Shanghai authorities may be loosening one of the world's strictest lockdowns, but after weeks of uncertainty and food shortages, many foreign workers are now contemplating a life outside China's glittering financial hub.
The city of 25 million people has been under an increasingly restrictive lockdown since March as Chinese authorities — who still reject the idea of living with the virus — have tried to snuff out an Omicron-fuelled outbreak.
With supermarkets shut and deliveries restricted, there were reports of residents in China's richest city coming perilously close to running out of necessities.
While there is now some light at the end of the tunnel, many people remain confined to their apartments.
Some Shanghai residents are now allowed to walk within the grounds of their gated communities or even out on the streets.
But others who were supposed to be set free according to revised rules have been ordered to remain inside.
Cases in Shanghai are now hovering at about 26,000 a day.
But with China's government re-emphasising that it must keep pursuing a policy of COVID zero, the possibility of more lockdowns in the future is making foreign residents nervous.
"There has been, if not an exodus, a steady drip of expats leaving since 2020 for various reasons and that is only accelerating now," Simon Manetti, an Australian who has lived in Shanghai for 12 years, said.
Mr Manetti's family intends to stay in China.
But like many Shanghai residents, they have been swept up in the food shortages caused by lockdown supply disruptions.
Government-organised deliveries of milk, eggs, duck and vegetables have kept them going.
"We were very lucky and grateful to get it but we didn't realise how long we were going to be in lockdown, so it was not quite enough to feed a family of four," he told the ABC.
A positive test is a 'real-life snakes and ladders'
Despite restrictions easing for some compounds that have gone a fortnight without new cases, Mr Manetti's family expect to do 12 more days at home.
And it could be extended at any time.
Under the new rules, people can leave their building if all residents stay COVID-negative for two weeks.
People who test positive are taken to a government quarantine centre, even if they are asymptomatic.
If one person tests positive the clock resets for the entire compound.
Mr Manetti said he had seen it in action. Residents at a friend's compound were given 12 hours of freedom.
But then the gates were closed again, which Mr Manetti described as a "real-life snakes and ladders".
Other foreign residents have taken to social media to show the thriving barter trade that has emerged in communities.
"We gave some vegetables to a family a few days ago and they returned in kind with some butter," Cameron Wilson, a Scottish long-term Shanghai resident said.
"People are just doing what they can to get hold of stuff."
But Mr Wilson told the ABC that despite being in lockdown for 26 straight days, he was in a reasonably privileged position to deal with the food supply problems.
"I just can't begin to imagine what it must be like for people on the fringes of society," he said.
His compound had not had a new case for almost three weeks but local anti-pandemic organisers told residents they would not be eligible to leave their homes because of cases in neighbouring communities.
Will Shanghai lose its status as a global financial hub?
Cameron Wilson, who has lived in the city for 16 years, said Shanghai's foreign community had started to shrink even before the pandemic.
"There's a clear trend of people trickling out of Shanghai," he told the ABC.
"Not a month goes by without a going-away party for someone."
He too is among those eyeing opportunities elsewhere.
"I owe it to my family to do it," he said.
"Look at the situation: If I test positive, I could be taken away at any moment to a facility that doesn't even have showers. The lights are on 24 hours a day.
Before the lockdown started, Mr Wilson said he was told by his employer to have blankets in the office in case they were forced to sleep there.
"Even if this is over and they beat back the virus, it's just going to happen again," he said.
The chaotic scenes have served as a deterrent for some foreigners abroad seeking to return to Shanghai.
One Australian businessman who got stuck in Singapore due to China's COVID-19 border closures told the ABC he had abandoned plans to return to Shanghai.
"I really wanted to, but thank f*** I didn't," he said.
Shanghai's lockdown descended into chaos
The citywide lockdown was imposed without warning in March after Shanghai's government initially declared it had "no plans" for such a move and warned residents not to spread rumours about it.
Some residents say the food shortages and difficulties in obtaining basic supplies have helped forge community spirit within large apartment blocks.
But that silver lining has come at a tremendous cost: COVID-positive children have been separated from their parents, pets belonging to COVID-positive owners have been slaughtered, and tens of thousands of people have been forced into huge makeshift isolation centres.
The rigid measures have again sparked anger, with a prominent economist writing online that his 98-year-old mother died from kidney problems while waiting for a COVID test which she needed to access hospital treatment.
In March, a Shanghai nurse reportedly died from asthma because she also was barred from entering a hospital for treatment due to COVID-19 measures.
"I'm quite worried about medical treatment," Wang Qian, who lives in Shanghai's eastern Pudong district, said.
"You hear of people with all sorts of big or small health problems who need to get treatment at hospital, but at the moment they can't really go."
Shanghai officials say that of more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases since March, not a single patient has died due to the virus and the vast majority of people who have tested positive have had no symptoms.
Yet at the same time, the virus is portrayed as being so dangerous that the government is putting residents through an unprecedented level of disruption.
"We're angry because we see these real cases of people dying due to these measures yet we never hear of any serious COVID-19 cases," Shanghai resident Liu Yang told the ABC.
The extraordinarily low case-to-fatality rate and a much higher asymptomatic case rate reported in Shanghai has also led some experts to question the accuracy of the figures.
China won't give up the dream of COVID zero
Despite the clumsy lockdown in Shanghai and the stubborn daily case numbers, China's government this week reiterated that its elimination approach, known as "dynamic zero COVID", was here to stay.
State television aired an interview with a top doctor involved in the Shanghai quarantine and treatment effort, Zheng Junhua.
"If we don't continue the dynamic zero-COVID approach, our medical resources will be overburdened and our society will not be able to bear the rise in infections," he said.
Chinese authorities say the social and economic disruptions caused by the restrictions are usually confined to a period of weeks or months, and then normal life resumes once the virus is eliminated.
But there is a major political element too.
Throughout the whole pandemic, state media has framed the COVID-19 response as a "war" against the virus, with military medics being rushed in to battle specific outbreaks.
The man ultimately responsible for deciding China's pandemic response, Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, has been described in militaristic terms as a "commander" in the war.
The rhetoric contrasts with daily state media reporting of huge death tolls from COVID-19 in countries abroad.
"As the world continues to grapple with resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government puts people and life front and centre," government spokesman Zhao Lijian told a briefing in Beijing this week.
"We have full confidence that with the leadership of the Communist Party and the solidarity of the whole nation … Shanghai will soon bring the epidemic under control.
"We have the same absolute confidence in curbing infections elsewhere in China."
