RPT: FEATURE - Beijing Residents Keep Social Distance Despite Easing Restrictions After COVID-19 Lockdown

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th April, 2020) After driving for more than one hour, Shawn Feng, together with a group of family members and friends, arrived at a park in the suburbs of Beijing, the Chinese capital, around noon on Monday. As it was approaching lunchtime, the group of six decided to eat at a restaurant nearby before visiting the park.

"It was the first time my family and I ate in a restaurant after the Chinese New Year [in late January]. We tried to avoid restaurants with a lot of people. That's why we picked a restaurant that allowed us to sit in a separate room. That restaurant actually only offered separate rooms for customers without allowing people to sit in the common dining hall," Feng, a 41-year-old Beijing native, told Sputnik during a phone interview on Tuesday.

Many local residents in Beijing shared similar experiences of eating outside of their homes and taking a walk in the park with friends for the first time during the three-day holiday weekend in China known as the Qingming Festival. After living under strict quarantine measures for almost three months, the new experiences during the long holiday weekend brought a sense of normalcy back to the Chinese capital.

As part of China's response to contain deadly COVID-19, Chinese authorities introduced strict measures to reduce the movement of residents living in most Chinese cities including Beijing in late January, when the epicenter of Wuhan was placed under complete lockdown. Most of the local businesses and public venues were ordered to shut down and local residents were recommended to stay home and avoid public gatherings.

Despite the city having not reported new confirmed cases for weeks, several restrictive measures remain in place in Beijing as of Monday to prevent any rebound of COVID-19 infections.

According to Feng, he had to be registered each time he left or returned to his residential compound and had his temperature measured at special checkpoints established at the entrances. In China, most residential buildings in the same community are walled off leaving just 2-3 entrances for the whole compound, which makes it easier to monitor the movement of residents in the neighborhood.

Before Feng and his group were allowed the restaurant on Monday, they had to register with their legal identifications and had their temperatures measured.

"We all had our face masks on the whole time and only took them off when we began to eat," he said.

As of Monday, Beijing has reported 416 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 8 fatalities. But the recent surge of imported cases, which stood at 171 by Monday, led to local residents like Feng continuing to take precautions when going outdoors.

"I'll only take my family to the parks in the suburbs and avoid all places where there could be a lot of people. I'll also continue to try to cook at home as much as possible to avoid eating in restaurants," he said.

While China's strict quarantine measures appeared to have contained the coronavirus from spreading further in the country, they also came with huge economic prices, especially for those in the service industry such as restaurants and retailers.

Chinese press reported that a large number of smaller restaurants and stores began to put up "leasing" notices, an indicator of bankruptcy, after being shut down for almost three months. For a number of larger franchises, including the popular hotpot restaurant chain Haidilao, they began to raise prices for their dishes after reopening to cover the losses during the period of shutdown, the Beijing News, a local newspaper, reported.

For consumers like Feng, he used to take his family to shopping malls at least once or twice a week. His 8-year-old daughter would take a number of classes available at different child education centers in the malls and they would eat in different restaurants before heading home.

But today, Feng has canceled all those activities for his daughter and the family would only take a short walk in parks close to their home when there are fewer people outside.

"I don't know when life will go back to normal again. Maybe I'll feel more confident when the classes resume at my daughter's school. I definitely would like my daughter to socialize with other children more. But it seems it's still too early for that now," he said.

Similarly, Tan Huiyan, a 37-year-old who has been working in Beijing for over 15 years, said her lifestyle changed a lot after the outbreak of COVID-19 started.

"My boyfriend and I used to eat lunch every day outside on working days. In the evenings or on weekends, we also used to eat outside in restaurants 2-3 times a week. But after the epidemic started, yesterday [Monday] was the first time I went to eat in a restaurant," Tan told Sputnik during a phone interview on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, Tan said the experiences during the epidemic also gave her a new view of her previous lifestyle.

"I've been cooking at home every day and tried to find new dishes to make. I realized that a lot of the money I spent before was totally unnecessary. I think everyone began to try to save money and not spend excessively," she said.

Tan has not collected a paycheck for three months from her company, which was struggling under the strict quarantine measures. Tan decided to quit her job because of the negative outlook for her company's business and her boss promised to pay her all the salaries from the previous three months by Friday.

As consumers like Feng and Tan began to adjust to a new lifestyle while restrictive measures were being lifted, a large number of businesses such as restaurants and retailers would be forced to face a new reality of shrinking consumption.

As part of the government's efforts to restore consumer confidence, local authorities in about 30 Chinese cities, including Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, started to issue discount coupons to local residents, the official Xinhua news Agency reported on Tuesday.