The brutal lockdown brings the barrel to overflow the middle class fleeing from Shanghai

Take a vitamin C pill, spray disinfectant onto the elevator ceiling, go down to make a PCR test, hurry back into the apartment, put your clothes into the washing machine, shower and repeat the process.

while they are trying to suppress the fear that the authorities could bring them to a Covid quartan tanner center at any moment and kill their cats.

This was reduced by Nicole Tsai's everyday life, a 35-year-old marketing manager at an international company in Shanghai, for 60 days, which was going through the grueling two-month covid lockdown of the city this spring.

It is "a constant state of worsening and suffocation," she told The Telegraph.

After having been gradually losing political freedom in China for years and had no hope of improving in the future, the Lockdown caused the barrel to overflow.

Especially when she started to hear that people were culled as a measure for infection prevention.

"I was very sure that I didn't want to live like that anymore," she said. "I had to run."

Ms. Tsai belongs to a growing exodus of Chinese and foreigners from the middle class, the Shanghai - and sometimes the country - leave after the city's draconian lock in April and May.

For two months it was forbidden to leave their apartments to most residents of the 26 million city-including walking with pets or shopping-with the exception of almost daily PCR tests.

Thousands were housed in provisional quarantine centers, some in office buildings and exhibition halls. There were also widespread reports about people who had to go hungry due to a lack of food.

The strict measures with which large parts of the population were put under quarantine should keep the omikron variant of Covid in check and protect the economic center of the country.

But with still appearing cases, threats of new restrictions and no end to the zero-covid policy of head of state XI Jinping, China's wealthiest and most cosmopolitan metropolis is permanently drawn, while more wealthy residents pack forever.

Biao Xiang, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Ethnological Research in Germany, said: “It is quite paradoxical because these people who have benefited from China's economic development do not emigrate because of a higher income. They will not receive any jobs that are paid at the level that they would get in Shanghai.

"Nobody goes away for economic reasons, but out of concern for life itself."

At least 10,000 wealthy private individuals will leave the Chinese mainland and 3,000 will leave Hong Kong in the middle of Covid 19 restrictions and political uncertainties and take a total wealth of £ 53 billion, according to the advisory company Henley & Partners. Many other residents of the middle class and the upper middle class are also looking for a way out.

The term that circumnavigates in the Chinese social media is "Runxue" or the science of "walking away" from home, whereby people go to Weibo to exchange advice and share emigration plans.

in Shanghai affects the Exodus Chinese and foreigners alike, many of which were attracted to the international orientation and the many possibilities of the city.

Among them are Sasha and Colin, an American couple who moved there four years ago to found a company. They asked to use pseudonyms because they still run the business and fear reprisals by the authorities.

You said that you had fell in love with the authenticity and simple lifestyle of the city, as well as in the feeling that you could achieve everyone and create something together.

But all of this has changed now.

"I think the Lockdown destroyed this type of energy," said Sasha. "There are many collective fears and the effects on the mental health of the population [Are Large]. The government does not recognize how much damage it has done and how much fear and fear also exist after opening."

Sasha traveled together with the couple's seven-month-old baby at the end of March shortly before the complete closure to the USA, as soon as she heard that the authorities would separate children from their parents if they were positively tested for covid-19.

Colin remained closed for five weeks, after which he also left China.

The couple said it is already planning to leave the city that has become narrower in recent years, but the Lockdown had accelerated the process.

For the locals, the demolition and the subsequent departure have accelerated the deterioration of the quality of life in Shanghai - a process that has been underway for several years.

"The cultural environment was relatively free in the past, there were many exhibitions, live music, foreign bands," said Zhang, a 34-year-old programmer.

he said it used to be the most cosmopolitan city of China. "After this demolition, the blow against the educational industry and the hard through when learning English ... Foreign investors withdraw and many other foreigners will go. The cosmopolitan atmosphere is definitely evaporated."

Zhang now wants to emigrate to New Zealand.