COVID-19: Beijing closes down businesses as millions told to work from home - but government in China avoids calling it a lockdown

In Beijing, schools, gyms, hairdressers, parks, restaurants and bars are shut, millions have been told to work from home, but do not call it a lockdown. The Beijing government zealously avoids the term. Instead, the phrase currently in favour is jing mo, 'stay silent'. And the city, especially Chaoyang, Beijing's biggest district, is indeed very quiet, with much fewer cars on the streets. And because everything is shut, life is fairly boring. Getting a PCR test - you need a negative one within the last 48 hours to enter supermarkets, or your district may have been told do to mass testing - is one of the more interesting things to do.