2023-04-20 06:00:00
CHINA: Justin Jin came across a COVID policy that appealed to the “general interest”, as the one-child measure did at the time.
Whenever I take a plane to China from Europe, where I live, I embark with enthusiasm. But when I went on a photo mission last year and walked past an army of PPE-clad airport workers, I felt a chill.
In 2022, when I was preparing to spend five weeks taking photos for this issue’s article, China’s draconian “zero COVID” policy authorized the government to lock down cities and confine anyone infected. Consequently, my flight to Beijing was diverted to Xian, 1,200 kilometers away, where I began my 10-day preventive quarantine in a room, with a camera facing the door and a loudspeaker that issued a loud alert if I opened it.
Once my confinement was over, I was able to move freely, as long as the health code that I had on my mobile continued to be green. For that, I had to undergo a PCR almost daily and install monitoring applications that recorded if I had been close to someone infected. At any sign of an outbreak, I would move without delay to another part of China, fearing I would be confined.
In the 1990s, when I started photojournalism, buying a train ticket meant waiting in line for hours, and the journey from Beijing to Shanghai took 24 hours; Today you can book a ticket in a few seconds from your mobile, and the high-speed train makes the journey in about four hours. But the COVID controls slowed everything down, causing huge delays and incidents. When I finally arrived at my destination, I often found my photo sessions canceled due to sudden lockdowns.
Friends and colleagues from Chongqing to Hangzhou would let me know in real time which neighborhoods had outbreaks so I wouldn’t get caught up. I always tested negative, but one day my code inexplicably turned red: suddenly I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. After two days, the code went back to green without knowing why.
Some 1.4 billion Chinese lived daily with these controls. Most of the people I spoke to resigned themselves, convinced that it was a sacrifice for the good of all. Perhaps they reasoned like the previous generation, which had stoically accepted the one-child policy in favor of economic growth.
Courtesy of the Emezi family
Lagos-based artist and photojournalist, Yagazie Emezi photographed Nigeria for article 8 billion. This early 1990s photo shows (from left) little Yagazie with her older brothers Akwaeke and Jamike, dressed for a party in her village of Old Umuahia, Nigeria’s Abia state.
I finished the job and returned to Europe. Within weeks it became clear that people had run out of patience. China responded to widespread discontent over COVID measures by removing PCR testing booths, color coding and quarantine centers. After three years of national isolation, the country turned 180 degrees and entrusted itself to herd immunity. When I called the people I had photographed to check on them, many were sick or caring for sick family members. I rushed to get my elderly father to safety, taking him out of Shanghai, but it was too late: he was already infected. Fortunately, he has recovered. —JJ
NIGERIA: Yagazie Emezi returned to find her hometown “hadn’t stopped growing.”
It is bitter to understand that home does not stay forever in the same place. When I left home, I wasn’t old enough to know that my parents were renting. In my mind, our home would always be ours. I still dream of being in Aba, in our little three-room house, with the white lace curtains brushing the glass slats in the windows. In those dreams I see the orchard, the cassava and the corn that we grew, and in the center of it all our huge frangipani, always in bloom.
The Aba where I grew up, in south-eastern Nigeria, was a commercial hub of bustling markets, rough roads, and people who were shouting and smiling at the same time. It was also a violent place. In my memories, down the street, some men are beating another, and no one pays attention to their screams. My father tells me not to leave the house because there are riots. Burnt corpses left out in the open give off a stink, and vans loaded with boys pass by, waving machetes and swearing to fight crime. They were the signs of a Nigeria that I did not understand.
But woven into those shadows were also quiet streets lined with stalls selling soaps and sweets. Where peanut and frozen yogurt vendors would sometimes appear, hawking the wares in melodious chant; where the afternoons fell slowly, as if time wanted to do everyone a favor. In a street like that I spent my childhood.
If I close my eyes, in my memories I see a picturesque and comfortable childhood. Many days we could play safely in the street, chasing each other with the bike or having wheelbarrow races. One night the moon was so bright and blue that we all ran out of the house, whooping with joy at the satellite’s audacity, the adults laughing with us as we chased each other and our shadows. I remember looking around and seeing the dancing figures of my neighbors, knowing that I would never forget it.
In 2005, before leaving home at the age of 15, I ran my fingertips along the walls, through each of the cracks that were so familiar to me. I kissed my cats and whispered to my dog that I would be back soon.
I returned in 2012. My pets were dead, my sweet little house was falling apart, and the huge frangipani had no flowers. Our landlord hoped that the progressive deterioration of the property would end up scaring my father away. Then he could take down the partitions and make smaller rooms to accommodate more tenants. Aba never stopped growing, and with it the demand for housing and commercial premises also grew.
The last time I was there, in 2020, many of our neighbors’ houses had been transformed into churches, schools, hotels and nightclubs. There was incessant car traffic on what had been a quiet street. The landlord had given my father a year’s leeway. And in the yard, the huge frangipani had been cut down. —YE
This article belongs to the April 2023 issue of the magazine National Geographic
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