by Fang Fang
Another news agency, Chutian New Media, also published an article about Central Hospital, which included some illustrated text, which read: “Wuhan Central Hospital has already become one of the hospitals with the highest number of infected workers. Currently there are more than 200 medical workers infected, including all three of the hospital’s assistant directors, and the hospital’s director of nursing care; the directors of several of their specialty clinics are currently relying on extracorporeal life support to keep them alive; numerous chief physicians are on respirators, and many of the front-line medical caregivers have severe symptoms that have left them teetering between life and death. The ER has been hit particularly hard; the Cancer Ward has lost 20 medical workers . . . the losses go on, but they are too many to enumerate. After suffering wave after wave of panic and heartbreak, we all know that one of us might be next.” This report is a bit more detailed than the previous one. I have no way of going to Central Hospital in person to authenticate these numbers, but whether or not these figures are completely accurate, we do know without question that the human losses at Central Hospital have been particularly devastating.
During the early days of the outbreak, they experienced “the incredible weight of being.” I can’t help but wonder: If these doctors knew the disease was infectious and many of them indeed became infected, then why didn’t they take protective measures? Why let themselves be drawn in like moths to a flame? When a hospital experiences such devastating numbers of deaths, isn’t there anyone who feels guilt or accepts any responsibility? You would expect those who made minor errors to resign out of shame and those who took major missteps to face some sort of punishment from their superiors. You can’t just write everything off by simply hiding behind the fact that “this is a new virus so we didn’t have enough knowledge about how to respond!” That is not an excuse. The Chinese people have always had trouble bringing themselves to repent; but when so many lives are dangling before you, we need people to stand up and take responsibility: You people, that’s right, you! Stand up and repent! Today someone posted an appeal online that we should allow Central Hospital to temporarily shut down so all the employees there can take a break. They have lost so many of their own employees to this illness, and many more remain critically ill; the psychological trauma for those still on the job is simply too much for them to bear.
The toll of 20 days of delays, 20 days of lies, is much costlier than simply the number of deaths. The quarantine has now been in place for 40 days; the deadliest days are behind us, but the most difficult days may still be waiting for us ahead.
The people of Wuhan continue to be quite depressed. Another doctor friend of mine said that all the sadness and depression have left people feeling uncertain about the future, causing people to easily slip into a state of psychological insecurity. Besides this, there is still the issue of the people’s livelihood; most people currently don’t have any new income coming in, which has further contributed to their feeling of insecurity. They don’t know when they’ll be able to get back to work and have no idea when they will finally be able to go outside again, which has left everyone feeling lost. When someone is left fumbling in the dark and has no power to control their own fate, they end up losing their most fundamental sense of security. During times like these they need something to hold onto in order give them the sense that everything will be all right; for instance, they need to have an explanation. When the outbreak was at its worst, no one had the time or energy to carry out investigations or worry about who was responsible for what was happening; instead, everyone tried to be understanding and put all their reservations aside. Now that things are starting to ease up, all those questions we have been harboring inside are starting to come to the surface, and now people want answers. Then there are some aspects to all this that seem to have been addressed very quickly; for instance, that incident concerning the female inmate who went to Beijing after being released from prison, or the controversy surrounding Li Yuehua’s practicing medicine without a license. These all occurred in the middle of this outbreak, yet the government was able to take swift action. However, what about those issues that the public really wants an answer to? Take, for example, the case of Dr. Li Wenliang: They have been investigating this for so long now, but where is the explanation we have been waiting for?
The case of Dr. Li Wenliang is indeed a knot that needs to be untangled. In actuality, the multitude of deaths suffered at Central Hospital is another knot. If we don’t untangle these knots, how can the knots inside our hearts be unraveled? Over time these knots become tighter and more complicated, just as the scars deep inside our hearts expand and reach deeper. Psychological services experts say that it is only after you have removed yourself from a place of immediate danger that the true trauma begins to rise to the surface. To put it plainly: You need to offer an explanation about what happened to Dr. Li Wenliang. You need to give us an explanation about what went wrong at Central Hospital; all of us deserve to hear that.
March 4, 2020
Online shopping, binge-watching, sleeping: This is our life now.
Today is truly a clear, bright day. The sunlight is brilliant and spring is in the air. All the colors—green, jade, red, and pink—seem to be contending to fill every space with a good dose of “positive energy.” The Chinese roses in my courtyard are beginning to sprout new branches, even though I never tended to them because I spent all last year at my place in the suburbs working on a book. I never trimmed their branches, tied them to a pole, or gave them fertilizer; they just grew freely on their own without anyone’s impeding them. Seeing them like that, I almost felt guilty when I tied some of their branches to the railing.
It is now a hard fact that the coronavirus is officially under control. As a longtime resident of Wuhan, I know how difficult it has been to get to this point. When you introduce the terror of an invisible virus that can be anywhere into a large sprawling city like Wuhan, which has a messy three-town structure5 and a complex maze of traditional alleys and old lanes, it is indeed an incredible feat that we have been able to get the coronavirus under control in such a relatively short time span. Things were especially chaotic during the early stages of the outbreak because the situation overlapped with the Chinese Lunar New Year and the government made a series of mistakes. Once the government put a new set of leaders in charge and put an iron-clad policy in place for battling the coronavirus, we began to see clear results. Right now the head of this monster has been cut off and all that is left is its writhing tail; we have now freed ourselves up enough to start taking care of other matters, like those people from outside provinces who have been stuck in Wuhan during the quarantine, as well as those Wuhan residents who have been unable to return home. These issues should not be too difficult to resolve. Today my doctor friend told me that the situation is continuing to improve, and he expects that by tomorrow the city should be able to get back to an initial level of functionality. Finally, I feel like we are able to heave a sigh of relief.
This afternoon a friend sent me a long audio file. It was recorded by a hospital administrator who had come to Wuhan to provide aid; in the audio file he recounted his team’s entire journey to Wuhan and the process of providing care to coronavirus patients. He originally sent this narrative to a friend and it is extremely logical, reserved, and objective. All he does is focus on the treatment process but he doesn’t get into too many other details. But whenever he mentions Wuhan and the people here, he begins to lose it a bit and you can hear him start to choke up. Only those of us here in Wuhan realize what lies behind those moments when he loses it. We know that he personally witnessed the situation early on; he just can’t get into those details, which is what kept causing him to uncontrollably choke up. You can tell that this doctor is a kind man with a good heart—someone who truly treats his patients with compassion and love. I want to again express my sincere hope that doctors like him who traveled to Wuhan to lend their aid and support will be able to record everything
they saw here, especially during that early period, and get it out there. Those documents will become some of the most important testimonials to what happened during the fight against the coronavirus in 2020.
When I first began this diary, I didn’t think at all about how many people might read it; I just wanted to jot down some reflections for myself. When I noticed some of the big-name verified users on WeChat using some shocking headlines to publish stories about me, I became quite uncomfortable. After all, I know that here in Wuhan there are a lot of people writing blogs like this, besides writers and poets. It’s just that each of us uses a different method and focuses on different aspects of what is happening. But each of these records is extremely precious. When discussing fiction, I used to say that although literature is a form of individual expression, when countless individuals express themselves it collectively becomes a forum for national expression; and when many nations come together to express themselves, it becomes an expression of an entire era. By the same logic, one person’s document is never enough; it can never capture the entire picture, but when you collect countless individual records together, you can begin to get a more complete picture that represents the truth of what happened.
Starting yesterday, they began a massive three-day project to clear and disinfect the Huanan Seafood Market, the site that became a focal point of the outbreak early on. The market was shut down back in early January and ever since then people have been coming every day to disinfect the area. But when they first shut the market down, their actions were rather rushed and many of the items in the various stores there were left behind. I suspect that no one ever thought the market would be shuttered for such a long time; and they certainly never imagined that the virus that emerged there would set in motion a catastrophe that would engulf all of China and later the world. After they shut off all power and water to the market and the temperature started to warm up, a lot of the seafood left behind started to emit a wretched stench. My second brother said that people could probably smell that stench all the way down by the Vanke Building. There are more than a thousand vendors at that market, and the vast majority run legitimate businesses. Like everyone else in Wuhan, they too are victims here; moreover, many of them suffered much more than other people. During the process of disinfecting the market, I’m sure those storeowners had to dispose of everything in their shops. I wonder what the site of the market will become in the future. Some people have suggested turning it into a memorial hall dedicated to this calamity.
Today I’ll just talk about shopping. Online group shopping has become increasingly flexible. There are really countless possibilities in the world of the internet. The way in which this program self-adapts to the market is really incredible; it can really do all kinds of tricks. My second brother told me that his wife has also been recording everything that happens every day, all the details about how she does her shopping. My brother even sent me a few of the things she wrote, and I picked out a few passages about shopping in the age of coronavirus. I know that the internet censors won’t bother deleting posts about grocery shopping. What follows is a record of how my second brother’s family has been handling their shopping these past few days; you can look at it as a snapshot that reflects the experience of most people in Wuhan.
I actually already went downstairs once today to pick up some donated vegetables. Miss X called earlier to remind me to pick them up. At first we felt like those donations were only for low-income families and elderly people who need extra support; although we are both over 60 and don’t have any children living with us, which fits the qualifications, we kept feeling like we shouldn’t accept any donations since our overall situation isn’t too bad. So the first few times that they called, we decided not to go down to pick any donations up. We didn’t intend on picking up any today either, but then our building manager personally called to tell us there was already a bag for us waiting at the first floor entrance. She told us to hurry down to pick it up. After hearing that, I bundled up with all my protective gear and went down to the first floor. There were two huge bags of vegetables and a stack of plastic bags so you could load up as much as you wanted. I took four heads of lettuce, just enough for two meals if I stir-fry them. I repeatedly thanked them, but didn’t dare stay too long and quickly took the elevator back up to my apartment. Although four heads of lettuce doesn’t amount to much in terms of cost, that feeling that someone is thinking of you and cares was worth so much more.
I still have to be careful when approaching this whole online shopping thing. This is, after all, an unusual period we are going through; sometimes even if you plan well, you can’t keep up with all the changes to how they do things. All the pork was sold out so I quickly changed my order to add 30 eggs to take the place of the pork; anything to prevent me from making an extra trip outside. It is a good thing that everyone infected, suspected, or in close contact with coronavirus in our community has already been taken away. When it was time to pick up my order, I put on a double layer of face masks; when I got there I made sure not to talk to anyone and quickly changed clothes and washed my hands when I got home.
This morning I received a notification from my Add More Group that my first order was ready for pickup, but the only item in our order that came in was two packages of chicken breast. I’m really annoyed at this method of online group shopping; there are too many people, so you have to wait for a long time before your pickup time comes and it is really hard to predict when deliveries will arrive. I’ve been waiting for my number to come up ever since the early afternoon; I checked the status an hour after I had dinner and they were only up to #60, but it seemed to be stuck there for a long time. But I still had to keep checking my phone, just in case they suddenly speeded up. I didn’t want to risk losing my slot. When I checked the chat group again, I saw that someone had posted a message saying the boss went to dinner and it was unclear when he would return. Someone in the group had already said that it was normal for the deliveries to go on past 10:00 p.m. Our family was #114 and we didn’t get a text to pick up our order until 10:56 p.m. There were still more than 60 orders behind me. The boss must be hungry and exhausted after doing this all day long; I hope he was able to have a good meal and take a breather; it must be damn hard on him! It’s not easy for us either, but I know that he has it harder than us. Can you imagine having to run around the city all day and night like that; he is really working himself to death; even if he doesn’t get infected, he’ll end up collapsing out of sheer exhaustion.
For the past few days now, the most exercise I have been getting has been going to the south gate of our development to pick up our online orders. Or perhaps I had better say that those little trips down to the south gate have given me a shot of adrenaline, as every time I go outside I tense up and can feel the anxiety kick in. I’m really not exaggerating; last night when I picked up our two bags of groceries (they weighed about 2 kg) I brought them in at around 11:00 p.m.; normally I would wash up, get into bed, watch a little TV, and then go to sleep, but last night I was still wide awake at 1:00 a.m.! This morning I slept in until 7:30 a.m., but I still feel exhausted from yesterday, but in order to keep myself on schedule I forced myself to get up and start my day. The good news is that another delivery service popped up today that allows you more control over the items you select. They had all kinds of items I have been looking for, like Angel yeast extract, tapioca, and Old Godmother hot chili sauce—I immediately put in my order.
You can see that those community workers are really thoughtful; you can also see how hard that supermarket boss works overseeing all those grocery pickups. Online shopping, binge-watching, sleeping: This is our life now.
Today is day 42 of the lockdown.
March 5, 2020
Common sense can sometimes be the most profound.
It is a clear sunny day; the sun is so bright that it almost dazzles the eyes. We have handed our roads, avenues, and parks over to the virus while we stayed at home, letting it roam the open c
ity like a wandering ghost in search of victims. The sun at high noon is powerful enough to make you feel like it could burn the virus to death. According to the lunar calendar, today is the day the insects awaken from their winter sleep. It is day 43 of the quarantine. A few days ago I told a friend that I feel like I’m busier now than I am during normal times. I didn’t watch a single TV miniseries and although I prepared a bunch of movies that I wanted to watch, I never got a chance to see a single one. My neighbor Tang Xiaohe was showing off a video of her granddaughter eating. The way she eats in that video is so adorable. One friend told me, “I spend my days watching videos of Xiaohe’s granddaughter eating and my nights reading Fang Fang’s diary; that’s how I pass my time these days.” Those videos and my friend’s message brought me a lot of smiles.
Today is a really special day. There are three people who trigger a lot of memories for me on this date. The first one is Premier Zhou Enlai6; he is someone that anyone from my generation would be very familiar with. Back when I was growing up, just seeing his name in the newspaper would always give me a sense of comfort. March 5 is Zhou Enlai’s birthday; I still remember the large-scale unrest set in motion after his death; it was referred to as the “April 5th Tiananmen Square Incident.” I’m afraid that a lot of young people have never even heard of this incident. At the time, there was a poem that everyone was passing around to copy; even today I still remember that poem just like yesterday: “Melancholy approaches and I hear the demons howl, I cry as the wolves and jackals scowl. Shedding tears in tribute to a great man, I raise my eyebrows as swords melt away”7 The second person, whom I’m sure many readers will be familiar with, is a man named Lei Feng. Ever since my childhood, the memory of Lei Feng has been there with me, and it has never faded. Lei Feng was a kindhearted soul who has been a companion to my entire generation as we grew up. Today is the day we commemorate Lei Feng. There was once a period of time that whenever March 5th arrived, young people nationwide would be mobilized to go do good deeds, like walking old ladies home—for a while there weren’t enough old ladies to go around! How many people in China have grown up learning from Lei Feng? But there is one more person, someone that I’m afraid may have already been forgotten or many people never even knew existed—his name was Yu Luoke.8 Fifty years ago today he was executed for things he had published. He was only 27 years old. For people of my generation who were the first group to take the college entrance exams after the Cultural Revolution, there is almost nobody who doesn’t know his name. His fate is what prompted so many of us to start thinking about the fate of our people, the fate of our nation, and our own future. Some people feel that Yu Luoke’s essays were not terribly profound; they claim that everything he said was common sense. That’s right, that’s exactly what it is. However, I often feel that people seem to be blinded by a misguided pursuit of “the profound.” Common sense emerges from the deepest truths and those things most commonly put into practice. Common sense can sometimes be the most profound, like “all men are created equal.” Bei Dao once wrote a poem to commemorate Yu Luoke; there was one line that kept getting quoted in articles for years: “In an age without heroes, I just want to be a man.” Sometimes it isn’t easy being a normal man who lives according to the principles of common sense.