Residents of Shanghai, once among China’s wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities, panicked and hoarded bottled water on Tuesday and Wednesday after a warning that taps would be shut off in ten residential areas, ostensibly to clean the pipes.
Shanghai has very bad memories of a nightmarish two-month coronavirus lockdown imposed without warning in July that resulted in food and medicine shortages and is nervously watching as a fresh wave of lockdowns descends on other Chinese cities.
“The anxiety felt by the public and the associated loss of trust in the authorities appear to have left a psychological scar on residents,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) observed on Wednesday as Shanghai stores were stripped bare of water.
“It was obviously an irrational buying euphoria because many people were not even aware of why others were buying it. They just followed others to buy some water too,” a bemused supermarket employee told the SCMP.
A Shanghai retiree named Bao Lihua said there was nothing irrational about the water-buying frenzy.
“The [Chinese coronavirus] lockdown sparked surging suspicion about the local government’s credibility and integrity. It is not wrong to stock up with some water just in case a crisis becomes a reality,” she argued.
As another resident memorably put it on Weibo, China’s version of banned Twitter, “I’m afraid that people’s current mentality is that they have been bitten by snakes for 10 years and are afraid of rope.”
“Bottled domestic brands were sold out at several supermarkets in Shanghai’s Pudong district — home to the Lujiazui financial area — though more expensive imports were still on shelves. Water was unavailable in some neighborhoods on major local online grocers such as Dingdong Maicai and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Hema,” Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.
Shanghai officials suggested the temporary tap shutdown was meant to deal with the routine problem of saltwater from the East China Sea seeping into the Yangtze River freshwater supply. The saltwater infusion was particularly heavy this year because droughts have lowered the Yangtze’s water level more than usual.
“Tap water production and supply are normal, and water quality standards have been reached,” the city government declared on Wednesday, without any visible effect on residents who continued lugging off all the bottled water they can carry. In fact, some of them apparently grew even more nervous after the government insisted they had nothing to worry about.
“I originally had two boxes left in stock, but when you refuted the rumors, it made me think that these two boxes are not enough?” one wag taunted the city government on social media.
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