighting the pandemic for so long, everyone is tired and does not want to wear masks anymore; families like ours with elderly people and children can only be more careful ourselves. The May Day holiday picking activities in the garden posed a risk of cross-infection; I did not want to take that risk, so I withdrew early.

I transplanted some of the seedlings that could be moved back home and planted them in flowerpots. I also bought seeds and organic fertilizer for lettuce, romaine, water spinach, baby cabbage, fennel, and bok choy, planning to use every idle flowerpot at home to grow vegetables. I also plan to raise my own seedlings and grow two sweet potato plants in large pots; by June or July I can eat the sweet potato leaves as a vegetable.

Growing a few vegetables on the balcony can both while away leisure and amuse oneself, and, should a pandemic occur, supply the household with some leafy greens. My old classmate in Shanghai says that now his eyes light up at the sight of leafy greens; his compound has been locked down for a month or so, and he has gone too long without a proper serving of greens.

I have a patient in Xuzhou who, because of lockdown, has been off her medicine for a long time. This month, on the 13th, Xuzhou was finally unlocked; she hurriedly bought her medicine, but before the package even arrived, today Xuzhou suddenly reported 89 new positive cases, and a city lockdown is expected again. I am really worried about her; I do not know how much longer before she can get her medication—the medicine tumor patients take is life-saving. Xi'an too was unlocked only a short while before locking down again. Under the dynamic zero-COVID policy, we may frequently encounter such situations this year, so we must be fully prepared psychologically.

The pandemic has made life very different from before. We must adapt to change at any time, prepare for the worst, and arrange our lives so that even in the worst case they are not so unbearable. Any of us could at any moment be locked in our homes, unable to go out. A fellow patient told me that when she went home at night everything was still fine, but when she woke the next morning she found her building locked down. Fortunately there was still some food in the refrigerator; otherwise she would have had nothing to eat. People living in big first-tier cities will continue to face this risk—of being locked at home or taken to quarantine—until the national dynamic zero-COVID policy changes. So at least through 2022 we must remain in a state of preparedness.

The novel coronavirus variants are too transmissible; the new forms of pandemic prevention have made even the life of "picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, gazing leisurely at the southern mountain" unsafe. I have begun seeking new pleasures within my own small patch. The cost of city life has also risen considerably, because vegetables at the market have gone up. Even if we can escape other price rises, we cannot escape the rising price of the food we eat every day.

Livelihood is hard; one can only seek joy amid bitterness.