Write an essay on Covid-19 impact on relationships between friends.
Answers
Both in China, which was the first country in the world to go into full lockdown when the virus emerged there, and in Hong Kong – where schools closed, shops were shuttered, and employees sent home – the virus has been brought under control and life has returned to some semblance of normality. But the pandemic has left some cracks in family relationships.
Most notably the high-pressure environment of confinement, combined with the financial stress brought about by a Covid-19 burdened economy, has led to a rise in marital conflict, according to Susanne Choi, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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This is most evident in a spike in divorce rates. In the city of Xi’an in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, marriage registration offices saw an unprecedented number of divorce requests when they re-opened in March. Online, the hashtag “Xi’an divorce appointment explosion” has gained 32 million reads on the social media platform Weibo.
“I’m doubling as both the man and woman in this family,” wrote a woman named Xuebi, on another Chinese social media site Zhihu, in a thread titled “After the epidemic, the first thing I want is a divorce”.
While she was working as a nurse in Wuhan’s over-stretched hospitals during the outbreak, her husband was at home with their five-year-old son having lost his job. But he was refusing to do jobs around the house, leaving it to her when she got home from her shifts, she complained.
Answer:
he Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped our personal relationships in unprecedented ways, forcing us to live closer together with some people and further apart from others. Life in lockdown has necessitated close, constant contact with our families and partners, but social distancing measures have isolated us from our friends and wider communities.
Both in China, which was the first country in the world to go into full lockdown when the virus emerged there, and in Hong Kong – where schools closed, shops were shuttered, and employees sent home – the virus has been brought under control and life has returned to some semblance of normality. But the pandemic has left some cracks in family relationships.
Most notably the high-pressure environment of confinement, combined with the financial stress brought about by a Covid-19 burdened economy, has led to a rise in marital conflict, according to Susanne Choi, a sociologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.