Wuhan Diary

by Fang Fang

  The chaos from the early phase of the outbreak has passed. From what I have learned, specialists are now drafting a report on how to ensure that victims of novel coronavirus and their families are treated in a more dignified manner. This means creating measures through which the final articles of the deceased, such as their cellphones, will be saved for their family members. The current suggestion is to collect those items together in a secure place and disinfect them once this outbreak has passed. Then the telecommunications company will attempt to use the cellphone numbers to contact family members. At the very least, these phones will serve as an item to commemorate those who died. If no family members are able to be contacted and the phones can no longer be stored, perhaps they can serve as an exhibit to bear witness to the history that played out here in Wuhan.

  The reason I still have faith in this world is owing to those kindhearted and rational people who are still busy working hard for something good.

  February 17, 2020

  You aren’t the only one suffering and facing difficulties, there are a lot of ways to live.

  Another clear day; if it had been any other time, there would certainly be a lot of people outside sitting in the sun. A shame that no one will be able to enjoy a scene like this for a while. But it is understandable; after all, these are unusual times. I suppose that we should be happy that we can at least enjoy the sunlight and foliage through the window.

  The strictest government order on the quarantine has just been issued: Everyone is now required to remain inside their homes at all times. Exceptions will only be made for those who are still required to report to work or carry out official business during the quarantine, but even they will be required to carry a special permit. I heard that if you are caught outside without a permit you will be put in strict quarantine for 14 days, but I’m not sure if that is true. One of those witty online jokesters posted that he thought the people of Wuhan actually had it pretty good. If they had been in Huanggang they would have also been forced to take the Huanggang Secret Edition Second Grade Math Exam while under quarantine, which more than half of the adults couldn’t even complete! Those online jokesters have been fairly quiet these past few days; this is one of the better jokes I have seen from them. I hope they can step up their game—after being locked up at home for 20 days now, the people of Wuhan could use some comic relief that they can forward to their friends.

  For someone like me, staying at home is a fairly simple task. My dog can just run around in my courtyard, so I don’t need to take him out for walks. It is a good thing that he is so old; a few laps around the courtyard and he is ready to come back into the laundry room to take a nap. After I bought him his own little heating pad, he is even more reluctant to ever leave his little dog bed. This year it is really as if I had some second sense or something. Back in mid-January as we were preparing for the Chinese New Year, I suddenly had the impulse to buy a new heating boiler. The heating company came to install it on their last day of work before the New Year holiday. The old heater still worked, but it was getting old and, after using it for so many years, I was afraid it might not be safe to continue using it. The new heater is indeed much more powerful than the old one; you can set it so that the room temperature will stay between 22 and 25 Celsius and I don’t have to worry about any safety issues with it. Earlier it warmed up a bit outside and the temperature in my apartment got up to over 25 degrees; I even started to feel hot!

  With the strict prohibition of going outside now fully in force, those online grocery delivery groups have really been taking off while all the other traditional e-commerce sites have also been tweaking their sales methods. Had it not been for those e-commerce sites, I really don’t know how we would have gotten through these days we have been stuck at home. Without the help of those websites, just feeding a typical family would have been challenging for most households. Now that those community grocery delivery groups have been popping up everywhere, the e-commerce companies are also getting on board. Their sales model allows them to make flexible adjustments based on the on-the-ground situation. They are now offering all kinds of meals available for “contact-free delivery”; residents can register through their grocery shopping group and the e-commerce companies take care of the purchasing and shipping. The manager of the online group can also better organize how the group functions in response to the adjustments made by the e-commerce companies. Compared to those idiotic actions taken by those stubborn old petrified bureaucrats who just stamp forms all day, these capable people from the private sector really put them to shame! This is what it looks like when your working method is informed by practical and realistic goals; the government should really take some notes from them and learn to appreciate this method of getting things done. To speak completely frankly, if it hadn’t been for their stubborn old work model, repeated delays at multiple levels, and various mistakes, the outbreak would have never gotten to where it is today. My old classmate Lao Geng knows that I don’t want to personally join any of those online grocery groups, so he just forwards me the lists of what they have available for purchase. The day before yesterday I ordered a Kengee Bread Set Meal. It was humongous—there was enough food for three people! It was really too much for just me; I’m afraid I’ll be eating this for the next 10 days.

  Today I also reached out to one of my doctor friends to get a sense of where things currently stand with the outbreak. Mostly it was just me asking questions and him answering them. I could sum up our conversation with the following points:

  Regarding the comments about the “turning point” having already arrived, which were made by the Director of Leishenshan Hospital: My friend said that Director Wang’s use of the term “turning point” was referring to something else. In medical circles, the term “turning point” has a different meaning. To put it plainly, it refers to when the number of infected patients reaches a peak. From this perspective, we still have yet to reach this turning point. This means that the number of infected patients is still expected to further climb. But my doctor friend thinks that by late February or early March we should see a true turning point. That means we still have at least two more weeks to go.

  Regarding the large number of medical professionals who have been infected or even sacrificed their lives, I wanted to know how they have been doing. According to my friend, more than 3,000 medical professionals have been infected. The vast majority of them should be able to make a full recovery, but because this disease takes a long time to run its full course, the majority of them have yet to be released from the hospital. This figure of 3,000 is an official statistic provided by the government, but I suspect that the actual number might be a bit higher. Most of these individuals were infected either early on before doctors and nurses were wearing proper protective gear or later during that period when hospitals were running out of supplies. But right now very few healthcare professionals are getting infected.

  As to whether hospitals in Wuhan have been using traditional Chinese medicine to treat coronavirus patients: My doctor friend responded that 75 percent of the patients have been treated with traditional Chinese medicine, which has shown clear signs of being effective. When I asked him why that other 25 percent of patients were not treated with Chinese medicine, he said that was because they were all undergoing intubation, so those other treatments were not able to be administered. All those patients being intubated were clearly the more severe cases, which I found to be a pretty terrifying percentage.

  What percentage of the patients are considered to be critical, and what is the recovery rate for them? My friend said that previously in Wuhan the number of critical cases was around 38 percent; but that is because a lot of these patients were originally just staying at home and only came to the hospitals when things got serious. Now that we have added more sickbeds, patients are now able to come into our hospitals and get treatment in a timelier fashion, which has helped us get the percentage of critical patients down to around 18 percent. The rate of recovery for
them is also much higher than it was earlier on. I figure that when you have close to 60,000 confirmed patients, you are still going to be facing some really high numbers. I’m afraid that the death rate will not be coming down anytime soon.

  A reader online posed a question to me about why I just record these little details of everyday life and not important things like the People’s Liberation Army entering the city, the support that people from all over China have shown to Wuhan, the miraculous construction of the Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospitals, and all those heroic and selfless individuals who have been rushing to Hubei to offer aid. How should I go about answering this question? When it comes to recording things, everyone has a different role to play; do you want to hear about this? When we eat we divide our meal up into main courses and appetizers, no? Throughout China there are so many official government news organizations and independent internet news organizations; every day they are all recording those things you asked for. They provide a macro-perspective on the big trends concerning the direction the outbreak is heading, their reports are often filled with heroic narratives and imbued with the hot-blooded passion of youth, etc., etc. There are so many articles out there written in that style that I can barely keep track of them.

  I, on the other hand, as an independent writer, only have my own tiny perspective on things. The only things I can pay attention to and experience are those little details that are happening around me and those real people I encounter in my life. And so that’s all I can write—I provide a record of those trivial things happening around me; I write about my feelings and reflections in real time as things happen in order to leave a record for myself of this life experience.

  Moreover, my profession is that of a writer. In the past when I would share my thoughts on writing fiction, I would always say that novelists are often closely tied to those losers, misanthropes, and loners. We walk together hand in hand and often go out of our way to help each other. Fiction has the ability to express a broader means of embracing the world of human emotions. Sometimes I feel like an old hen assigned to protect those people and things that have been abandoned by history and those lives that have been ignored by society as it advances forward. My job is to spend time with them, give them warmth, and encourage them. Or perhaps my fiction can reveal an atmosphere that shares the same fate as these individuals and I will need their company, warmth, and encouragement. The powerful people of this world, the so-called victors, often don’t really care about literature; for them, literature is just a flowery adornment. But for the weak and dispossessed, literature is often a bright light that shines through one’s life, it is a wreath of straw you can cling to for support while floating down the river, it is that savior you can turn to when you are reaching the end. That is because, in times like that, it is only literature that can tell you that it’s okay if you are behind, there are a lot of other people just like you. You’re not the only one who is lonely, you are not the only one who is alone. You are not the only one suffering or in pain, you are not the only one feeling anxious and weak. There are a lot of ways to live. Of course it is great to be successful, but not succeeding isn’t always a bad thing.

  Look at me—a novelist documenting all these trivial daily occurrences here in this diary, and yet I somehow follow the direction of my literature to observe, to reflect, to experience, and, ultimately, to set my pen down to paper and write. Don’t tell me this is a mistake?

  Yesterday’s post on WeChat was deleted again. Besides helplessness there is only helplessness. Where can I share this record of my life in this besieged city? Mooring on the misty bank the messenger is filled with sorrow. To observe, to reflect, to experience, and, ultimately, to set my pen down to paper and write. Don’t tell me this is a mistake?

  February 18, 2020

  Amid the outbreak the people weep . . . why do we need to push one another?

  Today the weather remains clear and beautiful; it is enough to make one feel as if there are new possibilities for life everywhere. The clouds today have a lot of character. I was even discussing the clouds with my neighbor who lives next to my place out in the suburbs; I wondered what kind of weather could form clouds like that. They looked like what you call “fish scale clouds,” but my neighbor said that’s not what they were. Last year I spent almost the whole year out there in the suburbs writing; I only returned to my apartment at the Literary and Arts Federation building in Wuchang just before the Lunar New Year last year. My neighbor told me that they still didn’t have a single case of infection out there in the suburbs. Oh my, I wonder when I’ll be able to go back there. The flowers outside my front door and in the courtyard are probably all dead by now. That said, I never had much of a green thumb; almost every flower that ends up in my hands usually ends up facing a rather tragic fate. Either they grow for a while and then wither away or they simply stop blooming.

  It has been almost a month since the quarantine began. When I first saw the lockdown order I had absolutely no idea that it would last this long. It is obvious that these severe quarantine restrictions that have been put in place have helped Wuhan emerge from its darkest days. By now people seem to have finally begun to grow accustomed to this new form of sheltered life. Even those spirited little kids bursting with energy have somehow managed to put up with this. Life’s ability to adapt and tolerate changes is really something.

  Those frantic pleas from those people desperate to get treatment have completely disappeared from the internet. Nowadays all the discussion you see online is information about how to order vegetables and groceries. Now that people are spending all their time paying attention to life matters, our days are looking more and more like the weather today, filled with new possibilities for life. All the large supermarkets have begun to roll out meal plan delivery services; each delivery carefully denotes the name of the district and drop-off site as well as the name and cellphone number of the contact person. This has made things endlessly more convenient for the manager of each grocery delivery group. I heard that the delivery group started by the Literary and Arts Federation has been a big hit; quite a few people from the nearby neighborhoods have also joined. The only issue is that there are tightly enforced restrictions when it comes to going from one neighborhood to another; I’m not sure how those people from nearby neighborhoods are able to pick up their deliveries. Just as I was wondering about this, I suddenly discovered that some of my colleagues had ordered groceries online and they were hoisting them up with a rope! The fact that they came up with this is quite amazing, but I suspect that there are a lot of other people doing similar things.

  The order that my old classmate Lao Geng (his wife manages the grocery group and he helps her run it) put in for me arrived and, besides the different types of bread that it said it would include, it also included some fresh green vegetables. There is not much pleasure in cooking when you are home alone, so I usually just take the easy route and cook a bowl of noodles or boil some shredded potatoes. But the range of dishes waiting for us when this all ends is actually quite something. Today Pan Xiangli25 sent me a WeChat message; she tried to console me by promising that she would treat me to a proper Shanghainese feast next time I was in town. “We’ll pig out for three meals straight!” she promised. Okay then, it’s a date! Others who have written to try to cheer me up have also repeatedly brought up the topic of food. Wuhan people love discussing which restaurant makes the best food in town, and that is even more the case now than ever. I’m not a member of too many WeChat groups, but the largest one I am a member of is a group made up of my former college classmates. For the past month or so the discussion has been dominated by talk of the coronavirus. While most of the members of the group are from Hubei, there are also quite a few members who are from Hunan. Normally there are a lot of jokes within the group that attempt to mimic the accent of those Hunanese classmates by referring to them as “Fulanese,” which is how they sound when they say “Hunanese” in their local dialect. First thing this morning one o
f my classmates clicked “like” on a post about the “Fulanese”; it said that there were no new cases of infection reported in the Huagang region where the Fulanese have been providing medical support. I didn’t carefully review all the data, but I had heard that the Fulanese had sent a lot of aid to Huagang some time ago. The recovery rate in Huagang is also the highest in all of Hubei Province, and the recovery rate in “Fulan” is the highest nationwide. Although my daughter was born in Wuhan, her residence card still lists her official hometown as being “Fulan.” The relationship between Hubei and Hunan has always been particularly close. I’m reporting these comments about Hunan here but, in all fairness, places all over China have really been doing their best to help out with the situation in Wuhan. Those backup forces have allowed Hubei, which has been under siege, to finally heave a sigh of relief. The fact that things are now really starting to improve has a lot to do with the support and contributions we are receiving from other provinces.

  Today one of my doctor friends called and we spoke for a very long time; he probably had a lot of bottled-up things he needed to get off his chest. He talked about how difficult it was for medical professionals early on when the outbreak first began. He talked about the incredible amount of energy that goes into saving even a single patient. After engaging in lifesaving intervention with a seriously ill patient, the biosuits worn by doctors and nurses will be covered with dangerous germs and need to be taken off immediately. But early on during the outbreak, when they were short of staff and supplies, they had no choice but to watch helplessly as patients died right before their eyes, yet there was nothing they could do. People dying in hospitals is a common thing, but seeing a patient who is clearly capable of being saved and yet you are unable to do anything because you are so utterly exhausted so you simply no longer have the strength to save another person or because you have run out of all the necessary medical supplies—now, that is something different. “You’ll never be able to understand what that feels like,” he said. “Doctors usually stay focused on their own area of specialization, but this time we all just put everything out there and worked together to save these people.” I completely get what he was trying to express to me. During this outbreak we all saw images of doctors sacrificing everything to save these patients. Some of them even went online to scream about how terrible the situation was. It was those cries that finally exposed a lot of the problems and started to allow for donated medical supplies to start getting funneled directly into the hospitals that needed them most. A lot of peoples’ lives were saved by those doctors’ public cries for help—it was only because they spoke out that some of those patients were able to survive. My friend said that the temporary hospitals were constructed very well. If they had been built even sooner and more patients had been quickly quarantined, they would have been able to reduce the number of mild cases that later turned critical; that would have also saved a lot of lives. I suppose that a professional like him must know what he is talking about. It was precisely the quarantine policy that was able to put a halt to the rapid spread of the disease that we had been seeing. But now the people of Wuhan are much calmer than before. We are all starting to shop for food and get back to our lives a bit, but still we patiently await a true turning point.