Xian residents are exchanging cigarettes for cabbages, dishwashing liquid for apples and sanitary pads for vegetables. A video shows a resident trading a Nintendo Switch console for one packet of instant noodles and two steamed buns. Radio Free Asia reports that one resident offered a smartphone and a tablet for rice.
An obviously frustrated poster on the Twitter-like Weibo site talked about the "return to a primitive society." In a once-modern but now-primitive Xian, authorities have been enforcing isolation to end transmission of COVID-19. Residents, for instance, have not been permitted to leave their homes to buy food since December 27. Prior to that, they could go out once every three days to stock up.
