Soccer fans in China are getting a rare glimpse of how the rest of the world has moved on from Covid during this week’s televised World Cup matches, and they are growing increasingly angry about the seemingly endless pandemic restrictions imposed on them by their own leaders in the name of combatting the virus.

China on Thursday expanded the lockdowns across the country as the number of Covid cases in the country rose by 31,444 — the highest daily figure since the virus was first detected at Wuhan in late 2019. While Beijing authorities won’t use the term lockdown, most non-essential shops in many districts are closed, people are working from home, and restaurants are only serving takeaway food.

Meanwhile, residents of China watching the World Cup are seeing a world very different from their own, with stadiums full of maskless spectators and raucous celebrations across the capital of Qatar, Doha. Chinese social media has been full of angry diatribes about the lack of similar freedoms at home.

An open letter questioning the country’s lockdowns and wondering whether China was “on the same planet” as Qatar circulated on the popular WeChat messaging service briefly Wednesday before being removed by government censors, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

“Some people are watching World Cup matches in person with no masks, some have been locked at home for a month, locked on campus for two months without even being able to step out the door,” a Guangdong-based user on the Twitter-like Weibo platform wrote. “Who has stolen my life? I won’t say,” the user added.

Another Weibo user from Shaanxi province wrote, “The World Cup has allowed most Chinese people to see the real situation abroad, and worry about the economy of the motherland, and their own youth.”

Chinese authorities are using the growing number of Covid cases and the country’s first death from the virus in six months as an excuse to ratchet up the ruling Communist Party’s “zero-Covid” strategy aimed at isolating every single case and wiping out the virus entirely. Just before the start of the World Cup, Qatar announced that it was lifting nearly all the country’s Covid-related travel restrictions.

Nearly 7 million residents of Zhengzhou have been told to stay home for five days, and mass testing has been resumed. Another 15 million people in Guangzhou and parts of Shijiazhuang, a city southwest of Beijing, are also on lockdown.

While the country’s borders remain largely closed, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said at a daily news conference Thursday that the country is adjusting its Covid protocols “according to the science-based and targeted principles” to help facilitate travel and exchanges with other countries, the Associated Press reported.

To prevent the restrictions from affecting manufacturing, the country has been locking workers in their factories for days at a time, forbidding outside contact. The tactic is referred to by Chinese authorities as “closed-loop management.”

While the Chinese national team did not qualify for the tournament, soccer is wildly popular in the country — President Xi is said to be a big fan — and state television has been airing many of the matches.

Commenters on Chinese social media platforms expressed frustration that while the rest of the world gathers to watch the matches in packed pubs and cafes, citizens of China are forced to huddle at home in isolation.

“On one side of the world, there is the carnival that is the World Cup, on the other are rules not to visit public places for five days,” one commenter said, according to the BBC.

Said another, “There are no separate seats so people can maintain social distance, and there is nobody dressed in white and blue [medical] garb on the sidelines. This planet has become really divided.”