On yet another compound walk we heard the sound of English at the gate.  Some friends of our neighbors had broken out of their compound in another district and walked 5km to get here.  We all congregated at the gate and started cracking out the beers while introducing ourselves.  Three of them were on one side of the front gate, three of us on the other side.  The guards didn't bat an eye but we got plenty of frowns from other onlookers.  One local walking by outside complained about the lack of strict management.  He could eat dogshit as far as I was concerned.

It wasn't long after that I got a call from a friend I hadn't seen in two months.  Gee I wonder why?   He had also broken out of his compound and actually walked over 7km to see me.  For that he got a bottle of gin.  We then mixed drinks and had another party talking through the fence at the side gate.

Elsewhere in the city things were getting wild and out of control.  A large crowd of expats and locals had either been released from their compounds or had broken out and were now thronging the streets.  Since no businesses were open they just improvised with  a literal street party.

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The police tried to shut it down but they made a pretty half assed effort out of it.  If this was mid-lockdown the police would have swooped in fast and furious.  But now, my guess is that the job was outsourced to rank and file police officers who were themselves tired of all this pointless lockdown shit.  They were just dictated to like everyone else.  If more serious action was to be taken, it would have to come from higher up.

And right on cue, the next day someone higher up in the district shut down that entire block.  Most likely the police the night before who were responsible got punished.  

Believe it or not, parties of this sort were actually rare before the lockdown.  Things were mainly a lot more orderly and taking place inside bars and clubs etc...  Certainly not on the street.  But people were mad as hell obviously.  That or a combination of cooped up and let out of their cage.  It was a strange mix of anger, frustration, and joy that this kind of street party would break up.  Even so, it would take years to heal from all this pain.  One illegal street party wouldn't solve much.  Many, if not all of those expats would end up leaving Shanghai as soon as possible, at the very most in a few years.