Residents of Beijing fretted over anti-virus restrictions curbing their movement while also worrying about the dozens of new Covid-19 cases reported daily, as China's leaders threatened action against critics of their zero-tolerance Covid policy.
Incurring a heavy economic cost and facing rare bursts of public criticism on its tightly-controlled internet, China is increasingly isolating itself from a world in which Covid restrictions are becoming a thing of the past.
Internationally, industry bodies have complained that Covid curbs in China have global economic reverberations. At home, the population is worried about painful, long-term restrictions.
Beijing is racing to avoid an explosive rise in cases like the one that forced the commercial and financial hub of Shanghai into an almost complete lockdown for more than a month.