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WUHAN – The night I arrived just before the city closure was lifted, the streets of Wuhan were mostly empty.
The occasional car passed, but for most of the way, it was just the two cars in our convoy.
State television had shown footage of cars queuing at a toll booth, their drivers vying to be among the first to leave at the time the city reopened. But by the time we visited the next day, about eight hours later, the queues were gone, replaced by a stream of vehicles.
That first day, the streets still seemed pretty empty.
As the days passed, more cars began to return, but traffic is still far from normal. Even pedestrian traffic is light.
On the first day of the city’s reopening last Wednesday (April 8), I went to the Han Street shopping district, an open-air shopping street by the river with international street brands like Nike, Uniqlo, and H&M, with dozens more with local offers.
Hundreds were outside, but most kept a distance, except in a meandering queue, with no safe distance, at a skewer store.
When I returned last Saturday, it seemed that the novelty of being outside was gone and most of the street was largely deserted. But it could also be the sudden drop in temperature that kept people home: No one wants to catch a cold, let alone a fever these days.
Unfortunately, I cannot take public transport because foreigners cannot enroll in a Hubei “health code”, a specialized application on their phone to demonstrate that they are healthy and a prerequisite for traveling on the subway.
Like many other major cities, traffic jams in Wuhan are inevitable.
But in the past five days, I haven’t found a jam.
Speaking to a taxi driver, I asked him what it has been like to return to these empty streets.
“I can’t recognize it,” said Zhang. “Right now, I took a wrong turn and needed to use a GPS to find my way.”
When we took the second Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, the murky waters of China’s longest river running below, someone tried to cut Mr. Zhang off when he suddenly changed lanes.
He honked his horn and seemed tempted to embark on a car chase when he suddenly erupted in throaty laughter.
“Do you see this behavior? Wuhan is back.”
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