Shanghai’s residents have turned to swapping supplies under lockdown—but is Coca-Cola really the most in-demand item?
“[Shanghai has] reached the age of bartering,” announced a bespectacled woman in a video on streaming platform Bilibili from April 10, swathed in a head towel and rubbing her shoulder, apparently in a state of complete exhaustion. “Money is now useless.”
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Alex Colville is the former culture editor at The World of Chinese. Blown to China by the tides of curiosity, then marooned here by the squalls of Covid, Alex used to write for 1843, The Economist, and the Spectator from the confines of a cold London flat. When he’s not writing for TWOC, he can be found researching his bi-weekly column for SupChina from the confines of his freezing Beijing hutong.
