*This is part of our series on the nexus between COVID-19 and food systems.
The
purpose of this write-up is to express or show the impact of Covid-19 pandemic
on the food system in China as it has affected me.
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| Refrigerated Products - A Store in Shanghai |
I
am a foreigner, living and working in China for 18 years in the education
industry. A few years ago, I started a Nigerian ‘cook from home food and delivery’
on a small scale and I also cook Nigerian food for various events and parties
in Shanghai where I reside.
What
became now a pandemic started as an epidemic in the city of Wuhan in China’s
Hubei Province in late 2019 as I remember. On January 24th, 2020,
which was Chinese New Year eve, I travelled with my family to celebrate the
Chinese New Year in my younger brother’s in-law city which is at least six
hours drive from Shanghai where we both live and work. My brother and his
family left a day before us with lots of food. We set out the following day and
filled the trunk of the car with many delicious foods both perishable and non-perishable
as custom demands during the festival.
We
arrived at the city in the afternoon of the eve after driving for more than six
hours, checked in at the hotel and then headed to the family house for the eve
dinner which usually starts in the evening. We ate, drank, lit fireworks
because it’s a village and after midnight that ushered in the New Year, we
headed back to the hotel to sleep. We kept the food we brought from Shanghai in
the deep freezer hoping to cook it in the days ahead. Chinese New Year’s
holiday is one week, and we intended to stay four nights and then return to
Shanghai on day four. So, it was easy to estimate the food needed during the
festive period
I
would like to say the impact on me is in two ways. Epidemic impact (domestic)
and Pandemic impact (global). We went back to eat at the family house on
Chinese New Year’s Day and after dinner, we started hearing the news on the TV
about the seriousness of the epidemic (then) and nobody really prepared for
what happened next. After dinner the village head who happens to be a family head
informed us the village would be locked down the following day and we might
need to leave for Shanghai in case of lock down so that we would not be
stranded in the village. I just drove almost seven hours the previous day and I
would have to drive another seven hours back! For me, this is the beginning of
the loss of my mental and social strength because it’s quite difficult to tell
the host we must leave even though they also knew what’s at stake. In the end I
and my brother’s family were all convinced we must go back to Shanghai because it
would not be so good if we were locked in the village and our livelihood in
Shanghai may be compromised.
From
this time, I started experiencing the impact domestically because some foods
especially seafood and vegetables that needed to be consumed that night were
supposed to be thrown out. Even we tried to give it to our host but there was
just too much food so storage became a problem since nobody envisaged, we could
leave that night. We got back to Shanghai the following morning and very early,
so we were tired and slept off. In the afternoon we woke up and tried to listen
to the news and then it was reported some cities along the epicenter Wuhan also
had to be locked down. Those are the cities we passed by the other night and
were all relieved that we had taken the best decision to go back to Shanghai.
However, the same day we started hearing people were lining up to enter
shopping malls, restaurants, and apartment buildings. And their body
temperatures were being checked and recorded; there was a mask mandate, etc. My
wife decided to drive out to observe what was going on because I was just too
tired to even walk. A few hours later she came back, and she asked me to go
down and help her to move some foodstuff. To my surprise, she came home with a
lot of food and I was wondering if we were having a party that day. I asked her
why she bought a lot of food and she said people have started stocking up on
food at home in the realization that if the epidemic is serious, supermarkets
will run out of supplies soon.
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| Fruits and vegetables in a supermarket in Shanghai |
Infections
started to rise, and the unexpected lockdown happened and at this point, so we
needed to go stock our home with more food. As it was winter, we could put some
perishables like veggies, and fruits in the balcony because the deep freezer
and fridge were full to the brim. We even stocked our home with drinkable
bottled water. We should not forget this was Chinese Year, a one-week holiday. We
all believed everything would be okay after the holiday but that was not the
case and in fact, things got much worse.
At
the end of the holiday, it was already declared that no one was going back to
work. Schools, restaurants, and supermarkets were put on specific and monitored
schedules with regards to their food supply chain as it was said at that time,
humans are getting infected by eating bush or exotic meat. As a result, there
was stringent monitoring of the domestic supply chain for food which led to short
supply or sometimes no supplies of some food in the market. Since markets and
other food producing lines are being monitored for the opening and closing
schedule, people had to rush and buy in large quantities each time since we didn’t
know if we could get such items again next time and in what quantities that we
wanted to buy. Even now, sometimes I get the food supplies that I want and sometimes
I don’t, and I just must look for substitutes which only work in a few cases in
terms of consumption satisfaction. It came to a time when many local shops were
even shut down indefinitely thus making the supply chains limited. With money
in hand and few goods to buy, prices of commodities rose and sometimes were too
expensive to afford.
As
a freelancer in the education industry, my payment is based on services
rendered and when education institutions were locked down, cash was not coming
in and it was hard to cope with the rising cost of food. I did not have any
choice but to resort to spending my savings which I was hoping to use for other
things and till now I have not been able to pay back what I have spent. There
was no financial support in the form of loans or credit for non-citizens by the
government, so I was on my own.
After
a few weeks the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic as
cases of infections and deaths were seen to be increasing both locally and
globally and at that time China closed her airspace and nothing came in or went
out unless it was very essential. At that point the global (pandemic) effect of
Covid-19 started on the food system. At that time many imported cold food chains
and other imported food stores were shut down and it became impossible to get
supplies which couldn’t be substituted for, including, for example, palm oil,
which is a very crucial ingredient needed in cooking Nigerian food. I mentioned
I used to cook for parties and events or on personal grounds for clients from
my home to make some side cash. Before the pandemic was declared by WHO, I did
cook for people and delivered via a private delivery company that clients pay
for since gathering was prohibited and it became impossible to cook and eat as
a group. But when the pandemic was declared all these crucial ingredients for
which there are no substitutes here, stopped coming in and I did not have any
choice but to stop doing my side hustle. Until now I have not recovered because
the global food supply chain is still limited.
There
is, therefore, no doubt about how negatively I have been impacted by the epidemic
which later became a pandemic. I’m counting my losses in terms of the high
prices of food commodities (local and foreign), food consumption satisfaction,
unavailability of essential or crucial food materials or ingredients, and the eventual
shutdown of the business (cooked and uncooked). At a certain point the raw food
must be kept for me and eaten by me and that means I could not make any profit
on the raw food that we had to eat ourselves since I knew for sure I would not get the food ingredients again. I can
only hope things get better and the airspace returns to the pre-pandemic level.
Hopefully the food supply chain can be normalized both domestically and globally.
Adedeji Ayodeji Adekunle
Shanghai Resident & Foodie
Guest Blogger, ECVOntario