{SHANGHAI ~ February 17, 2020}
It was a nice and sunny Sunday on February 9th– day #17, when I had an apartment-meltdown. My step counter of my health app counted in average of 30 steps a day and my body started hurting from sitting at the table the entire time.
I decided to jump on my bike and go for a ride around the city. So far I only left my place to go grocery shopping, but when I cycled all the way through Xuhui district and up Jing’An I couldn’t believe what I saw:
Nothing. No one.
Empty streets and highways. Closed stores, closed cafes, empty parks, a few people here and there – it was like a ghost town.
In a city with 23million people everyone stayed inside their apartments.
I cycled on main roads, over 4 lane crossings for over 2 hours. It was great to be outside but it was also frightening.
On February 9thShanghai had 281 confirmed cases. The rest of the world had 300 cases with Germany 14 and Italy 3 cases. Everything was still far away…
