City of plague:A new Yorker’s pandemic chronicle Pt 11.

We stayed home to avoid the virus—not to avoid hunger.

No matter how dangerous the world outside became, the body still demanded its daily tribute. Food was not optional. It was the quiet law of survival, older than fear, older than disease.

Experts reassured the public that there was, so far, no evidence that COVID-19 spread through food itself. The stomach, they said, was a hostile battlefield for the virus. Gastric acid was strong enough to destroy most pathogens clinging to what we ate. Still, caution became ritual. Everything had to be cooked thoroughly. No risks, no shortcuts. Because if even one invisible particle lingered in the throat instead of sliding safely into the acid below, the consequences were too terrible to imagine.

I listened to these reports obsessively, clinging to every fragment of certainty they offered.

Ironically, as my world shrank to the size of my apartment, my appetite grew.

I had assumed that staying home, moving less, and working fewer hours would weaken my digestion. Instead, the opposite happened. My stomach became an endless hollow, a quiet abyss that could never quite be filled. Hunger visited me not just as a physical sensation, but as a psychological reassurance. Eating made me feel anchored in a world that had lost its stability.

By April, I had become something like a half-awake animal, driven by instinct. A middle-aged man orbiting his kitchen, opening and closing the refrigerator door as if it might contain answers.

Eventually, hunger overcame fear.

I had to go out.

Manhattan’s Chinatown had always lived in two worlds at once.

Even after decades in America, traces of another homeland remained everywhere. Red Spring Festival couplets still hung beside doorways, their ink faded but their sentiment intact. Supermarkets displayed goods imported from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Southeast Asia—rice brands with familiar packaging, dried herbs in red-lettered bags, sauces that carried the taste of memory.

Before the pandemic, these stores pulsed with life. Narrow aisles filled with voices, bargaining, laughter, and impatience. People brushed shoulders without apology. Proximity was ordinary.

Now, proximity had become danger.

Many shop owners simply closed their doors. It was not cowardice. It was calculation.

America was a nation of laws, and lawsuits. Every misfortune could become a legal battlefield. If an employee became infected, who would bear responsibility? The employer? The insurance company? The government? Or no one at all?

The answers were unclear.

When the law is uncertain, fear becomes the only reliable guide.

Paying rent for an empty shop was painful—but predictable. Losing a lawsuit, or worse, losing a life, was not.

So they closed.

Doctors urged people to strengthen their immune systems: eat fresh fruit, drink milk, consume eggs, nourish the body.

New Yorkers obeyed, especially Chinese immigrants. We trusted food not just as sustenance, but as medicine.

The city allowed people to drive for essential errands. But that freedom belonged to others.

I did not own a car. I did not even have a driver’s license.

In New York, owning a car was both easy and difficult. Easy to buy, difficult to keep. Parking was a daily battle. Finding a space near home could take hours. The subway, for all its grime and unpredictability, was more reliable than any private vehicle.

It had always been my transportation.

Now, it became my calculated risk.

The subway was eerily empty.

Once, it had been impossible to find a seat. Now, entire rows remained vacant. People sat far apart, avoiding eye contact, as if proximity itself were an accusation.

I felt a strange, guilty relief.

Less crowded meant less danger.

Still, every cough echoed like a gunshot.

After more than thirty minutes, I arrived in Chinatown.

And there, reality reasserted itself.

A long line stretched outside the supermarket.

People stood silently, spaced six feet apart, their faces hidden behind masks. No one spoke. No one complained. We waited like supplicants outside a fortress.

Time had become the new currency.

After nearly an hour, I reached the entrance.

I stepped forward eagerly—and was immediately blocked.

A man stood guard at the door. Without a word, he raised a handheld thermometer and pointed it at my forehead. The device beeped. He glanced at the screen, then gave a brief nod.

Permission granted.

I entered.

But something inside me recoiled.

I felt less like a customer and more like a suspect who had just passed interrogation.

Inside, the store was quieter than I had ever seen it.

The fruit section was half empty. Prices had doubled.

Oranges that once sold four for a dollar were now two for a dollar.

I hesitated.

My mind calculated, resisted, surrendered.

Vitamin C was no longer just nutrition—it was protection, or at least the illusion of protection.

I placed the oranges in my cart.

At the meat counter, the shock was worse.

Pork had doubled in price.

What once cost two dollars per pound now cost four.

I stared at the small display, at the carefully arranged cuts that seemed suddenly fragile and precious.

For someone who had always believed that a meal without meat was incomplete, this was more than inconvenience. It was a quiet humiliation.

I chose a smaller piece.

Compromise had become a survival skill.

After visiting multiple stores, I finally gathered enough supplies.

The shelves told their own story.

Toilet paper was gone.

Hand sanitizer was gone.

Masks, gloves, disinfectants—all gone.

It felt as if the city had been stripped down to its bare essentials.

I still needed traditional Chinese medicine.

In times of crisis, old habits resurfaced.

But many herbal shops were closed, their doors shut like sealed secrets.

One shop was open, its door barely ajar.

The owner stood guard, allowing customers in one at a time.

When I asked for cough medicine, he immediately refused.

“I don’t have it,” he said sharply.

But I could see it on the shelf behind him.

I understood.

In those days, buying cough medicine was like confessing illness.

Illness meant suspicion.

Suspicion meant danger.

I left without arguing.

At another herbal shop, the owner recognized me.

He handed me paper and asked me to write down what I needed.

He prepared the order inside while I waited outside like a sentry.

When he finally allowed me inside to pay, another customer approached and asked for Lianhua Qingwen capsules—a herbal remedy rumored to help against COVID.

The owner reacted instantly, denying its existence and closing the door.

Fear governed everything.

Even commerce.

My herbs cost nearly two hundred dollars.

Prices had tripled.

I paid without complaint.

Because in that moment, the money felt secondary.

These herbs were not just medicine.

They were insurance.

Hope, packaged and sold by the pound.

When I finally stepped back onto the street, my bags heavy in my hands, I felt both relief and unease.

I had secured food.

I had secured medicine.

I had secured, perhaps, a few more weeks of safety.

But safety had become fragile.

Conditional.

Temporary.

The city around me was no longer the invincible New York I had once believed in.

It was something quieter now.

Something wounded.

And like everyone else, I was learning to survive inside its silence.