by Fang Fang
My friend’s suggestion opened up a slew of ideas in my head. I’ll be honest with you, ever since 1993 I have been attending the Provincial People’s Congress Meeting and the Provincial Political Consultative Conference each year for a full 25 years now. I know all too well what all the various government offices are like every year when these meetings approach. In order to ensure that everything runs smoothly with these meetings, all the various media outlets are prohibited from covering any negative news reports. And during this time every year, employees from all government offices put aside their normal tasks because the leader of every government office has to attend these meetings. This year was no different. You can clearly see that the day the Municipal Health Committee stopped reporting the number of people infected corresponded almost perfectly with the date of those two government meetings. That is no coincidence. At the same time, I wouldn’t say it was really intentional, either; it is simply how government offices have grown accustomed to functioning. And these practices are not something recent; they have been developed over the course of many years. For years now, every government department has gotten into the habit of putting various tasks off until after the meetings are over; while, at the same time, in order to ensure the success of these meetings, the media has for years been following the practice of reporting the good news but not the bad. All the cadres are used to this; so is the media, so are the leaders, and so are the people. And so they put off their work and suppress negative news reports; usually nothing unexpected comes of any of this. After all, there are a lot of small matters in life and most of it can always wait a few days. It turns out good for everyone; people seem to like the arrangement and everyone saves face. But infectious diseases don’t care about etiquette, and they certainly don’t care about saving your face; in fact, they’ll rip it right off. That’s what SARS did, and that is what the novel coronavirus did; will there be a third one? I’m a bit worried. And so in following my doctor friend’s thoughts, I would like to make a suggestion: If we don’t change the timing for these meetings, then we should change the ugly habits we have fostered around them. Or if we can’t change the disgusting way we run these meetings, then we should alter the timing to hold them during a time of year when the weather is unlikely to spawn an infectious disease outbreak. Actually, it shouldn’t be very difficult to change both these things.
Something else occurred today that I cannot ignore; I suspect that many of my readers are actually awaiting my response. Someone who claimed to be a 16-year-old “high school student” published an open letter to me online. There were a lot of details about the letter that didn’t feel right, and numerous friends thought it was obvious that the letter could not have been written by a 16-year-old; it felt more like something one of those men in their 50s who impersonate teenage girls online would write! However, whether that’s the case or not, I decided to go ahead and respond to the letter as if I were writing to a 16-year-old high school girl.
What I want to say is: My child, it’s a good letter that you have sent me, filled with the uncertainties of someone your age. The ideas you expressed are quite what one would expect, and I’m sure that those things that are bothering you came directly from those people who have been educating you. But I need to tell you that I’m not the one who can dispel the doubts you have. Reading your letter actually reminded me of a poem I read many years ago. It is a poem by Bai Hua18; I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of him, but he was a talented poet and playwright. I first read this poem when I was 12 years old; that was in 1967 in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. All summer long that year, Wuhan was filled with Red Guards fighting in the streets. I was in the fifth grade, and that was the year I received a copy of Bai Hua’s collection of poetry called Distributing Flyers in the Face of the Iron Spear. One poem in that volume was entitled “I Too Was Once Young Like You.” There is one line in the poem that goes: “I too was once young like you, and back then we were as you are today.” I was so excited when I first encountered that poem, so much so that I remember that line even today.
My child, you say you are 16 years old. I was 16 years old back in 1971. If someone had tried to tell me back then that “the Cultural Revolution was a terrible calamity,” I would have thrown down my gauntlet and gone at them until we were both bruised and bloody; and I know that even if this person had spent three straight days and three straight nights trying to talk sense into me, there was absolutely nothing they could have said to change my mind. That’s because ever since the age of 11 I had received an education that repeatedly reinforced the fact that “the Cultural Revolution was good.” By the time I was 16, I had been exposed to those views for a full five years. Three days of trying to change my mind wouldn’t come even close to doing the trick. So it is based on that same principle that I know it will be impossible for me to clear up those things you have misgivings about. I’m afraid that even if I took three years trying to convince you and wrote eight books explaining why, you probably still wouldn’t believe me. That’s because, just like me when I was young, you have received at least five years of that sort of education.
That said, I still need to tell you, my child, that you will one day find an answer to dispel all your uncertainties. But only you can provide that answer for yourself. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years there will come a day when you will remember this and realize how childish you were back then. That’s because by then, you will be a brand-new you. Of course, if you end up following the path of those gangs of ultra-leftists, you may never find that answer you are looking for; instead, you might into fall into an abyss of lifelong struggle.
My child, I also want to tell you that when I was 16 years old, I was much worse off than you are. At that time, I had never even heard of words like “independent thought.” I never knew that people needed to learn how to think for themselves; we just did whatever our teachers told us to do, we followed whatever the schools told us to do, we followed whatever the newspapers told us to do, and whatever the radio broadcasts instructed us to do. The Cultural Revolution broke out when I was 11 and it wasn’t over until I was 21; that’s the world I grew up in during those 10 years. I never thought of myself, because I never thought of myself as an individual person; I was just one screw in a much larger machine. I functioned in step with that machine; when it stopped I stopped, when it moved I moved. This is probably quite similar to where you are today. (When I say “you,” I am not referring to everyone from your generation, because there are actually a lot of 16-year-olds today who have very strong independent thinking skills.) But I got lucky because I had a father whose greatest dream in life was to send all his children to college. I still remember when he told me that. So even when I was working as a porter, I knew that I had to do whatever it took to make sure my dad’s final wish was realized. I ended up getting accepted into Wuhan University, which has the most beautiful college campus in China.
My child, I often feel that I have been quite fortunate. Although the only education I received during my childhood was filled with nothing but stupidity, I was still able to somehow get into college. While I was there I read and studied like someone who had been starved for knowledge for her entire life. I discussed all kinds of fascinating topics with my classmates, I started writing fiction, and finally one day I came to understand the importance of independent thought. I am also fortunate to have witnessed the early days of the Reform Era and then go on to experience the entire series of reforms that would unfold from there. Emerging from the catastrophic toll of the Cultural Revolution, I watched as, one step at a time, China turned itself around from a backward country to a powerful one. You could say that if it were not for the Reform Era, we wouldn’t have any of the things we have today, including the right for me to publish my diary online and the right for you to publish your open letter to me. We should both be thankful for that.
My child, do you realize that for the first 10 years of the Reform Era I was basically struggling against myself for that entire decade
? I needed to clear all that accumulated garbage and poison out of my brain. I had to fill my mind with new things, I needed to try to view the world through my own eyes, I needed to use my own mind to think through problems. Of course, all this is built on the foundation of my own childhood experience growing up, what I have read, what I have observed, and what I have worked so hard for.
My child, I always thought that this process of struggling against myself that I went through in order to clear out all the garbage and poison inside me was something that only people from my generation had gone through. I never imagined that you and some of your peers will also go through something similar in the future. You too will one day need to struggle against yourself in order to purge all that garbage and poison that infected your brain as a child. It is a painful process; but with each purge comes a kind of liberation. And with each liberation you gradually transform from a dead, fossilized, rusty screw into a real person.
My child, do you understand what I have been trying to say? Now I’d like to leave you with a line of poetry: “I too was once young like you, and back then we were as you are today.”
March 19, 2020
I may be retired, but I still have enough energy to take you to court.
Day 57 of the quarantine.
That news we have been waiting day after day to hear has finally arrived: Today there are no new cases of novel coronavirus in Wuhan and no new suspected cases! My doctor friend also seems to be extremely excited: “We are finally at zero! Zeros across the board! The outbreak has been contained and we can now control all traffic from the outside coming in; now the main task is treating the patients we already have.”
At the same time, today we also saw the Hubei government’s goodbye ceremony for the army of service workers who are leaving; they also appealed to everyone in China to treat the people of Hubei with kindness! That’s right, please treat us with kindness. Not everyone in Hubei was infected with this virus. Millions of people here in Hubei spent nearly two months quarantined in their homes in order to help control the spread of the disease; it is hard for outsiders to understand the stress and difficulties that they had to deal with. But the Hubei people’s strength and forbearance in the face of this calamity ended up being the biggest contribution to China’s efforts to contain this virus. And so it is important for me to say it out loud: Please, my friends from all over China, treat the people of Hubei well, be kind to these people who sacrificed so much for all of you.
The next step should be for people outside Wuhan to start returning. If you ask me personally, I’m already desperate to get my helper back; I really hope she can come back soon. After two months, my house is in need of a deep cleaning. My old dog is now dirty and smelly; and his old skin problem is starting to come back. My hand is also still badly injured; I’ve been trying not to wash it or get it wet. I wonder when the vet’s office will reopen. Every day when I let him out into the courtyard I tell him that he just has to wait a few more days and then he’ll be all clean again. All the businesses are waiting to reopen, and we wait too.
Just like always, I got out of bed today and ate breakfast as I looked at my cellphone. One thing I didn’t expect was for that “high school student” from yesterday to post yet another open letter to me. Besides her, today a bunch of her “relatives” also came out of the woodwork, and each one of them also published open letters to me. (Wow, she sure has a lot of “relatives”!) Naturally, a bunch of other people also wrote letters, including some university students, middle school students, and even elementary school students. I have to be honest; some of them made me laugh harder than I have in a long time. Now that we are down to zero, I guess it is finally an appropriate time to have a good laugh. My old classmate Yi Zhongxue jokingly referred to today as National Letter Writing Day; I really lost it when I heard that one!
The result of the investigation into what happened to Li Wenliang was also released today. I have no idea if people are pleased or not with the results, but I feel that I have said enough on this issue. Li Wenliang is gone; his Weibo page has become a wailing wall where countless people can go to forever remember him. Everyone knows that he was not a hero; he lived a normal life like everyone else, and the actions he took are the kind of actions you would expect any ordinary person to take if put in his position. All we can do is make sure he is remembered and do everything we can to support his family. As for the results of that investigation, I really don’t care anymore. To be honest, our commemorations are in some sense a way for us to commemorate ourselves, to commemorate this experience we went through, and there was one important man who was part of that experience—his name was Li Wenliang. That said, it appears that the younger generation are much angrier than I am. This afternoon one young man left me a message: One speck of dust from an entire era may not seem like much, but when it falls on the head of the Zhongnan Police Station it becomes a buck to be passed on to the next player. Just like the second letter I got from that “high school student,” this message also made me burst out laughing. But I still want to say that things might be a bit more complicated than we all think. They are complicated in a way that common people like us have no means to truly understand. Some things just take time, even though I’m not sure if time will help in this case.
Although we are still prohibited from going outside, virtually everyone knows that for the past several days now the city of Wuhan has been fairly safe. Even though everyone continues to reinforce that we should continue to stay on guard, psychologically we are all now much more relaxed. Whether it be the reality of what is going on inside the city or everyday people’s state of mind, we are now in a completely different place than where we were a month ago. I have faith that lives will soon get back to their old rhythm. When they imposed the quarantine it was as if they suddenly slammed on the brakes, but I’m afraid the process of opening the city back up will be slow and gradual. I figure I don’t have to necessarily stop my diary when some government leader proclaims that “the city will reopen tomorrow.” Perhaps such a day will never come; that’s because they have already gradually begun to reopen some parts of the city, so it will likely be a slow process of transition until the city is completely open again. That’s why a few days ago I told Er Xiang that I planned to stop writing once I completed my 54th diary entry. It’s like a perfect deck of poker cards, and now my hand will soon be finished. What I didn’t realize was that yesterday was actually my 54th entry. I decided not to reply to the open letter from the “high school student” who somehow already has more than 100,000 Weibo followers, which seems pretty fishy to me. Anyway, it now seems that I missed my chance to say some concluding words to close out this diary. But today I’m wondering when should I close up shop and bring this diary to a close?
I should, by the way, mention that all my diary entries have been uploaded to WeChat from the official account of the writer Er Xiang. The reason for that is quite simple: The day my Weibo account was frozen happened to be the same day that Li Wenliang passed away. I suddenly lost my one public platform. I’m not very adept with public posts on WeChat, but I often follow Er Xiang’s official account there, so I reached out to her to see if she might mind helping me forward my posts. As a fellow writer, Er Xiang immediately agreed to help out. At the time, besides the fact that I knew she was a novelist, I really didn’t know anything about her, and we have never met in person (of course, that isn’t even possible now). It was only later when I read an essay about her that I learned something about her background. In short, it just comes down to an author with a verified official public account on WeChat helping out an old writer who doesn’t know how to create an official account and share essays on that platform. Who would have thought that such a simple arrangement would lead to all kinds of conspiracy theories online?! I’m extremely thankful for Er Xiang’s help and I hope she is able to one day visit Wuhan where I look forward to treating her to the seafood here! Seafood is one of Wuhan’s specialties and there are a lot of talented
seafood chefs in town.
I would like to digress again with a story from my youth. I was thinking back to many years ago when I was a member of the literature society in college; we would often discuss all kinds of literary topics. But after discussing things over and over, we could never seem to come to a mutual understanding. Later I grew a bit impatient with them and came up with a nickname I used behind their back; I called them the “Three Old Essays”19 group. The three topics the group kept going back to were the tensions between praise and expose, comedy and tragedy, and darkness and light. More specifically, we found ourselves continually discussing whether or not literature should only be about works that express praise, are comedies, or shine light on the positive side of society. We also discussed whether or not those writers who expose social ills, portray human tragedy, and reveal the dark side of society were all reactionaries. This was back in 1978 into 1979. Since we never seemed to come to a conclusion about these questions, we for some reason just eventually stopped discussing them. Later we even organized a big discussion around the topic “Is Literature a Tool for Class Struggle?” but I don’t think we came to a conclusion on that, either. Eventually, time passed by, I graduated, I started working, and I became a professional writer; then one day I discovered that somehow not only my old classmates but also the entire literary world had already reached a common understanding about how to approach this question: Can you write about anything you want? The main issue came down to the quality of your writing. So sometimes when I deliver lectures I say that there are a lot of questions that really don’t need to be discussed, as time will eventually answer all those questions.