“Everything is bitter, but Paris is sweeter” is the English translation of a Chinese phrase circulating on Chinese social media, reflecting the Chinese people’s hardship under the ruling communist regime’s lengthy Zero-COVID policy.
Zero-COVID is a policy of lockdowns enacted on entire cities and regions even when there are only a few cases of COVID-19.
The phrase expresses support for a famous western bakery chain, Paris Baguette, which provided affordable bread to hungry Shanghai residents in April—the hardest period of food shortage during the lockdown. But the bakery was fined 585,000 yuan (about $84,000) by the city’s market supervisor because allegedly “the production license did not match the actual sales location.”…