The second last day of my time at the kindergarten, we received news that cases had been found in Wuxi. It was a conspiracy observed one of the teachers. For it seemed that every time there was a holiday, the government would announce cases as if they didn’t want people to travel. This was said between preparations for the graduation ceremony that was to be held the next day.
In the evening, just as I had finished ironing some nice clothes for the ceremony, I read on WeChat that the government had declared that the school year was over. So the ceremony was cancelled. The teacher still had to go to school though. The teachers wondered why.
The last day of my time at the kindergarten was spent standing around waiting for permission to leave. It was a sad day for me. Not so much because there was no closure with the children I had spent time with since September, but because my being let go was official. I was in a situation where I was ashamed to say what had happened to me and to say how my summer plans had thereby been ruined. Tears came to my eyes a couple times during the day.
Seven weeks I now have off. I doubt if I am going to travel. I have to move stuff out of the Xishan apartment. My wife Jeany does not want me to risk going somewhere and then being put in quarantine. (There is a person I am talking to on Instagram who had to quarantine for two weeks in Wuxi after coming from Shanghai).
The first day of my life after kindergarten was Trucker Day aka Dominion Day aka Canada Day, the national day of Canada. On a Canadians in China WeChat group, I made statements in support of the truckers and some prominent anti-lockdown Canadians like the Polish pastor persecuted in Alberta. It seemed that some people in the group wanted to derail possible trucker support by talking about the plight of aboriginals. I wouldn’t have anything of it, and called the people doing it regime stooges. One of them talked of aboriginal pipeline protestors being harassed by RCMP as being more egregious than what was done to the truckers in February and so how could he be a regime stooge. The aboriginals I told him were regime-approved victims. The point probably went over his head.
On July 1, I was at the Huai Shan apartment which I will sleep in starting August 1. It was so small. It will be a while before I stop cursing what happened to me at the kindergarten.
July 2, Jenny told me that 72 cases had been found in Wuxi. Is there going to be another lockdown? I wondered. How will my travel plans will be affected? I saw many ask on WeChat groups. In the morning, I took Tony to his baseball camp which is being held in Wuxi and they were to stay in a five star hotel. In the evening, I got a phone call from him where he sounded disappointed. The government had expropriated the hotel they were staying in so it could be used as a quarantine hotel. They were put in a less nice hotel. In the evening, there was to be a get-together with some of the teachers from my now former school that I was looking forward. Lockdown fears cancelled this One of the teachers who was moving to Xiamen on the 6th decided to catch an earlier flight (on the 3rd) so as to avoid lockdowns. I was faced with a lonely Saturday night in the Xishan apartment so I decided to take the subway to downtown Wuxi. There, I noticed the traffic was reduced to a dribble. I then saw that the Nanchang Temple market areas and walk streets had been closed. Restaurants were still open which was why I ended up drinking two beers by myself at the Red Lion. The Lion wasn’t that busy which put me in a good mood, or better to say a not so somber mood.
I heard there were lockdowns in the Liangxi district of Wuxi. For me, there have been daily NAT tests.
One of the things you rare readerscan expect from me in July & August, will be some blog entries.
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