Wuhan Diary

by Fang Fang

  It is only because we have lived in this city for so long and have so many deep connections with the people here that we are so very concerned about this city’s fate and feel so deeply sad by the difficulties the city is now facing. You have people here who are carefree and happy-go-lucky, always smiling for no reason; there are people who speak so loudly and quickly that when visitors from out of town hear them, they think there is an argument going on; and those worldly people who know what it means to fight for honor and seem to have a confidence that comes out of nowhere. Once you get to know them, you begin to understand just how warm and sincere they really are, and how much they love to look cool. But today so many of them are suffering, wrestling with the god of death. And here I am—here we are—utterly helpless to do anything. At the most, we can go online and gently ask, Is everyone okay? But sometimes I don’t even dare to ask—I’m afraid at some point I won’t get a response.

  Unless you have lived your entire life in Wuhan, I’m afraid it might be difficult for you to understand this or the feeling of pain that we are going through right now. For more than 20 days now, I have been relying on sleeping pills to fall asleep each night. I blame myself for not having enough courage to face everything.

  I can’t go on about this anymore.

  This afternoon I cooked four dishes for myself; it should hold me over for the next three days. For the previous few days, I’ve just been eating whatever I had left over around the house. I also cooked some extra rice. My 16-year-old dog is out of dog food. He was born on Christmas Eve of 2003; I suppose you could call him my Christmas present. I had just had an operation at the hospital. My daughter was home alone and she had a mix of fear and excitement when she saw our dog give birth right before her eyes. One of the puppies was a cute little white dog that looked like a stuffed animal, so we kept him. Just like that, he has been in my life for a full 16 years now. Just before the Chinese New Year I ordered him some dog food on Taobao, but it never arrived. The seller apologized but told me there was nothing they could do. The day before the quarantine began, I picked up some food at the pet store, but I never imagined it wouldn’t be even close to enough. I called the vet at the animal hospital to ask what to do and he told me I could feed the dog rice. So from now on, whenever I cook rice, I need to cook an extra portion for him.

  As I was cooking, my colleague called to tell me that her classmate just gave birth to a 4.5 kg fat baby boy by C-section. She told me that the arrival of a new life is such a happy occasion.

  That is the best news I heard today. That’s right; the arrival of a new life is the best hope that heaven can give us for the future.

  February 12, 2020

  Shouting political slogans is not going to ease the pain that the people of Wuhan are going through.

  It has been 21 days now since the city went on lockdown. It’s almost as if I’m living in a daze. It is hard to believe that we have been quarantined for this long. I’m somewhat amazed that we are somehow still able to do mundane things like share jokes with friends and poke fun at one another over group-chat threads and talk about what we are eating each day. I was even more amazed when I read a thread of messages on my phone and saw a message from a colleague who jogged three kilometers just by running back and forth between her kitchen and bedroom! Now that is amazing! Trying to jog around your apartment like that is a completely different level! Compare that to taking a run alongside the East River in Wuhan. No comparison. I figure I must indeed be getting old; I’m sure I would pass out if I tried to run around my apartment like that.

  The sky is really glowing today; the sun even came out for a bit in the afternoon, brightening up this winter day. Yesterday the lockdown order was extended to every district. Now no one can go outside. This order was sent down so that the quarantine can be more strictly enforced. After seeing so many tragedies over the course of what has happened, we all understand why this needs to be done and calmly accept it.

  Realizing that every household needs a supply of food, each neighborhood has set up a series of practical measures so that every three to five days, one person from each household is allowed to go outside to purchase groceries and supplies. So from here on out, every few days the people of Wuhan will take turns making supply runs to stock up on food. Today one of my colleagues sent her husband to play the role of the do-gooder Lei Feng15—he not only picked up supplies for his household, but also brought back a bag of groceries for me and another for my neighbor Chu Feng. He even delivered the groceries right to my doorstep! I fall into the category of people who are at particularly high risk of contracting the virus, and Chu Feng has a back injury that makes it difficult for him to get around; so we both have a lot of people looking out for us. In the bag was meat, eggs, chicken wings, and some fresh fruit and vegetables. I don’t think my kitchen was this stacked even before the quarantine! I told my colleague that for someone like me who only eats a small bowl of rice and a simple dish each day, this will be enough to last me for the next three months!

  My eldest brother told me that there is only one gate in his neighborhood that they have open and only one person from each household can go out once every three days to purchase supplies. My other brother said that there is this delivery boy in his neighborhood who runs around every day delivering food to everyone. Every family writes up its own shopping list and hands it off to him, and he takes care of the rest. His family gave the kid a list that included a bunch of vegetables, eggs, some cooking sauce, disinfectant, and instant noodles. Everyone goes down to the main gate of their development for pickups. My brother said, “Now we get to stay home for a few more days without having to worry about going out again.” He lives just across from Central Hospital, which for the past several days has been the number one most dangerous area in all of Wuhan in terms of the number of infections. He said: “We need to stand firmly together against this, and let’s hope that by late February everything will be back to normal!”

  That is indeed what most of us are all hoping for.

  There are always a lot of kindhearted people who do incredible things during difficult times. The Yunnan writer Zhang Manling16 sent me a video of the people from Yingjiang prefecture sending nearly a hundred tons of potatoes and rice to be donated to the people of Hubei. Zhang Manling had spent time in Yingjiang as an educated youth during the Cultural Revolution, and that is the place she wrote about in her novel Sacrificed Youth.17 The film adaptation of Sacrificed Youth was a movie that everyone of my generation saw. In some ways, it served as a record of our collective coming-of-age story. I have been to Yunnan Province many times over the years, but never to Yingjiang, but now I will always remember that place.

  I surfed the web on my phone as I ate lunch but most of the news was more of the same items from the previous few days. Much of it is those fearmongering essays that friends keep forwarding, often the same content, just with different headlines. My phone doesn’t even have enough memory for all these stories, so I find myself deleting a lot of this content, just like the internet censors.

  But there isn’t really that much that is new. The outbreak seems to be heading in a positive direction, and the virus that was once exploding seems to be showing signs that it is getting tired. Perhaps the turning point will come any day now, even though those infected early on continue to die at an alarming rate. But I have a kind of uneasy feeling inside. Those patients crying out for help may indeed be fewer than before, but there is also a lot of self-ridicule floating around out there among the Wuhan people. This has left me of two minds: On the one hand, things are finally more organized and the entire system is getting on track. As soon as a patient calls out for help, they are getting medical attention. But at the same time, the people of Wuhan are starting to grow more depressed about the overall situation.

  Here in Wuhan it is hard to find anyone who isn’t experiencing some form of psychological trauma from all this. This is something that I’m afraid none of us can avoid. Whether it be those still-heal
thy individuals (including children) who have been stuck at home for more than 20 days, those patients who have spent time wandering the city in the cold and rain trying to find a hospital to take them in, those relatives who have been forced to watch their loved ones tied up in a body bag and shipped off to a crematorium, or those medical workers who helplessly watch as patient after patient dies while they remain unable to save them. And there are so many more traumatic stories that will continue to be a psychological burden on people for a very long time to come. Once this plague has passed, I’m afraid that Wuhan will need an army of counselors and psychologists to help the people get through the aftermath. If possible, each district should allocate psychologists to visit each and every resident for treatment. People will need a release, they will need a good cry, they will need a place to scream out their accusations, and they will need to be consoled. Shouting political slogans is not going to ease the pain that the people of Wuhan are going through.

  Today I am actually feeling quite bad, and I think I really need to get some things off my chest.

  Several cities have already sent aid workers to provide support to all the local Wuhan funeral homes. All those aid workers have been showing up with Chinese flags, taking pictures in front of the funeral homes, and then posting the photos all over the internet. There are quite a large number of these volunteers, and seeing their images flood social media has left me somewhat beside myself. As soon as I see those images pop up, I can feel my hair standing on end; it is so painful to see. Of course I am thankful that they have come to help, but I really want to tell them: Not all situations call for you to get all patriotic and wave your flags. Is it really necessary to intimidate us with all of that?

  I think it is a great thing that the government has asked public servants to go and help those requiring the most basic needs and services. But then a friend sent me a video link to a group of these public servants carrying a bunch of Chinese flags as they marched down to serve those disenfranchised people. Usually when we take a photo in front of the Chinese national flag it is because we are visiting some famous scenic site while on vacation; it is not the kind of thing you do when you are rolling up your sleeves to volunteer in a region rampaged by disease and suffering. Once they took their pictures, they then just threw their protective gear into a trash can on the street. My friend asked, “Just what are they doing?!” How would I know? I suppose this is just how they are accustomed to operating. Everything they do starts with a good show to prove just how important they are. If going down to the underprivileged classes and helping them out was part of their daily work routine, would they need to wave those flags around? Just as I was writing the previous sentence, another video just appeared in my friend’s feed—it made me even more uncomfortable. One of the temporary hospitals received notice that a certain local political leader was about to visit the hospital, and so several dozen people lined up at the hospital entrance, including officials, medical professionals, and probably even some patients. They were all wearing face masks and went one by one singing to all the patients in their sickbeds, “There Would Be No New China Without the Communist Party!” It is a song that everyone knows, but is there really a need to bust out in full chorus like that for all these suffering patients? Have they even considered the feelings and needs of those patients? Isn’t this a contagious disease we are dealing with? Doesn’t it affect the lungs, making it difficult to breathe? And here you want them to sing?

  Why has the outbreak turned so deadly here in Hubei? Why are those Hubei officials being castigated by everyone online? Why have the measures taken to control the outbreak in Hubei been repeatedly marred with errors? Each and every step along the way has been a series of blunders that have only added to the suffering of the Hubei people. And now, after all this time, do you mean to tell me that there is still not a single person in the government who is willing to reflect on any of this? The turning point we keep hearing about still has yet to arrive and our people are in pain, everyone is still trapped inside their homes, yet here they are so quick to raise up their red flags and sing patriotic songs about how great the nation is?

  I also want to ask: When will those public officials go do their work without taking any more commemorative photos? When will our political leaders go on a survey trip to a hospital without expecting people to sing songs of gratitude or put on big performances for them? My people, only when you understand common sense will you be able to truly understand how to take care of practical matters. Otherwise, how can we expect the people’s suffering to ever end?

  February 13, 2020

  Perhaps then they will finally understand what ordinary people are going through.

  I opened the window in the afternoon and noticed that the sun had come out again. I believe that today marks the Seventh Day18 since the passing of Li Wenliang? The Seventh Day is when those who have embarked on their distant journey return one last time. When Li Wenliang’s soul in heaven comes back to this place of old one final time, I wonder what he will see.

  After two quiet days with virtually no real news online, last night things suddenly came to life again. In particular, there were three rather miraculous short essays published in the Yangtze Daily newspaper that really got under the skin of a lot of readers. It seems like everyone got a new injection of energy after reading those essays. This energy comes from the fact that we are all aching for the opportunity to really let someone have it. Actually unloading all our anger on someone or something would be a productive psychological outlet for most of us. My daughter once asked her 99-year-old grandfather what his secret to a long life was. His response: “Eat a lot of fatty meat, don’t exercise, and be sure to curse out anyone who deserves it.” And so the third secret to a long life is cursing people. The people of Wuhan are all locked up at home, bored out of their minds with nothing to do—we all need a release. We can’t get together to talk because of the risk of infection; we can’t open our windows and sing together because we are afraid airborne particles of saliva can still spread the virus; we tried to wail together to mourn the loss of Dr. Li Wenliang, but it wasn’t enough; the only thing left for us to try is to start unleashing our curses on those people who caused us so much pain. What’s more, the Wuhan people have always had a special talent for putting people in their place. Once you have gotten it out of your system, your entire body feels completely refreshed; kind of like the way northerners feel after they have spent time at the bathhouse on a cold winter day. But I have to say that the views portrayed in those three essays were all right on point. So I have to express my thanks to the Yangtze Daily for giving all of us who have been pent up for so long a chance to really just unleash our screams! What’s more, after the death of Li Wenliang even newspapers as far away as Shanghai put commemorative essays about Dr. Li on the front page; and here you are, your editorial office is just steps away from Dr. Li’s hospital, and how much coverage have you devoted to Dr. Li? I suspect that there are a lot of people in Wuhan who are secretly holding a grudge, and I’m sure they will remember this. Of course, at the same time, I know that there are a lot of things we can’t criticize, but we can criticize you guys! When I woke up, the first thing I did was go online to see if the internet authorities had posted a notice stating that they had deleted the post. Guess what, there wasn’t anything! That means that the Yangtze Daily had themselves deleted those essays! Now that really leaves you with something to think about.

  Things are still quite tense due to the outbreak, yet online the headlines keep changing, alternating between depressing stories and uplifting ones. The commander-in-chief responsible for spearheading the fight against this outbreak in Wuhan has finally been replaced. Actually, as far as the people are concerned, it really doesn’t matter who they send here. It only matters if that person has the ability to control this outbreak, if that person is able to avoid making the mistakes that keep repeatedly being made, if that person can refrain from those meaningless displays, and if that person can avoid
repeating that same old empty bullshit over and over again. If they send someone who can do that, it will be enough.

  As for those Hubei government officials who have been removed from office, they never lived up to fulfilling their most basic responsibility of protecting this land and keeping the people safe. They allowed this city and the people here to go through such terrible pain; I don’t see any way they could have quelled the people’s anger, short of firing them. But it is still unclear if they will simply be transferred to another location where they can start all over again. In traditional China, the emperor used to have a policy of “never again employing” government officials who had committed grave mistakes that led to catastrophic consequences for the people and the nation. I think that, at the very least, this approach should be adopted here—those officials would actually be getting off easy. I figure they might finally understand what everyday people are going through if they themselves get stripped of their power and get a taste of what being an average person is like.