Artist Zeng Fanzhi depicts ‘zero-COVID’ after a lifetime of service to the Chinese state

BY DAKE KANG

SHENZHEN, China (AP) — In one painting, a child sits, mouth wide open, as a worker in white medical garb extends a long cotton swab toward her tonsils. In another, a masked officer and medical workers stand guard in front of an apartment cordoned off with ropes and seals reading “CLOSED,” as residents look on with frustration and despair.

These are some of the portraits that Zeng Fanzhi, 85, has painted to commemorate three years of China’s strict “zero-COVID” controls, which sparked nationwide protests a year ago. But Zeng, a retired architect living in Shenzhen, is not a harsh critic of the measures, under which millions of people were tested, locked in apartments, or carried off to quarantine centers.

Zeng has spent much of his life in service to the Chinese state, designing monuments in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and coal plants for the Ministry of Coal. He’s