After 8 weeks of lockdown Beijingers have definitely put behind them the shock and horror that led to so much pessimism and so many predictions of social and economic disaster just a month ago. Yang Haisong, who heads Maybe Mars, China’s biggest indie label, even asked me if...

...he could invite a few friends to my house today for a back-to-work barbecue (the label’s office is in my courtyard house) and, as the pictures below show, there were several musicians who showed up. The party didn’t draw as many people as a Yang Haisong invitation normally...

does, which shows that many people are still reluctant to break social distancing, but you’ll notice that none of those who came wore facemasks once they arrived at my home. This would have been almost inconceivable just a week or two ago.

Social life here continues its...

...return to normalcy even though Beijing is still at “level one” lockdown, along with nearby Tianjin, the surrounding province of Hebei, and the central province of Hubei, whose capital is Wuhan. The rest of the country has pretty much opened up, and everyone seems to explain...

...the still-high lockdown level in Beijing with a “this is where the leaders live” shrug. In many provinces senior students are returning to school, although other students, including university students, are still doing all classes online. I myself just finished my 2-hour...

...Friday-evening class on financial markets at Peking University, and as of now I have no reason to believe that campuses will open this semester.

As I went this afternoon to the Sanlitun area for my biweekly food shopping, I didn’t see a significant increase from last week...

...in street traffic (cars, pedestrians and bikes), but that is mainly because we are 2/3s to 3/4s back to normal. The subway, however, was much more crowded than last week, with 63 people in my car, a 30% increase over last Friday. There was even a line in front of the...

...security machine at Tuanjiehu subway station (left). Bus traffic is still lagging, with few passengers in most of them, but it is pretty clear that many of not most people in Beijing are getting back to work.

Sanlitun had the crowds I have come to expect over the past two...

...weeks, although visitors must still get their temperatures checked when they enter the area and then again at each shop they enter. This temperature-checking all seems pretty perfunctory for now, although in China all petty regulations are enforced, no matter how useless...

...everyone thinks they are. Here are pictures of Starbucks (left) and the Apple store (right). People are getting snacks at food shops and buying food in supermarkets, but otherwise most shops remain open but empty, except for the occasional customer wandering around. I...

...noticed today that the paparazzi (left) who always hang out at Sanlitun snapping pictures of the occasional celebrity or overdressed shopper were out in full force in front of the fountain again – as much a sign of normalcy returning to Sanlitun as we could hope for...

...In the rest of the world I read and hear the same sort of doomed predictions of economic, political and social collapse as we heard in Beijing even 3-4 weeks ago, but in Beijing that all seems very far away right now. I suspect that within a few weeks the mood of the rest...

...of the world will also have lightened considerably. That is not to say we don’t have a difficult environment ahead of us – we clearly do, especially economically: notice that except for cafes (left), the shops in Beijing (right) are still mostly empty – but in the past few...

...weeks in Beijing the mood has been completely transformed and the future seems merely tough, not apocalyptical. I suspect that as the economic pain begins seriously to kick in, the mood will become grim again, but the end-of-the-world feelings will be over.

The last...

...picture I will end this with is of my taxi driver on the way home. Judging by his mask he clearly remains prepared for whatever else Beijing might throw at him in the way of disease.