by Fang Fang
I can’t help but think about those aid groups who have volunteered to come to Wuhan; before they set out to leave, some local leaders delivered some speeches to send them off. The political leaders who gave speeches mostly focused on three points. The leader of one group summed them up as: “Our first task is to preserve the honor of our group, our second task is to do whatever we can to save the sick, and our third task is to protect ourselves in the process!” A different group leader put it in these terms: “Number one is to save the sick, number two is to protect ourselves, and number three is to preserve the honor of our group.” These are both political leaders and there is a perfect overlap in terms of the content; however, from the way they list their priorities you can tell a lot about the value system of these organizations.
Let me say a bit about what has been going on in my own life lately. While I usually sleep in every day, my brother tends to always be an early riser. But last night my brother was up late; he even sent me a text: “You stay up writing your diary, I stay up doing online shopping!” I wondered why he was up so late doing that. He told me that if you don’t act quickly, all those products get sold out within minutes, so you need to stay up and order as soon as items are restocked. After being stuck at home for 31 days, he has eaten almost all the food he had at home. He said that these past few days he was starting to get anxious. Since they shut down the city, people have been buying up everything at the supermarket across the street from him and you have to fight the crowds just to get your hands on anything. Those online vendors list their new stock of items for the next day at 11:30 p.m. and people instantly start snapping them up right away. My brother already filled his online shopping cart with items and was ready to hit the purchase button as soon as it was 11:30, but the system was frozen. By the time he got logged back in, everything in his cart was already sold out. He and my sister-in-law were going crazy last night. At least a few days ago he was able to order some rice, noodles, cooking oil, vegetables, and medicine, some of which have already been delivered, and a few other items he is still waiting for. I told him not to worry too much: “They’re not going to let us starve! Things aren’t that bad in China yet!” His neighborhood is the single most dangerous area for coronavirus infections; it has been listed as the area with the highest number of infections for quite a while now. He is also not in very good health so if he were to catch the coronavirus, the results could be really scary. So everyone in the family keeps insisting that he had better not take a single step outside his door. But we all know that it is really difficult being stuck in a small apartment like that for over 30 days.
I’m fortunate to have a much better setup than my brother, as I have had a bunch of colleagues and neighbors helping me out ever since this thing started. Yesterday one of my colleagues sent her husband over to bring me a few cans of chicken soup; I wasn’t expecting that at all but accepted this gift with a smile. However, there was a catch: In exchange for the chicken soup, she insisted that I send her a copy of my diary each day the second I finish each installment. For me it feels like I’m making an unfair profit! I naturally agreed to her deal. Everyone at the Writers Association has been really good to me; I’ve basically watched a lot of them grow up. This colleague is one of them. When she first joined the Writers Association, she was probably not even 20 years old; she was so cute and stubborn back then. Now in the blink of an eye, she is almost 50.
Just as I got to this point, someone posted in my classmates’ forum: “Wuhan plans to construct an additional 19 temporary hospitals.” Seeing this news reminds me of a message that Mr. Liu from the Wuhan Botanical Garden put up on Weibo. Let me copy Mr. Liu’s suggestion here: “If the novel coronavirus outbreak is not a short-term setback, an extended lockdown in Wuhan will affect the economic national recovery; moreover, the impact of a long-term quarantine will also have a severe psychological impact on the citizens. Instead I would like to propose a ‘River Isle Quarantine Model.’ This is what it would look like: By utilizing the islet areas of Baishazhou, Tianxingzhou, and all those decommissioned passenger ships, we could house 10,000 patients there. Besides this, Tianxingzhou is roughly 22 square kilometers, which is actually two square meters larger than Macau. Macau has a population of 600,000 people. Based on this, it should be no problem to build a massive hospital in Tianxingzhou that could accommodate 150,000 patients. And then there is still Baishazhou and those decommissioned passenger ships. If we can move all the patients in Wuhan to these sites on the river, we will be able to keep the virus off the mainland. Then we can gradually, one at a time, start lifting the quarantines in Wuhan, Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang. If people are afraid it will take too long to construct a large hospital, we can start with 100,000 medical tents where patients can be treated. In short, a long-term quarantine is not a long-term solution; the nation won’t be able to handle that, nor will the people.”
I find Mr. Liu’s suggestion to be quite bold and interesting. However, there would still be a lot of issues that would need to be resolved, such as how to deal with all the sewage waste produced there, and I’m afraid that it would be too cold for patients to live in medical tents during this time of year. I’m not an expert in these matters, but perhaps various specialists will have ways of getting around these problems?
People are now starting to discuss more about the timeline for economic recovery, even more than the outbreak itself. A lot of industries are on the verge of collapse and countless individuals who are just hanging on without any source of income are facing the question of how they are going to get by if this continues. All these issues have a direct bearing on our social stability. As we quarantined our sick, we have also locked up the healthy. As more time goes by, the damage this causes begins to multiply. I’ve already begun to hear a lot of people make the appeal that healthy people need to get on with their lives, too.
But I don’t have any answers; all I do is record things as I see them.
February 22, 2020
The spread is so difficult to contain, which is indeed a challenge.
The weather remains clear and warm, yet here I am, lying in bed looking at my phone.
The first thing I encountered online was an audio recording of a woman from Wuhan criticizing her district. She went on and on in her crisp and sharp Wuhan dialect. She didn’t use many profanities, but she littered her speech with all kinds of idioms, which made a lot of people laugh and want to follow her online. Listening to her speak also gave me quite a kick. I’m only all too familiar with that accent of hers; she must be from the area around 27th Street in Jiang’an District, where I spent several years when I was a teenager. It isn’t really the most typical Wuhan dialect; it is a bit off when you compare it to the standard Wuhan dialect spoken in downtown Hankou. But she still speaks it better than me. Several friends all sent me links to this recording today. I asked them if they really understood Wuhan women; she rarely used any profanities, and what she said actually made a lot of sense; I guess you could consider the way she spoke an elegant way to curse someone.
Beautiful weather paired with some good old-fashioned elegant Wuhan cursing really put me in a good mood and helped get this day started off right.
One month into the quarantine and today I did another interview with Xia Chunping, Assistant Editor from China News Agency. We did the interview portion online and then in the afternoon he and his crew came over to take some photos, at which time we chatted a bit more. The guards on duty at the front gate were quite meticulous about following all the rules when Xia arrived. Although Xia Chunping and his crew all had proper press credentials, the guards still made them all officially register and took everyone’s temperature before letting them in. I joked and said it was a good thing they didn’t just show up unannounced. During his visit Xia Chunping not only brought me some additional face masks, he also brought over some milk and yogurt. When I got back to my apartment I also discovered that he had also snuck a box of chocolates into the bag! When I saw the chocolates I immediately call
ed my colleague and told him to pick them up for his daughter next time he was around. Whenever people give me chocolate I usually pass it on to my colleague’s daughter. One day when I saw that little girl she said: “Grandma Fang Fang, you are like a real-life Lei Feng!” After I heard that, I was even more eager to give her chocolate; after all, now I had a theoretical foundation for my actions!
Less than half an hour after Xia Chunping left, I received a text from a friend in the United States who had just read the interview I did with him! The link even included the photos he had just taken of me! The speed at which the internet can spread news is really shocking; it is truly hard to believe. Almost everyone in my family is in engineering and the sciences, and that has heavily influenced me; I suppose that I too have become fairly well acquainted with technology; I gave up writing by hand and started using a computer back in 1990. But I still have trouble keeping up with all the latest technological advances and often find myself blown away by the newest capabilities out there. The news organization Headlines Today (Jinri Toutiao) featured me on its site and I uploaded an installment from my diary onto its “Micro Headlines” page; within one day it had been read by 20 million users, and a few days later it was up to 30 million views. For a writer like me who is used to a very small circle of readers, those numbers are terrifying. It just feels unnatural to me, so much so that I almost wanted to give up writing this diary. It was only after several old classmates encouraged me to continue that I decided to stick with it.
I’m quite familiar with how official government media organizations function in China. When they interview you, they ask a ton of questions, but usually only a small portion of your answers actually make it into print. But because I understand how they work, I usually still try to provide detailed responses to their questions as much as possible so that the editors will have plenty of material to choose from. The good thing is that when they add additional material without my permission, I always take a stand and they understandably agree to take that material out; they always do their best to respect my wishes. Overall, China News Agency has a relatively relaxed standard that they go by, while of course remaining fairly prudent when it comes to certain topics. They are certainly not as free and open as some of the social media and independent media platforms that I publish on. Comparatively speaking, Sina Weibo remains the platform with the most liberal policies for expression in China. I’m also quite fond of writing short posts in those little boxes; I pop out a post in a single breath, which always feels good. It is, however, a shame that they can’t stop those ultra-leftist groups from continually reporting my posts, which has resulted in my account being suspended. I left a message for them, saying: “I really love you guys at Weibo, but you have really let me down!”
First thing this morning my doctor friend sent me a note with his latest thoughts on the coronavirus outbreak. I also followed up with him in the afternoon to get a better sense of where things stand. I would summarize his thoughts as follows: According to statistics from the past three days, the overall trend is improving, but there has yet to be a fundamental change. The spread of the coronavirus has yet to be fully contained. The number of presumed cases is still quite high. The only good thing is that there is less pressure than before to provide additional hospital beds. There are two reasons why the shortage of beds is not as bad as before: The first is that many patients have now been discharged, and the second is that a lot of patients have died. Every day there are nearly 100 patients who die.
This news is all quite sad. While Wuhan’s ability to investigate cases of infection within the city is quite impressive, there are a lot of citizens who are not entirely happy with the way things are being handled. At the same time, it is still quite difficult to control the spread of the virus; perhaps it is precisely because of this that Wuhan is now constructing an additional 19 temporary hospitals. The plan is to increase the number of sickbeds to the point that there will always be open beds there waiting for new patients; that will help significantly cut down the number of mild cases that turn critical. My doctor friend reiterated what he told me before: There are still nearly 10,000 patients who were infected early on who are now still in serious or critical condition. That alone makes it hard to reduce the number of patients who are dying. Critical patients with breathing problems are put on oxygen or respirators to help alleviate their symptoms. That reminded me of a report I read yesterday by a Caixin Media reporter that was about how people’s lives were on the line, dependent on the availability of a single breathing tube. During my conversation with my doctor friend, he said: “We are now seeing a certain degree of effectiveness with the use of traditional Chinese medicine.” This reminded me of a question posted online about whether or not Chinese medicine was at all effective against the coronavirus. I passed this question on to my doctor friend, since he is trained in Western medicine. I really wanted to know how doctors who specialize in Western medicine look at the use of Chinese medicine for treating coronavirus patients.
According to my doctor friend: “Right now there are many hospitals in which the entire treatment ward is managed by doctors who practice Chinese medicine, and they have achieved very positive results. Of course, those traditional Chinese medicine doctors also employ some Western medicine and Western medical treatment practices. This mixture of Chinese and Western medicine has yielded very positive results and has also won a high level of approval with state-level medical agencies. At first a lot of doctors trained in Western medicine were extremely resistant to this approach and even mocked it. However, now that it has yielded positive results, most of those early critics have all quieted down. I suspect that once this outbreak has passed, the state will lend a good deal of support to further develop the field of traditional Chinese medicine. After all, over the course of this battle against the coronavirus, traditional Chinese medicine has really shined as an effective treatment method and everyone has taken notice; even practitioners of Western medicine have to admit that. Traditional Chinese medicine treatment is also much more affordable than Western medicine. I have never really understood the principles of Chinese medicine, but I also never looked down on it. After all, traditional Chinese medicine has been with us throughout 5,000 years of Chinese history, whereas Western medicine has only been in widespread use in China for a few decades. There are certainly ailments for which Chinese medicine is quite effective.” The previous passage was pasted together from several texts that my doctor friend sent me. I restructured it a bit, but the content is entirely taken from his comments.
I have a college classmate who now teaches at the Institute of Chinese Medicine (he was a graduate of the Chinese department; I wonder if he teaches students how to read classical Chinese medicinal texts? I never asked him that). Ever since the coronavirus outbreak began, he has been confident that traditional Chinese medicine would prove to be an extremely effective treatment. Moreover, he has stood by this belief and wholeheartedly promoted it over the past few months. He even got angry that Wuhan wasn’t utilizing even more traditional Chinese medicine in its treatment of coronavirus patients. I posted some of the things my doctor friend said in my college classmates chat group. One former classmate who works in the media said that, in some respects, you could even say that the coronavirus has saved traditional Chinese medicine. I find that comment somewhat frightening.
Then my classmate from the Institute of Chinese Medicine replied: “We should thank the coronavirus for allowing traditional Chinese medicine to finally show its face! The basic approach of Chinese medicine is completely different from that of Western medicine: ‘Chinese medicine always leaves the virus with a way out; it politely sees the virus to the door, but whether it lives or dies depends (usually the virus dies off).’ But Western medicine tries to completely eradicate the virus, but when it fails there are no incantations left to cast.” I found his viewpoint interesting, but a bit biased. His understanding of traditional Chinese medicine has a philosophical twist, yet his understanding o
f Western medicine seems just plain twisted.
This evening the discussion of traditional Chinese medicine continued on my group chat. Apparently, there are quite a few old classmates of mine who are totally against traditional Chinese medicine. Then my classmate from the Institute of Chinese Medicine jumped in again to further discuss his viewpoint: “Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a true synthesis between Chinese and Western medicine. They are each theoretically incompatible, like two cars driving on completely different roads. When we talk about a synthesis between Chinese and Western medicine, what we are usually talking about is using Chinese medicine as the basis, while employing some Western medical equipment, supplies, and therapies in the treatment plan, depending on effectiveness. But actually there are a lot of problems with this approach; in fact, these two traditions are often in conflict with one another.” I’m really not well versed in the various debates between Chinese and Western medicine. Usually when I go to the doctor I seek out specialists trained in Western medicine. However, when it comes to everyday health maintenance issues, I usually turn to Chinese medicine. For instance, every winter I tend to start drinking a lot of hot water infused with Chinese herbal medicine. I even introduced this method to my colleague Chu Feng, and she said she felt like a new person after she started drinking it.
I just noticed a report online that the various stories about Wuhan people getting fed up and cursing the system were starting to be taken seriously by various government offices. Various District Heads and the Commission for Inspecting Discipline have all begun to take notice, and Zhongbai Supermarket has already begun to adopt some changes; I guess speaking out can lead to some good results. One of my friends told me that an English-language version of these “Wuhan curses” has already come out online. I’m sure that will give me another good laugh.