Today We Know Not Tomorrow's Affairs; Cherish the Life Before Us

Yesterday we took the first round of universal nucleic acid testing. When I got up this morning and opened the Beijing Health Kit app, it showed no abnormality. Early on, the nucleic-acid information section had crashed and I could not look anything up—probably because too many people were querying at once. When I checked again at ten o'clock, it showed yesterday's test result as negative.

The residential compound was not locked down, and the child and his mother went to school as usual; everyone's life is still in good order. Last night, the children frolicking at the compound's activity center and the aunties dancing there were, as always, not wearing masks. Everything before my eyes is so peaceful, nothing like the strong reaction the stock market has had to Beijing's epidemic.

I have been rushing nonstop for three days, making thorough preparations in case Beijing is locked down or our compound is sealed off. Because I serve many people, I also worried that if we were locked down, a great deal of work would have to be interrupted. By yesterday evening I was so exhausted I could barely straighten my back.

After a night's rest, I got up early and saw everything in the compound running normally, and I felt greatly relieved. Today Beijing has light rain turning moderate; while no one was about in the compound this morning, I went out for a walk, and after returning home watered the vegetable seedlings I had transplanted onto my balcony. Watching these little seedlings thrive—growing even better than they did in the garden—a surge of happiness welled up within me. With this, I am content; I ask for nothing more.

Nowadays we know not tomorrow's affairs. No one knows whether, after waking from a night's sleep, their own compound will be locked down, or when the CDC might call to notify us that we must isolate. But judging from Beijing's nucleic-acid results over the last two days, transmission in the capital is still at a very early stage and is expected to be brought under control within two or three weeks; the likelihood of Beijing being sealed off is also low, unless some much bigger thunderbolt suddenly erupts.

Personally, I am quite glad about this epidemic, because I had previously worried that the long May Day holiday would let Beijing slip out of control; discovering the problem before the holiday is far better than discovering it afterward. Ours is one of the few countries still pursuing the dynamic zero-COVID policy; had the scale of the outbreak in Beijing been larger, those of us living here would have had a very hard time, and the impact on the national economy and people's livelihood would have been huge.

These three years of epidemic have greatly affected everyone, and many people's outlook has shifted substantially; people have generally become more conservative and cautious than before, less willing to take risks and less ambitious. Whether the outside world is wonderful or not, it matters little to us, because for the great majority of people, going out to see the world is no longer realistic. In my child's class group chat, the homeroom teacher reminds parents several times a week to take precautions and not cause trouble for the whole class; every time an outbreak occurs, the teacher asks parents to report whether they have been to the affected urban districts.

These days I ask almost nothing of life. I know many people are in this same state: having a meal to eat is enough, and as it happens we have a meal to eat; our old clothes are sufficient, and the problems of food and clothing are solved, so I am well content. Tomorrow holds great uncertainty; perhaps the present life can continue, perhaps not, which makes the life before us all the more precious.