In the tenth week of the lockdown much of Beijing is back to work, but it seems to me that consumption – or at least shopping – is going to take longer to come back than I had expected. The streets are pretty busy – about 70-80% back to normal during work hours although less...

...than that later in the evening – and even the busses are starting to see some riders (although still well under one-third of what we would normally see), while the subways seem to be at two-thirds normal rush-hour capacity. I counted 71 people in my subway car, versus...

...63 last week at the same time and 50 the week before.

In my neighborhood many of the smaller shops are open, although many are still closed, probably permanently. Among the open ones you can see (below) that the shop on the right allows customers to enter and while the one...

...on the left still has barriers that require customers to order from the door. The good news is that the local liquor shop (left) is finally allowing customers into the shop. Meanwhile Nanluoguxiang (right), normally the most crowded street in Beijing because of all the...

...Chinese tourists, is nearly empty.

In Sanlitun, where I go for my food shopping, there were plenty of people walking around outside, but fewer than during the previous two weeks, probably because a small rise in infections last week in the Chaoyang district – credited to a...

...teenager who had returned home from school in Florida and had passed the two-week quarantine but turned out still to be infectious – made it one of the last places in China to remain on high alert. There were still people in Starbucks, various cafes, the Apple...

...store, Uniqlo, and wherever else trendy young people like to congregate, but fewer than usual, and as in previous weeks, most of the other shops remain almost completely empty of customers. The few people you can see in the pictures below are mainly bored shop attendants. I...

...I also found it very easy to find an empty taxi when I had to return home. What is more, earlier this week all the gyms and indoor sports areas, which had been open for a couple of weeks, were once again closed, without much explanation.

I don’t want to exaggerate the...

...worry and I certainly don’t want to encourage conspiracies. The entrance to my hutong is still guarded (left), but the two security guards are so relaxed that they waved me through without bothering to check my temperature or my pass – the first time this has happened since...

...they began barricading my neighborhood many weeks ago. The 5-6 people working at the office of the indie music label with whom I share my house (left) have been coming to work every day, and are even planning two releases this week and next, and once here no one bothers to...

...wear a mask. The reason for the increased concern, I suspect, is that Beijing must be planning to important “Two Sessions” meetings, and they want it to go off without a hitch. Meanwhile people are still frightened enough that if we hear about new spate of 5-10...

...infections, even in this city of over 20 million we all become a little more cautious.

For me the real problem is that as Beijing returns closer to work and leisure normalcy, we are not seeing anything comparable in shopping. Next week China is setting up an online...

...“consumption festival” aimed at encouraging people with money to spend some of the money they didn’t spend during the past three months. We will see how effective it is, but I suspect we should all prepare ourselves for the possibility that consumption might take longer to...

...revive than we might expect, and that a lot of shops, restaurants, and performance spaces are not going to survive Covid-19.