paint me. on. the snake those who look at me. my i'll say. i'm soledad o'brien. the secret of. starts john 3rd d.w.i. . china is still dealing with the effects of corona virus. the pandemic has changed everyone's lives. there's now a new normal. getting clued frequent digital tests for the virus.

first to scan this barcode. that automatically opens a health app. and when i take a look at the screen. the app says no no abnormal conditions no no abnormal conditions so i get the green line where the doctor if this were red i'd have to be quarantined for 14 days you have to until your data to including the passport information and date of birth country of origin of what the opponent. and the app can find out where i've been and where. but neither the chinese authorities nor the manufacturer will tell us how it works it's like a black box. lots of places have bieber scanners out front. even a slight increase in body temperature can set them off. no

. there aren't a lot of tourists here at the great wall of china even though lockdown restrictions have eased a little people are cautious and well monitored at this station visitors use their smartphones to scan a barcode this is the 1st time in a long time that has left her hometown she's here with her mother and her son. you type in your name phone number and home address and then the app decides whether you can come in. this is just one of many new health apps now used in china. a quick check of their body temperature and they're off to the summit. like many in china this family has been

living with lockdown restrictions. they haven't left their home for months. today they're taking a day trip to. this section of the great wall is about 70 kilometers north of beijing. it's normally crowded with tourists. but the family almost have the place all to themselves so they don't need to wear face masks and they can enjoy a bit of the great outdoors. so that's out. we spend more time at home now so i have to come up with new ways to keep my son busy what we play together a lot of what the. joke is 8 years old. he hasn't gone to school for several months so he studies at home. my mom has changed a lot she's always at home and she's really stressed out she gets upset 57800 times

more than she used to. the pandemic has made everyone more cautious we're on our way to interview a worker and even he asked us to use a health that. this is who you know shoot. after our apps show up green he satisfied that we don't pose a health risk. who tells us that for the 1st time in 20 years his working life is falling apart. i know. there he used to hire himself out as a day laborer usually at construction sites. but he says those jobs are hard to find these days and then there was. the lockdown restrictions that made it more difficult you must specially the social distancing requirements. but i think that we've come through the worst months of it now.

who takes us to the place where he and others wait for employers to come by and offer them work. but it's an unofficial labor market. when we arrive a lot of the workers get up and leave. the men are looking for work in factories or on construction sites. people here say there are fewer jobs. and wages are lower than before the pandemic and to me. who you assure you is cautious in his comments. he doesn't want to bad mouth the chinese government in front of foreign journalists even if your film there are still some problems but once they end the restrictions everything will go back to normal. but the pandemic has also created china's worst economic crisis in decades. at private

employment agencies like this one in beijing the jobs that are offered pay a lot less than they did just a few months ago. the equivalent of 20 euros a day they used to pay 30. dollars another unofficial job market just a few 100 meters away day workers wait here for employers to come off the more. there are about 300000000 migrant workers in china they helped to fuel the country's remarkable economic growth but now many of them are worried about how to make ends meet there are a lot fewer jobs now i think used to be all kinds of work and i've been waiting here for days my savings will be gone soon oh. yeah you know you by the way you know last year there were jobs that pay 200 you want today. today the average is on $100.00. 100 you one works out to about 13 euros

a day. was we now leave the outlying districts of beijing and return to the heart of the city i 1st glance life here looks pretty much like it did before the pandemic i but here's something new checkpoints set up by the communist party's neighborhood committees. these officials decide who can enter the area i am devoured by there are checkpoints on just about every side street to take people's temperature on one of a few months ago only people who lived here were allowed in but now you just share your health code data and that's it. still the restrictions change constantly depending on the level of new infections more lock down restrictions could be imposed at any time and this makes it tough for people to move freely around the city high enough that the movie. there are long lines outside some restaurants.

these people don't pay much attention to social distancing. most of my life is back to normal now because i can go to a restaurant and. the thing that infects me a lot is i can't go back to work so i can't get my salary. much has changed because of coronavirus many people have lost their jobs and have been forced to live on their savings. the fact sisters noodle restaurant has come up with creative ideas to deal with the situation for example the guests are separated by plexiglass panels at their table. to what the other toner duty and she has also distributed these advertisement around the neighborhood. her business is doing well despite the effects of the pandemic. which will go soon pat

i think it's a matter of mentality i try to think positively after all people always have to eat . these pitches from late january to late march guests were not allowed inside the restaurant so within 2 weeks dugard set up a takeout service since most of her employees had to stay home at that time do took everything into her own hands i told the lady that she's even taken extra measures to retain the trust of her customers men have in my little woman this take out receipt shows the body temperature of the cook and the employee who packed the meal road from her. we also list the temperature of the person who delivers it how much a little milk we got. jaring the lockdown the takeout service accounted for at least one 3rd of the restaurants turnover do didn't have to lay off any of

her workers. take out service is still available but now customers a returning to the restaurants in droves and turnover is way up due has found ways to work through this crisis i. i. i feel good about our situation we do a lot of take up business but if we pack up new orders all day long i think we have just enough people to do all the work but i may hire one or 2 more. finals i tell you that. the government is helping out by paying the employees share of social security contributions for the workers for one year that's an important subsidy for this business. meanwhile back at the. great wall of china change walsh wang and her mother and son are enjoying their visit because

of the lockdown restrictions there are no huge crowds like back home in beijing there's plenty of room to walk around and the risk of infection here is low. but chen and her mother are taking no risks when it comes to the health of dzhokhar . they still don't allow him to meet with his friends that's another complication created by the pandemic. they're about to have a meal at this restaurant. but before they're allowed in they have to provide their names and phone numbers and they have to have their temperature taken. in china people often share dishes of food but today the family have chosen to do that only among themselves and only here in this private room. i'll eat in a restaurant out here in the countryside but not in the city now that the risk of

infection is low or we can take occasional day trips but most of the time we stay at home by. grandma jang says people have a duty to protect themselves and others. oh we have to be careful of void crowds and follow the guidelines if everyone does that china will prosper and things will get better and better what. chen and her family believe that the government's policies will help to lead the country out of this crisis. she is a human rights lawyer who takes a critical view of the government's coronavirus policies. the. under surveillance 24 hours a day we didn't know until the last minute whether we'd be allowed to interview him

. when launch numbers of people recently took to the internet to demand freedom of speech she signed a petition that called for improvements in civil rights he says the police have ordered him to keep quiet. or not. they say that if i don't cooperate with my internet posts and stop speaking out it will have negative consequences for my family my children and me. there where you. know she 1st heard about a new unidentified virus last december he became concerned after 8 doctors who were trying to alert the public to the new threat were arrested in early january and they were accused of spreading false reports about the virus. when things like that happen we usually believe exactly the opposite of what the

government is saying. there's a saying on the internet that what the state media defines as rumors or more likely predictions. are foreign colleagues probably won't understand that unless they grew up in east germany. she fears that the pandemic will allow the government to increase its control over society he's concerned about the digital data that scented into the system whenever he uses a house down. and he believes that that app based surveillance will continue real now after the threat of virus infection has passed. we are. going to do more community one of the horse. in the past chinese citizens had to provide their personal data when they bought a train or bus ticket or booked

a hotel room and. they were also checked by facial recognition technology. now i have to go through that process not just when i travel but also here at home serbia. number you for our government now has complete coverage of the population of course with facial recognition 1st more data confirmation and passport registration transfer. we're on our way to beijing international airport there are strict security controls here even though the facility is mostly empty. overseas flights are full enough sharply because of the pandemic. we're here to pick up a journalist for an interview we've agreed not to use his real name so we'll call him chung hi he spent the 1st 76 days of the lockdown in will han it's been 4 months since he was in beijing. the return trip was complicated so each time he

boards a plane or other form of transport he has to register in trivia a passport number the health then determines whether the data is correct. or i try to buy a plane ticket at the apps and that under current regulations i was not allowed to come by the values that we have with god sure so i tried to buy a train ticket but that didn't work either what's he uses something like it's your war then chelm got help from a communist party neighborhood committee which has a say in such matters. a whole though after 2 days on may the 16th i was allowed to buy a plane ticket to the hall for the votes of what before. during his time in we han chung wrote about individual people who had been affected by the pandemic. you know with published worsley your book. in one article line talks about a doctor who treated coronavirus patients and then became infected herself use of

the hallway i mean she was not treated quickly was not given a hospital band and later died at the age of about 30. or later a lot of readers criticized me for writing such a tragic story or telling us that. nationalism is on the rise in china right now and negative reports about society a discouraged chung's article is no longer available on the internet. if you click on it you get an error message that says i violated the guidelines but it doesn't give specifics it's possible that some readers posted negative comments or complaints of the author or it is as in the. chung still has no idea what he did wrong. or. maybe i did break the law someone here with us at the person you would certainly not clear to me which was without without

a way of helping us with and i don't know why the article was censored the way someone without as our what. the authorities are also cracking down on other journalists and we were on these pictures of lee's a while were taken just before he disappeared critical reporting on the pandemic can have serious consequences used to work as a news anchor for chinese television now she said there are lots of. back in france. but he quit his job moved on and started filing freelance investigative reports. he even applied for a job on the night shift at a funeral home so he could get an idea of how many people were actually dying and will haunt. you. lee was doing

a live webcast at his apartment when plainclothes police turned up and arrested him he wasn't seen again for 2 months. in april he appeared in a video and claimed that he'd been in quarantine but many who have seen this clip i doubt that he was speaking freely. an attorney named chen shushi also filed independent reports on his coverage was read by millions chen has not been seen since february 7th. his mother has turned to social media to try to find out what happened to him. journalist being filmed crowded hospitals and on a few days after he did a video interview with german broadcaster a r d he was placed under house arrest been has not been seen in public since february

9th. the government eased to lock down measures in ruhani in early april before that life was difficult the city was sealed off and many residential streets were blocked for weeks people were not allowed to step outside shopping for essential zz was organized by the neighborhood committees. this is the 1st time in 4 months that journalist a high has been in his apartment in beijing he tells us that his experiences with the pandemic. affected him deeply. what you have are so many people especially those in families are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder you see others feel terribly guilty because they fear that they brought the virus into the family wants out some even feel responsible for the death of a family member to see it all for true this in the. hospital was.

accounts of doctors and nurses tell a grim story at the start of the outbreak hospitals were poorly equipped and understaffed patchy were you going way too often or one doctor described how he managed to save one patient but not another job because he couldn't treat him quickly or through the use of the situation was unprecedented finance us with our use at the field the effects of the pandemic will likely be felt for years. back at the great wall grammar jang takes a photo of dzhokhar a souvenir of their lockdown day trip to this world famous structure. later jane told us that she was pleased with the government's response to the pandemic. she said. i think that other countries can learn something from the way we've handled this we chinese know how to take preventative measures and protect

ourselves and everyone follows the government's rules and regulations don't you see any. results at all. many others agree they trust in the guidance of the communist party it's the leadership who should make important decisions. not the people. that's how china works our leaders come up with ideas and the people should obey them and not complain too much it's for the good of society you know if we all work together we can solve problems faster but if people have a lot of different opinions things can get out of control if we have so incredible how can you know so that's the difference between socialism and capitalism i think you should be more like china. foreigners always want freedom freedom can kill you . there's freedom for you you get sick keep walking around in public and in

fact everyone else. maybe these people are just giving us the official government line in any case china's leaders are trying to portray their country as politically and culturally superior and responsible world power. chinese state t.v. often shows pictures of medical aid shipments bound to various foreign countries it's good publicity. this is who and an economics professor at ching law university and a government advisor he says china is a world power that loves peace. civil fashion. china doesn't want to new cold war we want peaceful cooperation and development that benefits both sides equally 'd 'd. but he says the u.s.

does not want to be upstaged by another wild power. foreign china's growing and washington simply can't deal with that. that's why the u.s. is always challenging us here. and the pandemic has actually increased china's self-confidence. now we're driving to the outskirts of beijing to a resort that was quite popular before the pandemic. a checkpoint has been set up on this access road only local residents are allowed to enter the area. you holmey on runs a small restaurant here it was allowed to reopen in april but the customers have to sit outside. the e.u. make sure that there are plenty of disinfectants on hand to keep people safe.

customers have to go through the usual procedures. first they enter a barcode check to help out have their temperature taken and give their home phone number and address. lou is happy to be back in business so far this year she's lost 50 percent of her turnover now home or will not have the virus comes back it'll ruin us restaurant owners are having a really tough time now. this temple reopened recently. but foreigners are not allowed to visit as a health precaution. guests at this in have to show health data about their temperature taken and provide a passport photo. it took almost 10 minutes to download the right app and put all the data but now we're good

to go we're going about. we start talking with the manager but then her husband intervenes. oh he says foreign journalists can't be trusted so she shouldn't talk to us and the interview is over. but. we visit a small hotel nearby the owner has been waiting for 3 months for permission to reopen. but then a colleague warns him against talking to foreigners. the local communist party leader has put out a phone message it says that anyone who talks to foreign reporters could face serious consequences. since the outbreak of the pandemic fewer people want to talk to us they seem to be worried about saying the wrong thing and they don't want to get into trouble here.

we return to be joining to visit chen and her family following their trip to the great wall. we're pleased they've invited us into their home since many chinese believe that foreigners could help to spread the virus. these people are part of china's prosperous middle class chen has been working from home for months. her husband is a construction manager at a state owned company it's a secure job but he's often on the road for weeks at a time when he returns he helps to home school his son. i can't meet with his friends yet but he now has a smart watch so he can stay in contact. with the family is doing well but they still long for the pre-planned demick days when wife was much simpler. and chen says that homeschooling her son is a real challenge so. when the kids were in school they had one

teacher for each subject but now i have to cover all of them so you're still we've overcome these difficulties together. we've weathered this storm and it's been good for both of us. meanwhile grandma jang continues to i'm worried about her family's future. so sure we can't let our guard down i don't have to stay vigilant be able to feel safe again only when the virus disappears from china and the rest of the world. would you complain if look of this family has been living in crisis mode for 5 months now like millions of others but here at home they have peace of mind and kind of scape the new normal conditions outside the restrictions of the digital controls and fears of a new wave of infection. can

india. such a puerto rican for a delicious curry urban farmers are preventing spices from kindergarten. to desert on my own possible or to put down a single drop of water is wastage and there inland 15 turns 3. in. 30 minutes on t w. this

is t w news coming to you live from russia victory day 2 we're bringing you that special anniversary. as russians celebrate 75 years since the end of the cold war to send them of course postponed commemorations but now they're going ahead on the eve of the vote to extend president who seems term limits.