by Fang Fang
March 18: Last night Z had a toothache so in the middle of the night he got up and rubbed some oral pain relief cream on his tooth, but it only seemed to help a little. The next morning, besides rubbing on some more cream, he also tried gargling with saltwater, but he was still in a lot of discomfort. It was a good thing he was able to calm down and carefully examine his mouth; he discovered that it wasn’t actually a tooth problem, he had a mouth ulcer in the gum area. I remembered that there was a spray that can treat mouth ulcers, so I quickly had him contact the pharmacy over WeChat and we were able to easily purchase the spray as well as a traditional Chinese medicine that was supposed to relieve internal heat. After I paid via WeChat I quickly went down to the west gate of our complex and picked up the medicine, which the storeowner next door passed to me through the iron gates of the fence. It was so convenient. I felt much more relieved once I picked up the medicine. You have to know how very difficult it is to go to the hospital during this current situation; first of all, just getting out of our complex is difficult and then getting into a hospital is also very hard. Since Z suffers from a serious chronic health condition, what worries me most right now is his illness’s suddenly acting up and requiring him to go to the hospital.
But going down to the west gate to pick up the medicine was actually quite enjoyable because I got to enjoy a full five minutes of sunlight on the way there and back; what a treat! Both of our main meals today are soups or soft dishes that won’t irritate his mouth; but waxed-duck and Chinese radish soup with some century eggs on the side was enough to fill us up while being quite tasty and nutritious. The medicine I bought is fairly easy to use; you just spray it in your mouth once every two hours. The Chinese medicine needs to be taken as a hot drink three times a day; I’ll start that one tomorrow. The good thing is that with Chinese medicine it doesn’t really matter if use a bit extra in the beginning. By the evening, Z’s mouth was already much better; I don’t think it will keep him up again tonight.
March 19: Today is our 59th day at home. Z’s mouth ulcer is much better. I guess we bought the right medicine. This afternoon for lunch I reheated the waxed-duck and Chinese radish soup from yesterday, but threw in a bunch of other ingredients like cabbage; that way, with a bowl of rice, it will be a full nutritious meal: another delicious soup dish. Hopefully, tomorrow his mouth will be good enough for us to start eating normal solid foods again.
L’s old partner had a stroke last year; at first it didn’t seem that serious and he had made a decent recovery, but the whole process was very stressful for him and he ended up with a long-lasting depression. Over the course of this extended lockdown, the two of them started to really get on each other’s nerves. I remember last time she texted me on WeChat she told me how terrible it was. Everyone is ecstatic today since the number of new cases just went down to zero so I thought I’d reach out to see how she and her husband were doing. I never imagined that the first thing she would say would be that she broke down crying as soon as she saw the number get down to zero. I never imagined her to respond so strongly; compared to her, I wonder if I’ve turned into a zombie after being locked up at home for so long. Of course I’m happy, but I also quickly realized that today only marks the first day at zero, we still have a long way to go.
Before I even had a chance to share what I’ve been going through, she just unloaded all kinds of complaints on me: “Oh my, we can’t go on like this! We’re just stuck at home every day. All day all he thinks about is his illness, he’s a real hypochondriac, oh my goodness, I’m so frustrated! Every day at home all he talks about is his illness coming back! He keeps babbling about wanting to go to the hospital yet at the same time he’s scared to go; so he ends up just sitting at home fixating on his illness. He gets so wrapped up in it that he can’t even sleep. I’ll tell you, this old man is going to make me have a nervous breakdown!”
I tried to talk some sense into her by explaining that once you enter old age there are a lot of times where you simply need to calm down and let things go. I told her what was most important was having someone there beside her to keep from feeling too lonely. I even suggested that she try looking at herself as a carefree big sister who has to take care of a naughty child; if that doesn’t work try to just laugh it off or pretend you are brain dead. I feel like people with psychological problems all have a common trait; when they say something crazy, you just nod your head in agreement, and then once that is out of the way you can do whatever the hell you want to. When you run into situations where you simply can’t agree with them, never try to talk sense into them, that will just make things worse. Instead you had better just shut your mouth and say nothing. There’s nothing else you can do because the person you are dealing with is not entirely normal.
When I read this entry written by my sister-in-law I thought it was really interesting, especially the part about “the person you are dealing with is not entirely normal,” which was particularly funny to read.
Today is a day worth commemorating: Day 60 of the quarantine. Today there were quite a few people who got in touch with me, asking me to stop writing. They are probably afraid about the number of people now attacking me online. Actually, I only intended on writing 54 chapters—a perfect deck of poker cards—I joked with my friend about playing out my entire hand. But I didn’t end up stopping on Day 54; instead I have decided to go up to 60. Today all my friends suddenly seem to think that the danger level has risen. I’m also starting to sense that. This afternoon the number of people attacking me on Weibo seemed to clearly double. My friends probably all know who these people attacking me are.
A few years ago there was a popular slogan online: “When the Emperor’s Bar sets out on an expedition, not even a single blade of grass grows.”23 At the time I also thought this whole controversy was quite something and even forwarded a few posts about it. Someone in my friends group also forwarded me a “command” sent out from the Official Weibo Account of the Emperor’s Bar. The Official Weibo Account of the Emperor’s Bar listed a series of articles about me. Now that was really something. Somehow in the eyes of the “Bar Boss,” I must be their enemy now? Last year this group did in fact express support for those who collectively mobilize people to use extreme obscenities for nationalistic purposes. At the time, I publicly criticized them and ended up having my account suspended for that. The Emperor’s Bar has a large group of 10 million followers online. I suppose the “Bar Boss” couldn’t tolerate this offense. That’s because their leader is indeed the greatest under heaven; no one in this world is a worthy opponent for him. I found this quite amusing. But I still want to believe that 99 percent of the members of the Emperor’s Bar are reasonable young people. If there are some even-headed people supporting this platform, how could this Bar have continued on for so long? The slogan “when the Emperor’s Bar sets out on an expedition, not even a single blade of grass grows” would actually be great as an advertising slogan.
Spring is now here. Spring is a season of awakening; it is also a season of hope. That awakening and hope are embodied in a poem that begins: “The wildfires continue to burn for now, but when the spring winds blow life will return.”24
March 23, 2020
All those questions, they remain unanswered.
Day 61 of the quarantine. I began to post this diary on Weibo starting on Day One of the Lunar New Year (January 25); that was five days after the lockdown began. Today marks my 59th diary entry.
A bright clear day and the temperature is perfect. This afternoon I was finally able to take the dog to the vet. His skin problem has been acting up again and is now festering all over his body; I can’t delay treatment for him any longer. The injury on my finger is also pretty bad; I need to get it checked out. Before long the vet sent me a video of my dog; they said he was so dirty that the tub of water all turned black! They also said they would need to shave him in order to properly treat his skin problem. This dog was born on Christmas Eve of 2003; at the end of the year he will be 17 years o
ld, a bit too old for a dog. All the other dogs I had from back then have all long died. He’s the survivor. He still has an appetite and still likes to play, but his vision is going and he doesn’t hear so well anymore. Once he got old, his skin condition also started to deteriorate and has become really difficult to treat. During normal times, I make sure to occasionally take him to the vet to get bathed and treated for his skin disease. But this time, because of the quarantine, he was way overdue for a visit. But it’s a good thing that everything is improving now; they’ll take good care of him at the hospital and I can finally rest easy.
Outside in the streets they are testing the buses before they start running again, and down by the subway station they are cleaning things up and disinfecting everything; everything is getting ready to start operating again. Everyone is passing this information around to each other and we are all excited to see the city coming back to life. And as for the numbers that used to terrify us each day, they are now at zero, as they have been for the past five days in a row.
First thing this morning, my second brother uploaded a photo to our chat group of someone offering 10-minute “quickcut” haircuts in his neighborhood. They were doing them out on the field right outside my brother’s window. The weather is sunny today and residents were lining up, at a distance of about one meter apart, in a long line. My brother said that they had been lining up like that all day long. His neighborhood was once the single most dangerous area in all of Wuhan. My brother has been locked up in his apartment for more than 60 days, but today he seems quite relaxed. For someone like my brother, who has a lot of medical issues, to get through these two months without getting sick is really a gift from God.
According to Mayor Zhou, just before the Lunar New Year approximately five million people left Wuhan. A few days ago there was a notification that most of these people can now reenter the city if they have a health QR code. My housekeeper also sent me a text saying that she should be able to come back sometime in the next day or two. Some of my former classmates who ended up staying on in Hainan island keep sending photos of themselves hanging out on the beach; we originally had planned to have seafood together before the outbreak. We have been trapped at home, they have been trapped outside the city; but now they can all start making their way back to Wuhan.
I’m told that right now it is relatively easy to enter Wuhan, but much more difficult to get out. This reminds me of those people who visited Wuhan just before the lockdown; I wonder what happened to them? Are they still here? I suspect that the two months they were detained here in Wuhan might be the most difficult period of their lives. How many people are there like them in Wuhan? I’m afraid there are probably no precise numbers. I’m just asking out of curiosity, but I discovered it must be a fairly large number; and most of them are still here. For the time being, none of Wuhan’s transportation services have resumed service outside the city; that means that no airplanes, trains, buses, or private automobiles are allowed to leave the city limits. I wonder how those people from elsewhere who have been stuck here in Wuhan and their worried family members have gotten through these two months; it must be so hard for all of them.
My neighbor Y told me that two of the volunteers in his Shadow Dream Team are actually out-of-towners who still cannot go home; one of them is from Nanning in Guangxi Province. When he saw the reports about the outbreak in Wuhan, he rushed here to volunteer. When he got here, the quarantine was imposed and now he is stuck here. The other volunteer is from Guangdong and he too has no way to get back home. The volunteer team takes care of their room and board and they also plan on buying them train tickets to get home once this is all over. One of my doctor friends who has been providing news on the coronavirus throughout this whole period told me today that a few of his friends came to Wuhan on a business trip just before the lockdown; they also got stuck here with no way of going home. All of a sudden it has now been two months; when they came it was still winter and now we are already in spring; they don’t even have the appropriate clothes. Another friend owns a company in Beijing; since he got held up in Wuhan, he has been unable to run his company.
During the outbreak, these unfortunate individuals from elsewhere who ended up getting stuck here in Wuhan during the quarantine were completely marginalized. For a long time no one even thought about them. It was only much later in the outbreak that a reporter discovered a few people who had been living in one of the city’s underground pedestrian tunnels without anything to drink or eat. Only after that article came out did people realize that there was a group of people like that here in Wuhan who were basically out on the streets. Their situation was really too tragic. After that report was published, the government stepped in and came up with some housing options for those people. But now, after all this time has gone by, it is hard to imagine that they are still here in Wuhan. They are even more anxious for the city to reopen than the other nine million residents of Wuhan. Sometimes I think that if there were more thoughtful people in the world, perhaps they could help the government to come up with some ideas to figure out how to get these people home a little sooner. For instance, we could do a census by scanning everyone’s health QR code, determine which province they are from, and then arrange one bus for each province to send them all home to their respective provincial capitals; they could then be quarantined in a hotel designated by the individual; then after 14 days, they could be permitted to return home. That kind of a policy wouldn’t be too difficult to implement. If you can dream it, you can do it. That would be an easy option for resolving this problem; and it could save a lot of people from this desperate situation, so what’s stopping us from trying?
Ever since yesterday, there has been a lot of news about Beijing refusing to let people from Hubei into the city. It is really hard for me to believe; even now I have trouble believing this is true. I just can’t fathom what the difference between a healthy person from Hubei and a healthy person from Beijing could possibly be. If Beijing really refuses Hubei residents entry into the city, it may be the people of Hubei who will be suffering, but it is certainly not anything they should feel shameful about. It is those people who suggested and adopted these policies of exclusion that should feel shame. Of course, it is also our entire civilization that should feel shame. One day we will look back and realize what level our civilization was still stuck at in 2020. For the time being, I’d like to hope this report is not accurate; but it is worth noting here in my diary.
There was also some bad news today: Several days back, a young nurse from Guangxi who had come to Wuhan as a member of one of the relief teams suddenly collapsed at the hospital. It was a good thing that there were several doctors present, so they quickly administered lifesaving treatment. At the time, all the media outlets reported this story; everyone was happy that she was able to escape death. But last night my doctor friend told me that, in the end, she still didn’t make it. She lost her life on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus. Her name is Liang Xiaoxia; this year she would have been 28 years old. Let’s forever remember her. I hope she is able to rest in peace.
For the past few days, the calls for people to assume responsibility for what happened have been growing weaker, so much so that even I have started to overlook this issue. There seem to be fewer and fewer in-depth investigative reports being published, and now there are nearly none. Last night I read one report entitled “The 41 Missing Coronavirus Reports,” which concludes with the following sentence: “By pulling away the deeply hidden thorns and accepting the pain hidden in these dark corners of society, the media uses its limited strength to reveal the truth and expose it to the light. While some reports may have temporarily disappeared, when all is said and done, there will certainly be a place for them in the manuscript of history.” Reading that, I was struck with a small revelation: I suspect that perhaps those groups that have suddenly been launching vicious attacks against me might have something to do with those deleted posts?
But when it comes
to the topic of assigning responsibility, I still want to believe that people from all levels of society will be on the same page: that this is an essential step we have to take. If we don’t investigate who was responsible for such a massive incident, I wonder how the government can ever face its people. I have been following this topic from the beginning. Looking over things carefully, among all those people connected to what happened, some of them should certainly take the initiative and resign; that’s what happened after the SARS outbreak. But for some reason, even up until today, not a single official in Hubei has resigned; I guess they know how to play the game. One thing that is interesting: When people passed blame, it was often the politicians who blamed the scientists, who, in turn, blamed the politicians. But now things are getting really interesting; now they are all placing all the responsibility on the United States. A few days ago I saw a series of curious essays by the economist Hua Sheng. In his essay he mentioned a “deepthroat” figure here in Wuhan. If it hadn’t been for this “deepthroat,” the coronavirus may not have been reported until much later. According to him, this “deepthroat” is the true whistleblower. As I read that essay, images from the Chinese television spy drama Lurking kept appearing in my head. A few days ago I told my friend that I was really dying to know who this “deepthroat” was. My friend felt the same. Sounds like the kind of person I could put into one of my novels.
Among the essays that friends keep sending me on WeChat, there was one by Professor Du Junfei from Nanjing University. Professor Du holds a PhD in sociology and his essays often hit on some very important issues. In this essay of his I just read, he points out seven items: