Restaurateur and martial artist Dev Raturi’s upbeat videos of life in lockdown have been very popular
Dev Raturi has not come out of his apartment for eight days. He couldn’t do it anyway – a white tape has been pasted on the outside of his door to seal him inside, along with his wife and two young children. As of Saturday evening, he was not told when he could leave.
Mr. Raturi is one of the millions of residents who have been confined to their homes In Xian, the provincial capital of northwestern Shaanxi and a city famous for its terracotta warriors.
Xian’s residents were initially confined to their apartment blocks in the lockdown that began on 23 December, only allowing deliveries and groceries without leaving their compounds. but with covid-19 case Crossing 2,000 a month – the highest anywhere in China since the start of the pandemic in Wuhan – has made many of the city’s 13 million residents stay at home.
On Saturday, Jian reported only four cases, suggesting that the lockdown is working. The stringent measures, however, have imposed what compares to the darkest chapter in Wuhan’s early days since the initial Wuhan lockdown for 76 days in early 2020 for any city in China.
When a Xian hospital recently refused a pregnant woman facing an abortion, a national outcry prompted an unusual apology from China’s deputy prime minister Sun Chunlan, who said she was “embarrassed”. Hospital officials have been dismissed.
Other residents complained of lack of food in the first days of the lockdown.
“Of course it has been difficult,” explains Mr. Raturi. Hindu In a video interview, showing the sealed door of his apartment. “But I know it hasn’t been easy even for the volunteers here, who bring us vegetables, rice, food, oil every day, who are doing what they can.”
Dev Raturi with Chinese stars Zhang Xinyu and Hu Yitian on the set of the television drama “Checkmate”. Photo: Special Arrangements
Mr. Raturi’s family is from one of the worst-affected districts of Gian. Born in Uttarakhand, he moved to China 17 years ago and started working as a waiter. Inspired by martial artist Bruce Lee, Mr Raturi trained in New Delhi, but was unable to enter the film industry in Mumbai. When he was offered the opportunity to move to China to work in a restaurant, he thought it was destiny. “That’s how Bruce Lee got started – in a restaurant,” he said. So he packed his bag.
Today, he owns five restaurants in Xian and also acts in film, and has gained fame for his roles in several Chinese television dramas and films, starring in over 20. Most were bit-part roles, but in 2020 the breakthrough serial “My Roommate is a Detective” brought her wide recognition.
Over the past month, his video interviews from his home have been watched by millions of viewers in China, partly because he is not only a foreigner, but is known to many, and partly because of his upbeat spirit. , as he provided an on-the-ground picture of the current COVID-19 ground zero.
In the first few days after the December 23 lockdown, Mr Raturi said, there were reports of some apartment blocks struggling for access to food.
“They were not prepared for such a situation,” he said, but once users started complaining on social media, officials swung into action. “He made mistakes, but he learned from them,” he said, adding that every family in his block was given free vegetables, rice and a box of oil the day after social media posts complained about the shortage.
But for many in China, reports of difficulties in Xian and the harshness of the measures have sparked a debate over the country’s “zero-Covid” strategy, which calls for mass testing and lockdowns to bring cases to zero. .
“Xian procrastination,” wrote columnist Wang Jiangwei south china morning post on Saturday, “exposed the dark side of China’s top-to-bottom ruling approach. The leadership of the Communist Party now demands full allegiance from its more than 90 million party members, and they are required to follow instructions to the letter. This has created lethargy at all levels of the Chinese bureaucracy, in which lower-ranking executives will only do what their superiors ask, leaving little room for differing opinions and flexibility. ,
That criticism also answers why the official media has given Mr Raturi’s video such a currency, part of a recent trend of using foreigners to refute the criticism. Chinese state media recently publicized videos of foreigners traveling in Xinjiang to respond to criticism over the internment camps there. Most were Western expatriates in China, but one of the videos shared by Chinese social media was of a Mandarin-speaking Indian YouTuber in New Delhi who was criticized for visiting an outlet of retailer H&M in the Indian capital and not using Xinjiang. was praised for doing. Cotton.
Mr Raturi said he was aware of the trend, but added that his aim was “simple” – straight talk to “whatever I see, good or bad”. In interviews with Chinese media, he called for a more balanced approach and said the lockdown cannot be permanent.
With Gian in the news, Mr Raturi said he received anxious phone calls from relatives in India, as he did two years ago when Wuhan was under lockdown.
“I have never regretted not going to 2020 when everyone told me to leave China,” he said, adding that for the past 18 months, his children were able to go to school and they were leading a largely normal life .
Not only this, he further said, “My work here is not over.”
“I want to fill the cultural gap because there is misunderstanding on both sides,” he said, referring to friends in India who were sending him “crazy articles” saying that millions of people in Xian were starving and In China which will send them only bad news about India.
Their next mission is to open China’s first Indian-themed boutique hotel in Xian this year. He is also opening a yoga space and plans to reopen his restaurants in half a dozen cities outside Xian, which were temporarily closed as all of his staff left for India when the pandemic struck. Was hit and have been unable to return due to China’s continued travel restrictions.
“Permanent lockdown is not the solution,” Mr Raturi said. “My hope is they find a better balance.”
Until then, the doors to his apartment, not to mention China’s door to the world, will remain firmly closed.
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