Eighteen police officers guard the bridge on each shift, while a loudspeaker warns that "Hubei residents and vehicles are prohibited" from entry. For Hubei residents locked on the outside and trying to get home, like Shi and her grandmother, it's a passage into a surreal confinement that will last weeks, if not months. ADFor the country, the bridge symbolizes the sudden isolation imposed over Hubei, a swath of China's densely interconnected heartland that is now physically cut off. On social media, Chinese have condemned the 5 million so-called "public enemies" — Wuhan residents who fled the city in the days before and immediately after the government's lockdown order. "We had already been having five years of slowing economy — and now this disease," Tian said.

Source: Washington Post February 05, 2020 05:40 UTC