Fans dancing at an electronic music festival, long lines at breakfast stands, gridlocked traffic -- the scenes in coronavirus ground zero Wuhan these days would have been unthinkable in January.

The central Chinese city's recovery after a 76-day lockdown was lifted in April has brought life back onto its streets.

The queues snaking outside breakfast stands are a far cry from the terrified crowds that lined up at the city's hospitals in the first weeks after the city was quarantined in January to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The hazmat suits and safety goggles that were once the norm have given way to umbrellas and sun hats as tourists shield themselves from the scorching summer sun, posing for photos in front of the city's historic Yellow Crane Tower.

But all is not back to normal.

Business remains slow in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people where the coronavirus was first detected late last year before it unleashed a global pandemic.

"In the first half of the year, we only opened some projects that had been decided before the outbreak," Hu Zeyu, an employee at a local real estate company, tells AFP.

"Business volume has been greatly reduced."

Food stall owner Yang Liankang says things are improving slowly, with sales growing from around 300 yuan ($28.72) a day a month ago to more than 1,000 yuan.

"It's not as good as my ideal," he says.

In some Wuhan neighbourhoods, plastic barriers ubiquitous during the lockdown continue to restrict traffic.

Many of the people first found to be infected worked at the Huanan Seafood Market, which was sealed off by the authorities.

It still stands empty behind blue barriers. Some vendors have reopened their stalls elsewhere.

Wuhan has also had time to look back on its trauma, though only some memories make it into the official narrative.

At a pandemic-themed exhibition, families peer through glass at autographed hazmat suits used by medical workers at the height of Wuhan's outbreak, in an attempt to document an unprecedented period in the city's history.

China has largely brought its domestic epidemic under control, but sporadic outbreaks and a summer of severe flooding have exacerbated the economic fallout.

Despite fears of a resurgence, some Wuhan residents are keen to enjoy the city's recovery.

"Now I enjoy every day as if it were the last," says Hu Fenglian.

"I don't want to worry too much."

China promotes its 'heroic' battle against virus in new exhibition
Beijing (AFP) Aug 11, 2020 - Chinese workers raise their fists beside a red communist flag in a painting displayed at a Beijing museum, one of nearly 200 works put together for a propaganda exhibition that hails, not the Maoist past, but the "heroic deeds" of frontline medics fighting the coronavirus.

Since the discovery of the deadly contagion in Wuhan at the end of last year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to model itself as the vanguard in the fight against COVID-19.

Outside China, Beijing has been the target of Western criticism over accusations that it covered up the initial outbreak, silencing early whistleblowers -- including doctor Li Wenliang, who alerted colleagues to the virus in late December but was reprimanded by local authorities.

But inside the country, the CCP propaganda machine has relentlessly pushed a positive narrative.

China officially recorded around 85,000 cases and just over 4,600 deaths -- a fraction of the world's total -- and has now largely brought its domestic virus spread under control.

The National Museum of China's "Unity of Strength" showcases paintings, sculptures and calligraphy, all faithful to the socialist realism style, that depict what the regime says is its success in responding to the crisis.

Tens of millions of people were forced into a crippling lockdown when Wuhan and its surrounding province were shut down in late January.

As the virus gripped the nation, the power of the usually omnipotent and omnipresent President Xi Jinping seemed to waver, with the leader even disappearing from the state-run media for a couple of weeks.

- 'Great contribution' -

But the exhibition at the museum overlooking Tiananmen Square doesn't show the overwhelmed hospitals in Wuhan, or the homages given to Doctor Li -- whose death from the virus in February triggered an usual outpouring of rage against the government on social networks.

Among the large canvases on display, a painting shows an ecstatic nurse reading a letter from President Xi to her colleagues.

In the middle of the room, life-size sculptures of soldiers disembark from a plane to come to the aid of stricken inhabitants, with their uniforms evoking a scene from the Long March -- a military episode by the Red Army in the 1930s during China's civil war.

One emotive piece depicts a nurse with a face mask adjusting the full protective suit of a colleague, while another features a close-up portrait of the country's most famous medical expert, Zhong Nanshan, with a tear streaming over his mask.

The state-run China Daily said, "despite not working on the frontline to battle coronavirus, artists spare no effort to document the heroic deeds of those that did, hailing their great contribution to the cause".

The exhibition, which opened on August 1 for two months, only allows visitors with Chinese identity cards, and so is not accessible to foreigners.

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Europeans warned not to forget virus as temperatures soar
London (AFP) Aug 8, 2020
Sun-seekers flocked to beaches Saturday as parts of western Europe baked in a heatwave, but authorities urged people to avoid crowded areas and keep wearing their masks over concerns at rising numbers of coronavirus cases. The day after Britain recorded its hottest August day in 17 years, at 36.4 degrees Celsius (97.5 Fahrenheit), much of its southern coastline was packed with visitors, many of whom had been forced to abandon foreign holidays because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. Authorities ... read more