The lack of food was beginning to bite.  Really bite hard. Like so many other people did earlier in 2020, I started turning to alcohol to cope. While doing quite well to conserve my supply at the beginning, I went more than a little overboard last night and basically lost my mind.  It was a nasty combination of the ongoing lack of nutrients from food deficiency with alcohol calories that have absolutely no nutritional value.  

Some compounds were getting government deliveries every day.  A guy from the neighborhood committee would knock on the door  BANG BANG BANG and deliver a sleeve of noodles, some vegetables, eggs, and basic provisions.  If you had money it was useless since you couldn't get any food delivered in.  Everyone was getting the same government crap, that is if they were the lucky ones and it wasn't pilfered on the way over first.  As for us, we got nothing.  We were the rich entitled foreigners now being punished and shown what true equality means under communism. 

Surely this was one of the worst possible things about this miserable lockdown.  It suddenly gave a fresh light of meaning as to what must have happened during the cultural revolution and this dark period of Chinese history.  I was never there, but the lockdown started opening my eyes as to what this place was really about.  Mao and his philosophy had not gone away.  We would be kidding ourselves to think they had.

But later, somehow my wife managed a clever way for us to get us access to the group buying networks as well as the government handouts.  It was not an easy task, but lately more and more items started getting delivered.  

Even so, the key to survival was conserving the stocks that you had the foresight to prepare at the beginning.  As time goes on I'm eating less and less and feeling hungrier and hungrier.  Last night I could not sleep at all, mainly due to lack of food and the hot weather starting up. So yes I went to bed hungry.  The rest of the day not much happened as of note, I just had to adjust my appetite and get used to eating less.