Imtiaz Ali shares throwback pictures when he visited China in 2018

Critically acclaimed filmmaker Imtiaz Ali shared a few throwback pictures on social media when he visited china as a tourist in 2018. In his post, Ali said that he is glad that he visited China when it was a normal thing to visit the country before the Covid-19 crisis.

Sharing a series of five pictures on his Facebook handle, Ali wrote, “glad I made it to China when I could #throwback2018 #shotoniphone”

In the pictures, Ali can be seen dining at a local restaurant. He clicked a picture when people were watching a game football outside a restaurant and he also clicked a few pictures from the local market.

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, the Chinese government came under heavy criticism for not listening to the scientists and then hiding the virus once it had come out.

By early January, some local doctors in China had discovered the Covid-19, but the news was suppressed and the whistleblowers were punished. The WHO also didn’t acknowledge the virus. On 14 January, WHO tweeted that there was no human-to-human transmission of the virus. It was only on 21 January that the Chinese government acknowledged the virus for the first time. Then on 23 January, the Chinese government announced a lockdown of Wuhan.

US President Donald Trump has been referring to the Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” and even US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to the virus as the “Wuhan virus”.

The Chinese, on the other hand, are retaliating by calling it racism and discrimination. They are also propagating rival conspiracy theories, the most popular being that the virus originated in the US and was brought to China by the US military during world military games in Wuhan last year.

The Global COVID-19 caseload nears the 45 million mark while the fatalities due to the virus globally stand at 1.18 million deaths, as per the latest updates by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

Since May 2020, Chinese and Indian troops have also engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

On professional front, Ali’s last film ‘Love Aaj Kal’ which featured Kartik Aaryan and Sara Ali Khan didn’t make much noise at the box-office.

Ali also made his directorial debut on a digital platform with a Netflix film ‘She’ which starred Vijay Varma and Aaditi Pohankar in lead roles.