After feeling almost fully recovered from the jet lag I woke up feeling pretty good and the weather had also changed here, the smog was lifting and you could almost see the sun. After some breakfast, we ventured out to the supermarket to stock up on food and water to make sure we had enough food to sustain us for the coming weeks, just in case.
We walked to the shop where upon entry we had our temperatures taken and access to alcohol wash for our hands. We filled our baskets with long shelf life food and a mixture of fresh meat and veg, not the really fresh live toads though, we gave them a miss. We knew that if we were going to be stuck inside, good food was going to be important and luckily for me, James is a pretty decent chef.
Leaving the walls of the community for the first time was my chance to see what the city of Hefei was really like. To my surprise, the streets were totally empty. This isn’t a small city, far from it. The population of Hefei is close to 8,000,000 people and it is usually full of traffic and people going about their daily city life, but not today. The streets were empty, the few vehicles on the road were mainly busses and they too were empty. This was the first real wake up call that something really wasn’t right.
On our way back we had a message from one of James’ friends. She’s away on holiday out of China and wanted to see if we could take care of her cat as she didn’t know when she’d be able to return. Since we’d cancelled all our travel plans and were facing the prospect of a few weeks mainly inside, a cat seemed like a great addition to the flat. A short taxi ride across the city and we had collected Coco along with cat food and supplies.
We spent the evening at our friend Steve’s house to have a meal, it was great to catch up. I hadn’t seen Steve since we were at Uni together in Cardiff. It was really nice to get out of the flat again to get some semi fresh air, even if it is through a mask.
Side Note:
Steve also decided to join and stay with us in the flat for the next few days to avoid being on his own, and of course to make FIFA a bit more tasty.
Ben In China 