Wuhan Diary

by Fang Fang

  A large number of your stories all depict the people of Wuhan’s lives. What traits of the Wuhan people are you fondest of? Has the coronavirus outbreak revealed any new characteristics about the people of Wuhan that you never saw before?

  Fang Fang: The people of Wuhan have always been straightforward and they place a lot of emphasis on what is right and wrong. They are generous when it comes to helping people out and have a sense of honor. Perhaps a lot of this is connected to the geography and climate here. But Wuhan has always been a city of commerce; most people are careless and casual, yet they aren’t the bravest. They tend to follow whatever the government tells them. They like to enjoy life but aren’t particularly interested in politics; they are very practical. Whether or not there is an outbreak, the people of Wuhan always behave the same, at least that is my impression. They are the same as they ever were.

  How do you view the relationship between a writer and their city?

  Fang Fang: It’s like the relationship between a fish and water; or a tree and the soil.

  Once this outbreak has passed, what are you most looking forward to doing?

  Fang Fang: Completing the novel that I have been working on.

  March 11, 2020

  Once things get to this point, do you really think you can delete it all?

  Another day of nice weather. It feels good to have the early spring sun shining down. I’m thinking about how East Lake must be completely desolate and empty right now. I’m sure the plum blossoms all shed their flowers during that rainy night a few days ago. Tens of thousands of plum blossom trees and they all bloomed and withered for them alone to see and enjoy. If you had to put that in a poem, how would you convey that? “The flowers whirl and scatter as the water flows.” My old dog has been locked up at home for so long now that he doesn’t even want to go out to the courtyard anymore. He just likes to stay curled up in his dog bed. In some way, I feel the same; I don’t even want to go out anymore, I just want to stay here in my apartment. A few friends have sent me invitations; they are all telling me to come over to visit and rest for a while once the outbreak is over. They are all telling me how gorgeous the spring scenery is, trying to entice me with the images of beautiful mountains and rushing water. The old me would have been there in a minute. But right now I don’t even want to leave the house; I wonder if this is some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome I’m going through.

  My doctor friends have continued to forward me news about how much the coronavirus situation has improved. The number of new cases is now down to under 20; it should be down to zero soon. And thanks to the hard work of all the doctors, the number of deaths has also dramatically decreased. But I really can’t wait until the number of deaths gets down to zero. Today the Hubei Province Outbreak Control Center released a statement: All work units in Hubei Province will begin to gradually resume work and production according to each district, level, and type of industry. That means that we should be able to get back to our normal lives soon?

  One of my friends (all these friends are real people, but I do not always reveal their names here in order to protect them from potential attacks) sent me a photo this morning—it was a group photo of Central Hospital’s Department of Thyroid and Breast Cancer, which was Dr. Jiang Xueqing’s department. The day that Dr. Jiang passed away, someone replaced the heads of all the people in the photo with candles, only leaving one person’s image untouched—and that was Dr. Jiang Xueqing. I was quite touched by that photo and by his colleagues’ sense of friendship and loyalty. If Dr. Jiang can somehow see this, I hope it gives him a sense of comfort.

  For the past two days now, the name Ai Fen,14 a physician at Central Hospital, has been circulating all over the internet. All the internet censorship has begun to elicit the wrath of the people. It is as if everyone is in a relay race; as soon as the censors delete a post, netizens repost it again online. They just keep passing the baton forward. They just keep forwarding those posts, using all kinds of different methods to the point that the internet censors can no longer keep up; there is no way for them to delete everything anymore. Over the course of this process of resistance, posts get deleted, then reposted, over and over again. Preserving these deleted posts gradually becomes a sacred duty of those netizens. This sacred duty comes from an almost subconscious realization that keeps telling them: Protect those posts, for protecting them is the only way to protect yourself. Once things get to this point, I have to ask my dear internet censors, do you think you can really delete it all?

  It is really hard for me to understand how those internet censors work. They delete my posts over and over; I suspect that it is the ultra-leftists who bombard the internet companies with complaints that my posts threaten social stability, so they try to solve everything by just deleting everything in one fell swoop. I understand the psychology behind this because I do the same thing; whenever someone posts things out of line on my social media accounts, I just blacklist them. But why would someone censor an article about Ai Fen published in the magazine People?15 Unless, of course, someone was scared that she might reveal the inside story that someone doesn’t want told? I wonder what that inside story really is. The essay was about what happened at Central Hospital and addressed exactly the kind of things that we have all been eager to find out: It was about the who, what, and where behind the 20-day delay in reporting the outbreak. Don’t the internet censors also want to know these things? If we don’t unravel the details behind what actually happened between the initial outbreak and its spread, how will the people of Wuhan, and the people of China for that matter, ever get over this? I don’t believe that the internet censors would just haphazardly delete that article for no reason; the order certainly had to be coming at the request of someone. So who was it who made the call to delete that article? Officials from Wuhan? Or was it an order coming from Hubei? Or was it . . . anyway, the whole thing is very difficult for me to understand, even hard to imagine.

  Ever since the novel coronavirus first appeared in December of last year, everything that has happened since has seemingly gone against normal rules and conventions; and there are so many questions that will never be answered. We are now starting to see some of these things gradually emerge in reports being published by various journalists. Some of the details in these reports have left us utterly dumbfounded and at a complete loss for words. Whether these officials and specialists failed to perform their assigned duties, careless and inattentive, flippant and perfunctory, or just plain stupid, they need to be held accountable and punished, which should also serve as a warning to others. I don’t believe that the government will let those responsible off easy after what they have done; I don’t think anyone is going to get a pass on this. After all, if you don’t pursue this and hold people accountable, at the end of the day, the biggest victim will be the nation itself. It will result in the government’s loss of credibility with the public, not to mention the pain that citizens will feel. And that would lead to all kinds of other continued catastrophes. But right now, for a lot of people, it doesn’t seem to matter if these people don’t do their jobs or completely screw up their jobs; they just don’t care. If they don’t take responsibility, the nation will still be able to absorb the damage. But we can’t go on like that anymore. To quote a famous line: If we continue on as we have in the past, the country will cease to be the country it once was.

  Today I took the time to look up some official documents relating to the resignation of government officials in China. One item I found was entitled Provisional Resignation Rules for Party and Government Officials and Cadres. I’m not sure what year this version was published or whether or not it was later revised, but I will nevertheless quote it here. Chapter four of the document is entitled “Resignation After Assuming Blame,” and the fourteenth article states: “Party and government officials who commit multiple professional mistakes that result in large-scale losses, catastrophic impacts, or bear the responsibility for major accidents should no longer serve in an
y official capacity and they should resign their position and accept blame for their mistakes.”

  Article 15 is even more specific: “(1) In cases in which a dereliction of duty results in a serious incident affecting the public, or when a group incident or sudden incident is handled improperly, resulting in serious consequences or adverse effects, those leaders primarily responsible shall accept blame and resign; (2) For serious mistakes in decision-making that result in large-scale economic losses or other negative impacts, the leaders primarily responsible should accept blame and resign; (3) In cases of serious negligence as relating to disaster prevention and relief operations, prevention of epidemics and infectious outbreaks, etc., which lead to major losses or adverse effects, leaders bearing the primary responsibility should accept blame and tender resignation; (4) In instances of serious negligence in terms of work safety, continuous or multiple major liability accidents, or if a major accident occurs, the leader in charge should accept responsibility and resign; (5) For cases of serious negligence in the management and supervision of economic markets, environmental protection, social management, etc., continuous or multiple major accidents resulting in large-scale losses that are the result of bad leadership decisions, the individual in charge shall accept blame and tender resignation; (6) In cases where poor implementation of the articles contained in Regulations on the Selection and Appointment of CCP and Government Leaders and Cadres results in serious oversights, mistakes, and negative impact, leaders bearing responsibility should accept blame and resign; (7) In cases where negligent management or supervision results in team members or subordinates repeatedly committing serious legal violations or actions that breach the discipline code resulting in a negative impact, those leaders responsible shall accept blame and tender resignation; (8) If the spouse, children, or staff of government officials commit actions that seriously breach the code of discipline or commit illegal acts resulting in negative consequences, those leaders who were aware yet took no actions are to be held responsible and shall tender resignation; (9) In addition, there are other additional actions that can also result in leaders’ being forced to accept blame and resign.”

  It is quite clear from the regulations recorded above that assuming responsibility and offering one’s resignation is something required for a society to function properly. Upon review of the nine items listed above, who from Hubei Province and Wuhan city should accept responsibility and tender their resignation? I recommend that all officials involved in what has transpired consult the above articles and decide if any of the items are applicable to their own actions. If they do not feel any of the articles apply to their own actions, then the public will probably still submit a formal list of officials that they feel need to bear responsibility; but it would be terrible if it had to come to that. Instead I feel that, from now on, government officials need to understand the importance of being able to step up and accept blame for their mistakes before they even take office; and then they need to learn how to resign. In short, we have so many ignorant, arrogant, and thick-skinned officials who refuse to admit their own mistakes that the people can no longer stand by and take this anymore.

  As I get to this point, my friend just sent me an investigative report from the magazine Southern Weekly entitled “Four People Dead in the Line of Duty, Four People Critically Ill: Wuhan Central Hospital’s Darkest Moment.” The essay begins with: “There are still four doctors from Central Hospital who are critically ill. Dr. Yang Fan, who has been on the front lines with these patients, stressed the fact that all four of them are experiencing multiple organ failure, including respiratory failure, and other severe complications. ‘Some of them are currently completely reliant on respirators and life support to stay alive.’ They include Assistant Director Wang Ping, Medical Ethics Committee Member Liu Li, Assistant Director of the Thoracic Surgery Department Yi Fan, and Assistant Director of the Department of Urology Hu Weifeng.” My god, it really breaks your heart. How can the secretary and director of Central Hospital bear to sit comfortably without taking responsibility for this? Someone needs to cry out: “If you have a conscience, stand up and resign!”

  March 12, 2020

  Someone has probably been trying to use this incident with the police to harass me?

  The sky is bright but you can’t see the sun. But there is still a strong feeling of spring in the air.

  Today is an unusual day. Ever since I got out of bed, there has been a constant stream of bad news. It started with a post that a few of my friends sent to me. The title of the article was: “What Do You Think of Netizens’ Denouncement of Fang Fang?” and it included a compendium of more than 200 vicious online attacks against me. What can I say? These people are rotten to the core; it seems they don’t have even an ounce of goodness left. At the very least, shouldn’t they have balanced the article out by including voices from some of my supporters? Half and half would be nice. The publisher of this post was a website called “Hubei Today Online,” which is run by the Hubei Province Journalists Association. Is this even an official site? Don’t tell me that someone put this site up after I starting calling for some officials to take responsibility and resign? Is that what they are resorting to?

  But the other thing that happened today was even more unusual. Moreover, once it happened, the news was everywhere. The basic gist of the accusation is that I abused my special authority to get the traffic police to escort my niece out of Wuhan, so she could escape to Singapore. There were quite a few verified users on Weibo who have been trying to put on a good show by earnestly publishing essays about this. It really seems like those ill-intentioned people intent on attacking me really have nothing better to do with their time.

  My niece has lived in Singapore for more than a decade and is considered a Singaporean-Chinese. She took a flight home that was arranged by the Singapore government to evacuate Singapore citizens who had been living or working in Wuhan. The whole thing was arranged jointly by the governments of Singapore and China. This happened back around the time of the Lunar New Year, and I believe that the flight departed sometime around 1:00 a.m. (I don’t recall all the details, but I think the flight was later pushed back to 3:00 a.m.? In any case, the flight departed very late.) My brother and his wife are both in their 70s and neither of them drives. And that day the order had just come down banning private automobiles from the roads. I always follow the rules, so I decided to inquire about what we should do to get her to the airport. Frankly speaking, I have lived in Wuhan for more than 60 years and know quite a few police officers. Some of my colleagues also have relatives who serve on the force. The Wuhan Police Department even has a writing class that I once visited, on their invitation. I also used to get invited to a lot of conferences organized by the police department. I have even written several stories with police officer protagonists, and some of the material for those works actually came from hearing their stories. So, based on this experience, isn’t it only natural that I would have some police officer friends? Since I know these officers and I had an emergency situation, I reached out to them for help; which all makes perfect sense to me. Officer Xiao and a few of his fellow officers even came to my apartment about two years ago. When I reached out to them for help, I was told that Officer Xiao was actually off duty, so he would be free to help me out. I sent him a text and he immediately agreed to help. Although he is technically a member of the auxiliary police, I still refer to him as Officer Xiao. There are quite a few auxiliary police on the force and I always treat them with respect, as I feel one should. I think that was around Day Five of the Lunar New Year (although I’m not exactly sure of the date, but I’m sure I still have his texts saved on my phone). So if anyone wants to investigate, please go ahead. If this is what is called “abusing my special authority,” then I’m not sure what “special authority” means. To be truthful, I think what is really going on is that someone has probably been trying to use this incident with the police to harass me?

  I already responded to these ac
cusations earlier today on Weibo because I was very concerned that Officer Xiao might face repercussions if his superiors didn’t understand what actually happened, which is why I have taken the time to provide a full explanation. Otherwise, I never look at Weibo as a platform for dealing out judgment; I normally don’t feel obliged to respond to accusations just because someone posts them on Weibo. Writers are allowed to have friends who are police officers and police officers are allowed to help their friends out on their day off; this is all a common part of human relationships. Don’t you see plots like that on television shows every day? The fact that this issue has become so overblown is really a sad joke.

  While I’m at it, why don’t I share a few things about myself for those people lacking common sense (including those who have been reporting on me) in order to prevent mistakes with their future posts:

  This year I am 65 years old and recently retired. I have quite a few health conditions. I was actually admitted to the hospital just before the Chinese New Year last year for a herniated disc, which didn’t end up resolving itself until the end of the year. All my colleagues at work can attest to the health problems I have faced. For the first half of last year I could barely walk, I was in so much pain. So those people online who have suggested that I should get out and volunteer need to know that it is simply not a practical option for me. Moreover, at my age, I don’t think I could handle the physical strain involved in most volunteer work. If I were to slip and reinjure my back, then I really would become more of a burden than anything else.