Wuhan Diary

by Fang Fang

  A few days ago I wrote about a nurse named Liu Fan and her family who died from the coronavirus. (My apologies, I initially wrote her name with the wrong Chinese character. When the news was first breaking there was some confusion about her name and I went with the version provided by a doctor I know.) Well, it now seems that someone else online is claiming that story was nothing more than a “fabricated rumor”! What can I say? Sometimes those people who appear to be the defenders of truth online turn out to be the greatest fabricators of them all! Chang Kai, the film director from the Hubei Film Studio who died, was actually Liu Fan’s little brother. I believe this already has been reported in the media. Chang Kai’s last will and testament is an extremely reserved document. But I guarantee you that there is no one out there who can read it without feeling his deep pain. My doctor friend told me that the two siblings each assumed the surname of one of their parents—that’s why one had the last name Liu and the other Chang. Their parents both worked in the medical field. Members of each of their families also seem to have been infected by the coronavirus, but so far they all seem to be doing okay. The people of Wuhan will never forget the tragedy that befell this family. I wonder after writing all this whether or not those people who are always attacking me online will start accusing me of spreading rumors? Actually, these people who have been attacking me are the same group of people who criticized my novel A Soft Burial26 a few years ago. I wonder if they will seek out some high-ranking officials to provide them with protection like they did a few years back. Whether they do or not, I’ll first make it clear right here: If they come after me I’ll be here to fight back, just like I did before. I’ll also make sure that their names are dragged through the mud, just like that earlier group who came after me.

  Today there is something I want to get off my chest that has been weighing on me for a long time: Those ultra-leftists27 in China are responsible for causing irreparable harm to the nation and the people. All they want to do is return to the good old days of the Cultural Revolution and reverse all the Reform Era policies. Anyone with an opinion that differs from their own is regarded as their enemy. They behave like a pack of thugs, attacking anyone who fails to cooperate with them, launching wave after wave of attacks. They spray the world with their violent, hate-filled language and often resort to even more despicable tactics, so base that it almost defies understanding. But what I really just don’t understand is: How is it that they are able to publish these ridiculous things online and repeatedly turn the truth upside down, yet their posts somehow never get censored or deleted and no one ever stops their flagrant actions? Maybe they have relatives working in the internet censorship office?

  These past few days I have been utterly exhausted and have a bad headache. A reader named TA left a message on one of my WeChat posts yesterday, saying that she could sense my exhaustion from my writing. TA’s intuition is really spot-on. I need to start reducing the amount of time I spend writing and take more time to get adequate rest. I’ll stop here for today.

  But in closing, I wanted to respond to Huanggang XYM’s post by saying: Here in this quarantined city the people are anxious, amid the outbreak the people weep. We are all facing similar difficulties, why do we need to push one another?

  February 19, 2020

  The specter of death continues to haunt the city of Wuhan.

  It isn’t as sunny as yesterday, but the sky is still quite bright. It started to turn a bit overcast by the afternoon, but it isn’t too cold. According to the weather forecast, the next few days will be relatively warm.

  Before I even got out of bed I received a phone call from my painter friend in New York who just donated 100,000 yuan a few days ago (I certainly hope no one accuses him of “colluding with the enemy” since he is living in the US!). He told me that another Chinese painter living in Germany with the surname of Su also committed to donating 100,000! He told me that this painter from Germany said that he knows me and had actually visited my apartment once! “These past few days he has been reading your Wuhan Diary, and his wife decided that they should do something for the people of Wuhan,” he told me. Since they have faith in my friend’s philanthropic plans, they decided to toss money his way. My friend had been quite anxious about raising enough money for a shipment of medical supplies that was about to arrive and was ecstatic when he heard this news. This Su family also originally hails from Wuhan and they have been extremely concerned about the situation here. For a lot of people originally from Wuhan, no matter how far they wander and no matter how long they have been away, Wuhan will always be their spiritual home. Special thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Su.

  I mentioned I had a headache yesterday, so today one of my colleagues had her husband bring me over a bottle of essential balm. Her husband’s job requires him to be out and about every day to help out around the city. When he got home last night, he dropped off the essential balm and some other traditional Chinese herbal medicine. When I went down to the main gate of the Literary and Arts Federation building, I was surprised to see quite a few people out. I haven’t seen that many people out in public since the Lunar New Year.

  I asked what was going on and learned that the orders for the grocery delivery group had just arrived. These people were all volunteers helping to unload everything. At first I thought that all the volunteers worked at the Federation, but I was surprised to learn from my neighbor that even her daughter was volunteering. Her daughter had studied in France and since coming back had opened up her own company here in Wuhan. She has been stuck at home like everyone else and thought it would be a good idea to volunteer to help out. According to the United Nations, the definition of a volunteer is: “Anyone who willingly participates in public serve beneficial to society without receiving any form of incentive or benefit, monetary or otherwise. Sometimes referred to as charity workers.” These volunteer organizations are really incredible and it is great to see so many good-hearted young people supporting them. Through this volunteer work not only can they contribute their own abilities, but it is also a great way for them to observe society, understand something about life, and nurture their own abilities and knowledge. During the outbreak in Wuhan, there have been tens of thousands of volunteers contributing to all aspects of society. If not for them, we would have only had the mechanical government offices to rely on and I am sure that things would have been much worse.

  Besides all those people delivering food, there were also several large bundles of celery piled up near the front gate. Standing beside the celery piles was a man who looked like a community worker. As I passed by, he said: “Please feel free to take some celery home.” I told him that I already had enough vegetables back at my apartment so I didn’t need any. He replied by insisting, “We got tons here, please take as much as you like! All this is designated for residents of the Literary and Arts Federation complex.” I gave in and took a few sticks of celery, which was more than enough. Mr. Wang the security guard immediately rushed over and helped me grab a bunch more, saying, “There’s plenty! It all came in from Shandong!” I was a bit confused and asked the worker standing there; he explained that all this celery was donated from Shandong Province. Two tons of celery was allocated to our district, which is actually way too much. We gave some to various government offices and took some for ourselves and distributed it to various families. The worker explained, “They aren’t the freshest, but the heart portion of the celery is still quite good.”

  Seeing that pile of celery made me think back to that first shipment of vegetables that Shouguang city in Shandong Province donated to Wuhan. Somehow, some government department ended up having the vegetables delivered to supermarkets to be sold! That elicited a public outcry. Someone even circulated a telephone recording of some of the accusations made against the city government online. Actually, if you ask me, I think unless those vegetables were specifically earmarked to be donated directly to hospital cafeterias or to an organization with storage facilities, probably the most effective thing would
indeed be to distribute the food to supermarkets where it could be sold at a discount price to citizens. At the very least, those supermarkets have storage facilities and delivery options; there are channels through which they can distribute the food to the people. Perhaps they could then donate whatever proceeds they generate to nonprofit charity groups in the name of the original donor. Or they could even refund the money and continue selling the vegetables at that discounted price for the local Wuhan market. That would be one way for everyone to benefit. At least the outcome would be better than just delivering the food directly to local communities like this. Ever since the coronavirus outbreak began, community workers have faced a particularly difficult situation; to request them to divide up donations and distribute them to all the different communities is a very challenging task. So I figure even though these items were donated, the whole process could still be handled in a much more practical way. If those donated items should go to waste, it would also be a waste of the donors’ kindness and goodwill, not to mention their money.

  I saw a video on my phone today of people crying as Dr. Liu Zhiming’s28 funeral car drove away; Dr. Liu had been the Director of Wuchang Hospital. There wasn’t a dry eye among the people lined up to see him off one last time. He was an honest and talented professional who had established a solid platform to do good work for the medical community. Who knows how many people he saved over the course of his career? But these days the bad news just keeps on coming. Wuhan University just lost one of its PhDs to the virus, Huazhong University of Science and Technology just lost a professor. . . . The specter of death continues to haunt the city of Wuhan.

  Currently the confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in Hubei Province have already exceeded 70,000 people. This isn’t far off from my doctor friend’s early estimate. Each day there are roughly 1,500 new confirmed cases. The numbers seem huge but in reality the rate of increase is continuing to slow down. The number that still hasn’t begun to decrease is the number of deaths, which is currently just over 2,000, according to the official government statistics. There are also some people who died who were never confirmed to have contracted coronavirus and others who passed away at home before ever making it to a hospital; I suspect none of them are included in those numbers. So I’m afraid that we still don’t have a completely accurate tally of just how many victims there really are. Once this outbreak has passed, various government departments will have to work together in order to come to a more accurate number of just how many people died during this tragedy.

  The overall situation continues to be quite serious. Currently there are still nearly 10,000 critical patients being treated at Huoshenshan Hospital, Leishenshan Hospital, and other facilities around the city, many of whom are still undergoing lifesaving procedures. These are all patients who were infected during the early stages of the outbreak. Many of them did not receive immediate care, and these delays led to the worsening of their condition. How many of them will end up losing the battle? This weighs heavily on us, as it certainly does their families.

  When we talk about a turning point, it is always framed by the grave situation we faced early on. At that time, you would turn on your phone and all you saw were videos of patients begging for help; all the hospitals were inundated with sick people trying to get treatment. At least now all patients are able to be received at the hospitals; even if a patient refuses treatment, the hospitals force them to be admitted. Once admitted everyone is guaranteed medical treatment. My doctor friend told me that most of these new patients only have mild symptoms and most should be able to fully recover. The turning point is within sight.

  I also saw some news that said that Wuhan was going to switch over to a new system. They were gearing up to establish four groups: a group that will ensure that patients all have access to hospital beds; an outbreak control group; a group responsible for coordinating things for medical volunteers arriving in Wuhan; and a CCP assessment group. These four groups will oversee these various tasks and, while overall they seem to have been designed with practicality in mind, I do feel that it would have been better to have a “division of supervision and assessment” rather than a “CCP assessment group.” That would have been a sign from the government that the people’s lives are what is most important, and not the responsibilities of the Chinese Communist Party. After all, this war against the coronavirus affects everyone in society; there are many nonparty members who are on the front lines fighting and they shouldn’t be seen as outsiders.

  By the way, those ultra-leftists attacking me seem to be gaining in numbers. It has really become a case of “one’s abilities falling short of one’s reputation.” I’m the kind of person who likes to talk about common sense, something I have mentioned quite a few times these past few days. Someone asked me what I mean by “common sense,” well, let me give you an example. If a dog runs over to bite you, you should pick up a stick to hit him. But then what do you do when that dog runs home and comes back with a large pack that includes some big scary dogs and even some rabid ones? Common sense will tell you to run the hell away! Just let those dogs have their turf back. Let them bark like mad for a while and before long they will eventually start to snap at each other, fighting over who has the loudest bark or who has the biggest bone. By then you will be back at home enjoying a book over a hot cup of tea. Just like you quarantine yourself during an outbreak, you need to quarantine yourself from those rabid dogs. This is what you call common sense.

  February 20, 2020

  We have actually held out for a long time already; we can’t allow those people who have been fighting for us to have fought in vain and, for those of us who have been patiently holding on, we can’t just throw all that away.

  It is another clear day; the sky is crystal clear and I can imagine what that warm sun looks like shining down on those empty streets, a deserted Zhongshan park, Liberation Park, and East River Garden Lane; such a shame there is no one outside to enjoy any of that.

  I really miss those days when I used to be able to go for bike rides down East River Garden Lane with my colleagues. I used to go there almost every week. We would ride out toward the more deserted side of Layan Island, riding up the hill and over the bridge; the entire trip would take about three hours. On the way, we would usually find a quiet place beside the lake to sit down and chat before stopping at one of those off-the-beaten-path vendors on the way home to pick some farm-fresh vegetables. I don’t think we would qualify as “brave and fearless revolutionary warriors” by any stretch of the imagination; in fact we normally try to fully enjoy the lives we have built for ourselves. But now I discover that my two primary biking partners (they are both colleagues as well) are both dealing with serious illnesses: One of them is sick herself and the other one has a family member who has fallen ill. Neither case seems to be the coronavirus, but they are both the kind of serious illnesses that make people give an awkward look when you mention it. They have it much more difficult than I do. But how many other people here in Wuhan suffering from all kinds of illnesses are left with no choice but to simply wait things out? They are still waiting.

  Today’s news about the coronavirus triggered a lot of discussion among my classmates. Everyone was quite shocked by how dramatically the number of new cases has fallen. What is going on? Did we today suddenly arrive at the turning point we have been hoping for? First thing this morning one of my doctor friends sent me a text; he was ecstatic: “We’ve got it under control! It’s a miracle!” He went on: “We don’t need to worry about adding any new sickbeds; we just need to focus on taking care of the patients we already have.” But not long after that he sent another text that seemed to reveal a more cautious tone: “Perhaps it’s too soon? But it really is amazing! I just have trouble believing it.” But an hour later his tone had completely changed: “I took a closer look at the figures and realized that the dramatic drop has to do with the fact that Wuhan has tweaked their standards for evaluation again. . . . We’ll have to wait and see what tomorr
ow’s numbers reveal.”