Walking on thin ice
Wuhan locals often joke, you can forget putting on clothes, but you can't forget your phone with your "green code" in it.
"Green codes" have dominated Wuhan residents' lives throughout the pandemic. Every public place, residential community, shopping mall and office building has its own code for entrants and leavers to scan; one will only be allowed to enter or exit the building after showing a green code, and having their temperature scanned.
Wuhan's Tianhe International Airport and train stations also require arrivals to the city to apply for green codes and report their travel histories abroad if they have any.
Users of the code also need to choose "enter" or "exit" as so to help big data analyze the time of one's stay in one place and conclude whether they rub shoulders with suspected patients.
Ever since taxis resumed services from Wednesday, passengers have to scan and show drivers a green code before getting in.
In Wuhan, although restaurants are open, dining-in is strictly prohibited in fear of infection. Many restaurants have even used short cabinets to block entrances into cooking areas in case customers happen to walk in.
Vendors are gradually returning to one of Wuhan's biggest wholesale clothing markets in Qiaokou district. The market has about 6,000 vendors, and less than one third have returned to work since Wednesday.
Apart from showing green codes and having temperatures scanned at the entrance, managers of the market will test vendors' temperatures one by one twice a day.
Zhang Lili from the market has five bottles of disinfectant at the counter next to the entrance door of her shop. "Every customer will be soaked with alcoholic disinfectant before entering."
Zhang from Baishazhou market said all sellers here will undergo disinfection five times daily "We are instructed by the market to keep a one-meter distance and use public chopsticks while eating with others."
In Wuhan's busiest business district, Wuhan International Plaza Shopping Center, 29-year-old Zhang, wearing medical gloves, was carefully squeezing disinfectant out of a small bottle on a public bench wiping a "clean" spot for herself before sitting down.
"Yes, Wuhan's coronavirus cases have dropped drastically; and yes the city lifted the lockdown. But I think we should be more cautious than before to protect ourselves. Now nothing soothes me more than a face mask, a bottle of liquid soap and the smell of alcoholic disinfectant," said Zhang.
