Tight supplies

Daily necessities also became a practical issue for many families like Qi's, never thinking they needed to prepare for the long haul. Shopping for food and supplies became a challenge, especially in Wuhan, as supermarkets and grocery stores were places to avoid for the sake of minimizing people-to-people contact.

Instead, people relied on the community staff of their residential areas to help with their purchases. Orders are placed in WeChat groups, and the staff would inform residents of the arrivals of their meats and vegetables, which are often put down at the community entrances for people to pick up. As for the quality of the produce, nobody has the luxury to be picky.

Liu Yong, a Wuhan native and an associate professor at a local university, heard about some online grocery stores that offered an alternative to buying through community staff. She was hardly the only one, judging by the speed of things getting sold out. Liu had to act quickly and place orders right at 10 p.m., when new stock becomes available every day.  

Liu said the prices have been noticeably higher, and vouchers—which most online shopping platforms in China have used to attract customers—are no longer being offered. Still, considering the situation, Liu said she did not feel like she has been ripped off, and she counts herself lucky whenever she was able to buy what she wanted from the online market.

One item has been particularly hard to come by—face masks. Everywhere in China, those who must venture out of their homes are wearing masks in the public. Few shops could keep a stock earlier during the outbreak, and people who bought them had to find ways to keep from running out.

Hunkering down 

Wang Bing, a Wuhan native who has a job in Shanghai, said he was fortunate to have friends from outside the province to send him some masks—a lot of people did not. He heard that some families have to share the one or two masks they had, and reuse them again and again. He said it reminded him of old stories of poor families sharing one pair of good pants, and whoever had to go out got to wear them.

Yet Wang wondered whether people in Wuhan right now might feel even more shackled than the people in those stories. He said he heard rumors of someone getting infected just by taking a walk downstairs, so he and his family have chosen to stay indoors as much as possible—even though they are allowed to move around within their community compound.

But if he and his wife can manage hunkering down for weeks, his five-year-old son is finding the boredom and isolation extremely difficult to deal with. Wang said his son had searched every corner of the home to find things to play with. "He even dug out the soil in the flower pot."

However great their anxieties, though, Wang said they could not compare to what the people infected by the virus are going through, which fortunately did not include any of his family members so far. Many who he grew up with were not so lucky, and Wang said he was especially troubled by the news that a friend and his wife both had the virus, one of whom might be beyond cure.

"It was simply too miserable." Wang, preferring to use a pseudonym for the interview, said he could not yet bear reaching out for more updates or to ask about the couple's two young children.