Wuhan Diary

by Fang Fang

  Today the bad news just keeps on coming. A nurse named Liu Fan21 was still working on the second day of the Lunar New Year [January 26] without wearing a face mask and she ended up getting infected. Later her parents and her younger brother all fell ill. Her parents passed away first, and yesterday she died. Her younger brother was the only one still hanging on. This afternoon my doctor friend told me that her brother just died. Just like that, the virus swallowed up an entire family. I’m devastated, but I also wonder if the virus was the only thing that swallowed them up.

  What is making me even more depressed is that my middle school classmate whom I shared a desk with for many years also died yesterday. She was one year younger than me; I always thought she was so elegant and cultured. She had a soft and gentle voice, a great figure, and was quite stunning. We were in the school orchestra together. I played the yangqin [a Chinese-style dulcimer], and she played the pipa [a plucked lute]. We were the only two girls in the orchestra; we were in the same class and shared a desk. We stayed close all the way through high school. In mid-January, she went to the market twice to buy some things for the Chinese New Year and unfortunately ended up getting infected. It had been extremely difficult for her to finally get admitted to a hospital, but I heard that she was recovering nicely, then her family got the shocking news that she had suddenly passed away. All my old middle school classmates are crying for her today. All those classmates who are usually singing praises to our current “age of prosperity” are today saying things like: “The only thing that will quell the people’s anger is the extermination of those evil monsters who caused us this pain!”

  I also learned a new term today: “rogue virus.” There was a specialist who said that this virus is quite strange and difficult to get a handle on. During the early stages of infection, there are often no symptoms, which has led to a group of “asymptomatic carriers.” Once you are infected and recover, it seems as if the virus has been completely eradicated, but it may very well just be hidden away deep in your body. Once you feel as though you can finally get back to your daily routine, it suddenly bursts out. Thinking about it like that, it truly is a “rogue.” Actually, the virus isn’t the only one behaving like a rogue. Those politicians who act without regard for the lives of everyday people, not caring whether people live or die; those people who accept donated supplies and then resell them online for a profit; those people who intentionally spit in the elevators or wipe their saliva on their neighbor’s front door; those people who steal packages of emergency medical supplies that hospitals have ordered before they even arrive; and of course those people who go around spreading all kinds of vicious rumors that harm people. Common sense tells us that as long as people exist, disease will always coexist with us. And the same holds true for our social lives—as long as there are people, there will always be those diseased people (what I mean is those ethically corrupt boneheads) living among us.

  During times of stability, our lives are ordinary and routine, and the peace and quiet of the monotonous everyday gradually conceals the great kindness and the horrific evil that humans are capable of. Sometimes people spend their entire lives under the cover of the everyday; but when we find ourselves in a time of unrest, during a war or a terrible tragedy, those acts of great kindness and horrific evil all begin to reveal themselves. You begin to see things you never imagined humans were capable of. That experience allows you to witness things that were once unimaginable. You are left shocked, saddened, and angry, and eventually you get used to it. The cycle goes on like this, again and again. Thankfully, as evil raises its ugly head, the face of good rises up even higher. That is what allows us to witness those who are selfless and fearless, those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for others, those we call heroes. They are those angels in white that we see here today.

  But let me say more about what is happening in Wuhan now, since that is what people are most interested in. A doctor friend of mine told me that before February 20, Wuhan must open up a new hospital wing with a thousand beds and have enough supplies for 100,000 patients. This means that the early estimate by specialists that there would be 100,000 people infected in Wuhan wasn’t crazy talk, after all. As for those people infected, Wuhan should be able to offer care to all those who need it. Even though there are an incredibly high number of people infected, it still hasn’t gotten worse than what some early projections indicated. Based on his clinical experience, my doctor friend believes:

  The toxicity of the virus has shown a clear abatement as compared with the early cases;

  After recovery there do not seem to be any lingering side effects, and there does not seem to be evidence of fibrosis in the lungs of those who have recovered;

  Newly infected patients are all third- or fourth-generation infections and seem to mostly be mild cases that are easily treated;

  As long as victims with more serious symptoms are able to get through an initial period of acute respiratory distress, most of them are able to be saved.

  In the end, however, the number of deaths we are seeing each day doesn’t seem to be diminishing, but that seems to be a consequence of early cases that were improperly treated. Once those cases got to a critical stage, it was already too late to save them. As I’m writing, my brother just sent me a text: Professor Duan Zhengcheng22 of Huazhong University of Science and Technology just died from novel coronavirus. This is a terrible loss for the university.

  Besides this, my doctor friend made a special request for me to say: Currently in Wuhan there are only three hospitals in the entire city that are accepting non-novel coronavirus patients: They are Tongji Hospital, Wuhan Union Hospital, and Hubei People’s Hospital. All other hospitals in the city are being used in the fight against the coronavirus. In order for patients to be able to conveniently pick up their prescription medications, 10 special pharmacies have opened across the city and patients can pick up their prescriptions with their insurance cards and certificate of diagnosis. Of the three hospitals that are open to non-coronavirus patients, two are in Hankou and one is in Wuchang; that means that, without any functioning public transportation, patients must rely on their local communities to help arrange transit.

  The Order No. 2 for a complete lockdown of the city just came down. Whenever things happened in the Provincial Literary and Arts Federation housing complex building where I live, the orders used to come down to us from our work unit, but now the families living here have established their own management team. The team contacts people from the local community government to arrange for us to purchase food and supplies. We each have a number and when we are called we go down to the front gate to pick the items up. It is a new way of life for us, and there is a new management system in place to make sure it runs smoothly. We are all very orderly and take our time, patiently waiting for the next opportunity to go downstairs and pick up some supplies.

  All this suddenly makes me think of a line from Haizi’s poetry, which I have slightly revised and posted here: “Wuhan, tonight I care not about the boneheads, I care only about you.”23

  February 16, 2020

  There is no peace when living amid a calamity . . . and “being-toward-death” is just a luxury of the survivors.

  I can’t remember how many days it has been since the quarantine began. The weather today is so beautiful that it may as well be spring. All the snow from yesterday has melted away without a trace. I looked outside the window from the second floor and could even see the leaves outside reflecting the sunlight.

  Although I’m in a much calmer state of mind as compared to yesterday, those internet attacks from the capital just keep coming. It is hard to understand what it is that could be driving such hatred. These people must be going through life every day just brimming with bottled-up anger. There are so many people they despise, so many things they hate. They have no regard for what their targets might be going through; they just stubbornly push forward with their campaign of hatred. The funny thing is that I’m the target of their
hatred, yet we have never met and I have absolutely no connection to them.

  It was just yesterday that “Xiang Ligang from CCTIME.COM” was rushing to delete his slanderous posts, but now he has posted a new essay where he writes: “Where did you get that photograph? You are stuck at home making up stories to incite panic by implying that there are large numbers of people dying from illness and no one is doing anything about it! Do you even have a conscience?” How can I even respond to such a ridiculous question? This guy supposedly works in the communications and media industry, yet he poses such an immature question. We live in an age when unmanned drones can precisely take out human targets from the air, yet somehow I’m unable to access online photographs from my home? I’m not able to understand what is happening right here in my own city? No one else who reads my diary is in a panic, but somehow you are? I’m here in this epidemic-stricken zone, quarantined to my apartment, keeping up with what is happening via the internet and conversations with my friends and colleagues, documenting what I see and hear each day, impatiently waiting for some kind of turning point. And there you are, free as a bird in Beijing, using all your precious time to launch daily attacks at me. And you dare talk about having a conscience? Well, I can tell you that most people who click on my posts tell me that they feel more at ease after reading them.

  But there is another Weibo user by the name of “Pansuo” who commented: “Anyway when you see Fang Fang post things online like ‘a doctor friend sent me a photo,’ ‘my classmate passed away,’ or ‘this or that happened to my neighbor,’ she never uses people’s full names, all she is doing is trying to spread fear. Reading her recent posts, I feel like she has created more than her fair share of ‘anonymous characters,’ it is quite a literary achievement!” So there you have it, another bonehead with no common sense. These suffering patients just passed away and their families are still in the grip of suffering; you think these families need to suffer the additional blow of having their loved ones’ names all over the media? You think they would want everyone to know how they suffered? I live in Wuhan and was educated here; my classmates and neighbors all live in this city. My writings about this outbreak are completely open; don’t you think the people around me would call me out if I was making all of this up? Hasn’t “Pansuo” seen the official death toll numbers released by the government? There are more than 1,000 casualties in Wuhan alone. And my diary has only referenced a small fraction of those deaths! Just to make it perfectly clear, I will not be disclosing the names of any deceased individuals unless they have already been reported in official media reports.

  Chang Kai,24 who was a film director with the Hubei Film Studio, was recently taken from us by the novel coronavirus. His entire family was also wiped out by this disease. Today one of Chang Kai’s classmates published a memorial essay that has been flooding the internet. Chang Kai wrote a heartbreaking final testament before he died; reading it is enough to tear you apart. I wonder if those people who insist on only getting their news from CCTV and the People’s Daily will also believe that Chang Kai’s final words were also an attempt to spread panic. Just two days ago I wrote about a painter friend of mine who donated 100,000 yuan to fight this outbreak; well, today I just learned that his brother died from the coronavirus. I wonder if Xiang Ligang and people like him will also say that this was just another rumor.

  Speaking of “my doctor friend,” I should make it clear that I have more than one. I should also tell Xiang Ligang and his cronies that these doctors are professionals at the very top of their fields; so I am certainly not going to publicly reveal their names. The reason I insist on withholding their names is precisely because dregs like you exist. Our mindless government might buy your one-sided stories, but I will never let my friends become your victims. This afternoon another doctor friend (a leading expert in his field, but, again, I cannot reveal his name) called me. It has been a long time since we were last in touch, and we talked about my Wuhan Diary. He said that whenever his friends from outside Hubei Province call to ask him what is going on with the outbreak in Wuhan, he always recommends that they start reading my diary. He tells them that they can find some truth in my writing. Of course, we also talked about the coronavirus. My doctor friend thinks the outbreak should be more or less under control now. The toxicity level seems to be waning, but the level of contagiousness seems to be growing stronger. Among the current group of patients being treated, most of them have mild cases, with a high rate of recovery. The reason we are not seeing a dramatic change in the overall number of deaths is that there are still so many serious cases of infection from the early stages of the outbreak and many of those patients are passing away. These are all things I have written about before; the serious infections are all holdovers from the early stage of the outbreak. So it seems like doctors from different hospitals all have basically the same observations about where things stand right now. There are a few things contributing to the improvement of the overall situation:

  The toxicity level of the virus seems to be diminishing;

  Because there has been an influx of medical workers coming to Wuhan to provide support, the medical professionals can work more effectively;

  There is no longer a shortage of medical supplies, and people are better educated on how to protect themselves;

  After many days of clinical treatment, doctors now have more experience with what treatments and medications are most effective.

  Director Wang from Leishenshan Hospital even told the media: “We have reached a true turning point in the evolution of this outbreak.” From the new cases coming in, they have noticed that the number of patients with high fevers has decreased and continues to steadily decrease; moreover, there are not a lot of cases of the fever recurring. Director Wang emphasized that he had great confidence that things were improving.

  Isn’t this the news we have all been waiting to hear?

  Later in the afternoon my doctor friend sent me a video. The video was of a young man delivering a popular science-style lecture about the coronavirus. In the video he kept repeating: “Don’t go shooting off your mouth about things you don’t understand!” I couldn’t agree more.

  When it comes to things beyond the scope of your educational background or ability to understand, try to observe and reflect before jumping to conclusions. And one should certainly avoid launching into these unfounded attacks against people; this is especially true for boneheads like Xiang Ligang. One of them just left a comment criticizing me by asking: “Don’t tell me that none of the victims’ family members went to the crematorium? No one from the deceased person’s family came to collect their personal belongings?” What can one say in response to comments like that? If they apply their everyday logic of how people behave during normal times to a period of utter calamity, there is no way they will ever understand what is happening here.

  Right now Wuhan is in the middle of a calamity. What is a calamity, you ask? A calamity is not having to wear a face mask, being quarantined at home, or having to show an official permit to access certain areas. A calamity is when the hospital is going through an entire folder of death certificates in just a few days, which in normal times can last several months. A calamity is when the hearse that brings bodies to the crematorium goes from delivering a single body in a coffin to delivering an entire truckload of bodies stuffed into bags. A calamity is not when you suffer a death in the family, it is when your entire family is wiped out in the course of just a few days or weeks. A calamity is when you drag your sick body out on a cold and rainy day and go from hospital to hospital looking for somewhere that can admit you and offer you a bed, but there are none. A calamity is when you go to the hospital first thing in the morning to see a doctor and don’t get seen until the middle of the night the following day—that is, if you don’t collapse waiting. A calamity is when you sit at home waiting for the hospital to inform you that they have a bed for you, but by the time that happens you are already dead. A calamity is when a gravely ill patie
nt comes to the ER and if that person later dies, his family will never see him again or have a chance to say a proper goodbye. You think that in times like this there are still family members who are accompanying their deceased relatives to the crematorium? You think there is an avenue for relatives to collect their family member’s personal items and belongings? You think that the dead are still able to die with dignity? No, I’m afraid not. When you are dead, you are dead. They drag your body away and burn it immediately. During the early period of the outbreak, there was a great shortage of professional healthcare providers, hospital beds, and protective gear for medical workers. All this contributed to the widespread transmission early on. There was also a shortage of undertakers at the crematoriums, a shortage of hearses to transport the bodies, and the crematory ovens were far too few to keep up. Moreover, because the bodies coming in were infected, there was a need to quickly dispose of them. Do you know any of this? It is simply not the case of people not doing their jobs; we are facing a calamity! Everyone is doing the best that they can do, they are all overworked, yet still they don’t seem able to meet the standards expected by those scumbags online. There is no peace when living amid a calamity; there is only regret for those patients who succumb to the illness; there is only the feeling of heartbreak when you see what your family is going through; and “being-toward-death” is just a luxury of the survivors.