A YEAR after historic protests broke out on Shanghai's bustling Wulumuqi Road, only a subtly increased police presence on main junctions betrays anything out of the ordinary.
But for many involved in what became China's most widespread demonstrations in decades, it's impossible to erase the memory of the events of last autumn.
In the early hours of Nov 27, 2022, vigils for victims of a fire in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi morphed into multi-city calls to end zero-Covid measures, and even in some cases, topple the ruling Communist Party and leader Xi Jinping.
Authorities responded by cracking down. But in early December, they abruptly lifted the strict health restrictions that had dominated people's lives for almost three years.
"Shortly after zero-Covid lifted, people just got back to their normal life. Everyone just seems to have moved on. No one's talking about it," said Li, a protester.
For people like Li, there is another reason for the silence: police visited her last month and warned her not to demonstrate.
Like many, she believed the country's harsh Covid rules had hampered rescue efforts when she joined the vigil on Wulumuqi Road to grieve the 10 people killed in the fire. Wulumuqi is the Mandarin name for the city of Urumqi.
Protests continued in Shanghai the next day, and ignited in other major cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu, with protesters holding aloft blank sheets of A4 paper to symbolise China's lack of free speech.
"It was not surprising that protests would break out in response to the anti-Covid lockdowns," the University of Toronto's Diana Fu said, noting bread-and-butter issues were common flashpoints in China.
"What was surprising was the anti-regime rhetoric." Overt political protest is rare in China.
Li said: "People are only going to protest for their rights when it affects them. That's why there were so many people."
Fu said the protests involved "a minority of Gen-Z and millennials" and therefore had not heralded a mass political awakening. For those who did join though, it was "a watershed moment".
Huang Yicheng, 27, who was briefly detained on Wulumuqi Road and later fled to Germany, said: "The social movement tide was very big, but we were stranded like fish on a sand beach" when people went back to normal after zero-Covid ended, he said.
China's security apparatus sprang into action to quash the nascent movement, from scrubbing online mention of the protests to blanketing cities with officers.
On the second night of protests in Shanghai, Li said, police were more prepared to use force.
"They were dragging a girl into a police car. It was so violent, I keep thinking about that image," she said.
Huang was dragged upside down along the pavement, losing his glasses and shoes.
In the chaos, during which he said he saw women being beaten, he managed to escape without his name being taken.
Li was called to a police station a week later, and confronted with a picture of herself at the protest.
William Nee, analyst for Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said he estimated more than 100 people had been taken in or detained across the country after the protests.
He said most had now been released, except for Uighur student, Kamile Wayit, 19.
Human Rights Watch recently called for her release, along with that of Peng Lifa, who in October 2022 unfurled an anti-government banner across a Beijing bridge. "The longer-term impact is in breaking the norm of protest rhetoric," said Fu.
"Previously, protesters would cloak their demands in economic terms and refrain from pointing the finger at Beijing."
The impact on individuals is more tangible. Li said some of her friends had left China and planned on never coming back.
The writer is from Agence France-Presse