Artist protests Chinese policy wearing 27 Covid suits

One Sunday morning, a bloated Michelin-man-like figure walked through Times Square in New York, panting from the effort of trying to move while wearing 27 protective suits.

Inside the white cocoon was Zhisheng Wu, a Chinese artist who staged the street performance to criticize China’s relentless Covid zero policy.

“Protective suits have become a visual symbol in the collective experience and collective memory of every Chinese,” said Wu, a 28-year-old graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

With the hoods of the suits wrapped tightly around his head, exposing only his nose and part of his eyes, Wu said he had transformed into a “monster” with reduced senses.

Originally, he planned to use 100 of them, but found that 27 was the most he could manage. As he staggered, the artist went lower and lower until he had to resort to crawling. Eventually, he fell to the ground and was helped by his assistant to free himself from the suits, his face flushed and drenched in sweat.

“I want to use this as a metaphor for every individual Chinese being drowned in the political torrent,” he said.

During the roughly hour-long performance, passersby stopped to look at Wu or take pictures, although many looked confused by what they saw. In the United States, protective suits remain a rare sight in everyday life, even at the height of the pandemic.

In China, however, Covid workers dressed from head to toe in protective suits are still ubiquitous nearly three years after the virus emerged. Nicknamed “dabai,” or “big whites,” they work at Covid testing sites and quarantine camps, guard airports and train stations, and spray clouds of disinfectant on streets and residential communities.

For many in China, they have embodied the government’s zero-tolerance approach, which relies on mass testing, extensive quarantines and instant lockdowns to eliminate infections at all costs — even as much of the world has outgrown the pandemic.

For Wu, the dabai are also an embodiment of power and subjugation. “You feel like you can never get out of their control. There is an invisible sense of oppression,” he said.

The dabai are the soldiers of the government’s Covid zero campaign. They include residents who volunteer to help their neighbors during lockdowns, as well as bureaucrats and public health professionals who carry out measures that – especially to outside observers – can border on the absurd.

In cases that sparked nationwide protests, unidentified dabai have driven seriously ill patients and pregnant women out of hospitals, taken residents on overnight buses to quarantine camps, and entered empty homes to disinfect furniture and appliances.

“They could be ordinary people or their neighbors. But once they put on the dabai attire, they become a distant manager, an emotionless machine,” Wu said.

The cost of Covid zero

Wu was living in Beijing in late 2019 as the world’s first coronavirus outbreak was emerging more than 600 miles away in central China’s Wuhan. He recalled his burning anger over the death of Li Wenliang – the doctor who was accused of spreading rumors by the police for trying to warn the public about the virus – and his sense of helplessness amid the widespread censorship that followed.

He was locked up in Beijing for two weeks, filled with anxiety and fear for the future. But the Covid situation in China soon improved. By April, the outbreaks were largely contained and life returned to some sort of normalcy.

Wu was admitted to a graduate program in Chicago, but due to China’s border closure and the United States’ ban on flights from the country, he had to take his classes online.

State media reports at the time were touting the success of Covid control efforts in China, highlighting the rise in infections and deaths abroad and warning of the serious consequences of the prolonged Covid. Wu was so scared of catching the virus that when he arrived in the US in August 2021, the masks “became part of my skin,” he said.

It didn’t take long for Wu, who was vaccinated, to overcome his fear: he ended up catching Covid and was lucky to recover quickly from his symptoms. Meanwhile, restrictions in China have become increasingly stringent after the arrival of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

From Chicago, he followed the news of Shanghai’s two-month lockdown, the bus accident that killed 27 people being taken to a Covid quarantine facility in Guizhou, and many other reported costs of Covid zero policy, from business closures to rising of the unemployment rate. The artist’s own family and friends were also impacted.

Wu’s father, a professor in an eastern province, was punished by his university for fleeing an impending lockdown and returning to his home in Beijing without his employer’s approval. Her mother was prevented from visiting her sick grandmother due to travel restrictions. Many of Wu’s friends in the art industry have lost their jobs as galleries and exhibitions have closed amid ongoing lockdowns.

“All these costs are born to each Chinese, as small and inconsequential as dust particles,” he said.

compelled to act

Wu, who studied at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, has used mixed media installations, sculpture and photography to explore issues facing China today. He decided to speak out against China’s Covid zero policy by staging his performance in Times Square on October 16 – the opening day of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the most important event on the country’s political calendar.

Such a performance would be unthinkable in China, where artists have faced increasingly strict censorship since leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. But staging it in New York could also pose risks for Wu and his family.

The artist said he was concerned for his parents’ safety in China, fearing they could be subjected to possible government retaliation. But he said he nevertheless felt compelled to go ahead with the project and express years of pent-up emotions about Covid zero.

On Sunday, Xi defended his Covid policy, insisting that it “maximally protected people’s lives and health” and “balanced epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development.”

Some analysts took this as a sign that China is unlikely to relax its restrictions on the pandemic anytime soon. For Wu, China’s insistence on Covid zero is directly linked to its political environment.

“I feel like the power (of the government) is growing bigger and bigger, getting bigger and bigger like a giant,” he said. “And as individuals, our feelings and emotions will be increasingly submerged as we become smaller and smaller.”