Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

It is only because we have lived in this city for so long and have so many deep connections with the people here that we are so very concerned about this city’s fate and feel so deeply sad by the difficulties the city is now facing. You have people here who are carefree and happy-go-lucky, always smiling for no reason; there are people who speak so loudly and quickly that when visitors from out of town hear them, they think there is an argument going on; and those worldly people who know what it means to fight for honor and seem to have a confidence that comes out of nowhere. Once you get to know them, you begin to understand just how warm and sincere they really are, and how much they love to look cool. But today so many of them are suffering, wrestling with the god of death. And here I am—here we are—utterly helpless to do anything. At the most, we can go online and gently ask, Is everyone okay? But sometimes I don’t even dare to ask—I’m afraid at some point I won’t get a response.

Unless you have lived your entire life in Wuhan, I’m afraid it might be difficult for you to understand this or the feeling of pain that we are going through right now. For more than 20 days now, I have been relying on sleeping pills to fall asleep each night. I blame myself for not having enough courage to face everything.

I can’t go on about this anymore.

This afternoon I cooked four dishes for myself; it should hold me over for the next three days. For the previous few days, I’ve just been eating whatever I had left over around the house. I also cooked some extra rice. My 16-year-old dog is out of dog food. He was born on Christmas Eve of 2003; I suppose you could call him my Christmas present. I had just had an operation at the hospital. My daughter was home alone and she had a mix of fear and excitement when she saw our dog give birth right before her eyes. One of the puppies was a cute little white dog that looked like a stuffed animal, so we kept him. Just like that, he has been in my life for a full 16 years now. Just before the Chinese New Year I ordered him some dog food on Taobao, but it never arrived. The seller apologized but told me there was nothing they could do. The day before the quarantine began, I picked up some food at the pet store, but I never imagined it wouldn’t be even close to enough. I called the vet at the animal hospital to ask what to do and he told me I could feed the dog rice. So from now on, whenever I cook rice, I need to cook an extra portion for him.

As I was cooking, my colleague called to tell me that her classmate just gave birth to a 4.5 kg fat baby boy by C-section. She told me that the arrival of a new life is such a happy occasion.

That is the best news I heard today. That’s right; the arrival of a new life is the best hope that heaven can give us for the future.

February 12, 2020

Shouting political slogans is not going to ease the pain that the people of Wuhan are going through.

It has been 21 days now since the city went on lockdown. It’s almost as if I’m living in a daze. It is hard to believe that we have been quarantined for this long. I’m somewhat amazed that we are somehow still able to do mundane things like share jokes with friends and poke fun at one another over group-chat threads and talk about what we are eating each day. I was even more amazed when I read a thread of messages on my phone and saw a message from a colleague who jogged three kilometers just by running back and forth between her kitchen and bedroom! Now that is amazing! Trying to jog around your apartment like that is a completely different level! Compare that to taking a run alongside the East River in Wuhan. No comparison. I figure I must indeed be getting old; I’m sure I would pass out if I tried to run around my apartment like that.

The sky is really glowing today; the sun even came out for a bit in the afternoon, brightening up this winter day. Yesterday the lockdown order was extended to every district. Now no one can go outside. This order was sent down so that the quarantine can be more strictly enforced. After seeing so many tragedies over the course of what has happened, we all understand why this needs to be done and calmly accept it.

Realizing that every household needs a supply of food, each neighborhood has set up a series of practical measures so that every three to five days, one person from each household is allowed to go outside to purchase groceries and supplies. So from here on out, every few days the people of Wuhan will take turns making supply runs to stock up on food. Today one of my colleagues sent her husband to play the role of the do-gooder Lei Feng [15] Lei Feng (1940–1962) was a “model soldier” serving in the People’s Liberation Army who was espoused by Mao Zedong and elevated to the role of national hero for his willingness to sacrifice for others, display modesty, and work hard without any hope for credit or reward. Decades after his tragic death, schoolchildren throughout China are still taught to “learn from the spirit of Lei Feng.” —he not only picked up supplies for his household, but also brought back a bag of groceries for me and another for my neighbor Chu Feng. He even delivered the groceries right to my doorstep! I fall into the category of people who are at particularly high risk of contracting the virus, and Chu Feng has a back injury that makes it difficult for him to get around; so we both have a lot of people looking out for us. In the bag was meat, eggs, chicken wings, and some fresh fruit and vegetables. I don’t think my kitchen was this stacked even before the quarantine! I told my colleague that for someone like me who only eats a small bowl of rice and a simple dish each day, this will be enough to last me for the next three months!

My eldest brother told me that there is only one gate in his neighborhood that they have open and only one person from each household can go out once every three days to purchase supplies. My other brother said that there is this delivery boy in his neighborhood who runs around every day delivering food to everyone. Every family writes up its own shopping list and hands it off to him, and he takes care of the rest. His family gave the kid a list that included a bunch of vegetables, eggs, some cooking sauce, disinfectant, and instant noodles. Everyone goes down to the main gate of their development for pickups. My brother said, “Now we get to stay home for a few more days without having to worry about going out again.” He lives just across from Central Hospital, which for the past several days has been the number one most dangerous area in all of Wuhan in terms of the number of infections. He said: “We need to stand firmly together against this, and let’s hope that by late February everything will be back to normal!”

That is indeed what most of us are all hoping for.

There are always a lot of kindhearted people who do incredible things during difficult times. The Yunnan writer Zhang Manling [16] Zhang Manling (b. 1948) is a film director, producer, and writer. She was the first Chinese woman to be featured on the cover of TIME magazine during the Reform Era. She is the award-winning author of numerous books and screenplays. sent me a video of the people from Yingjiang prefecture sending nearly a hundred tons of potatoes and rice to be donated to the people of Hubei. Zhang Manling had spent time in Yingjiang as an educated youth during the Cultural Revolution, and that is the place she wrote about in her novel Sacrificed Youth. [17] Sacrificed Youth ( Qingchun ji ) was a 1985 film adapted from Zhang Manling’s novella A Beautiful Place ( Yige meili de difang ). The film was directed by Zhang Nuanxin (1940–1995) and explored themes of sexual awakening and minority cultures through the lens of an “educated youth” sent to Yunnan during the Cultural Revolution. The film adaptation of Sacrificed Youth was a movie that everyone of my generation saw. In some ways, it served as a record of our collective coming-of-age story. I have been to Yunnan Province many times over the years, but never to Yingjiang, but now I will always remember that place.