Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

4. What percentage of the patients are considered to be critical, and what is the recovery rate for them? My friend said that previously in Wuhan the number of critical cases was around 38 percent; but that is because a lot of these patients were originally just staying at home and only came to the hospitals when things got serious. Now that we have added more sickbeds, patients are now able to come into our hospitals and get treatment in a timelier fashion, which has helped us get the percentage of critical patients down to around 18 percent. The rate of recovery for them is also much higher than it was earlier on. I figure that when you have close to 60,000 confirmed patients, you are still going to be facing some really high numbers. I’m afraid that the death rate will not be coming down anytime soon.

A reader online posed a question to me about why I just record these little details of everyday life and not important things like the People’s Liberation Army entering the city, the support that people from all over China have shown to Wuhan, the miraculous construction of the Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospitals, and all those heroic and selfless individuals who have been rushing to Hubei to offer aid. How should I go about answering this question? When it comes to recording things, everyone has a different role to play; do you want to hear about this? When we eat we divide our meal up into main courses and appetizers, no? Throughout China there are so many official government news organizations and independent internet news organizations; every day they are all recording those things you asked for. They provide a macro-perspective on the big trends concerning the direction the outbreak is heading, their reports are often filled with heroic narratives and imbued with the hot-blooded passion of youth, etc., etc. There are so many articles out there written in that style that I can barely keep track of them.

I, on the other hand, as an independent writer, only have my own tiny perspective on things. The only things I can pay attention to and experience are those little details that are happening around me and those real people I encounter in my life. And so that’s all I can write—I provide a record of those trivial things happening around me; I write about my feelings and reflections in real time as things happen in order to leave a record for myself of this life experience.

Moreover, my profession is that of a writer. In the past when I would share my thoughts on writing fiction, I would always say that novelists are often closely tied to those losers, misanthropes, and loners. We walk together hand in hand and often go out of our way to help each other. Fiction has the ability to express a broader means of embracing the world of human emotions. Sometimes I feel like an old hen assigned to protect those people and things that have been abandoned by history and those lives that have been ignored by society as it advances forward. My job is to spend time with them, give them warmth, and encourage them. Or perhaps my fiction can reveal an atmosphere that shares the same fate as these individuals and I will need their company, warmth, and encouragement. The powerful people of this world, the so-called victors, often don’t really care about literature; for them, literature is just a flowery adornment. But for the weak and dispossessed, literature is often a bright light that shines through one’s life, it is a wreath of straw you can cling to for support while floating down the river, it is that savior you can turn to when you are reaching the end. That is because, in times like that, it is only literature that can tell you that it’s okay if you are behind, there are a lot of other people just like you. You’re not the only one who is lonely, you are not the only one who is alone. You are not the only one suffering or in pain, you are not the only one feeling anxious and weak. There are a lot of ways to live. Of course it is great to be successful, but not succeeding isn’t always a bad thing.

Look at me—a novelist documenting all these trivial daily occurrences here in this diary, and yet I somehow follow the direction of my literature to observe, to reflect, to experience, and, ultimately, to set my pen down to paper and write. Don’t tell me this is a mistake?

Yesterday’s post on WeChat was deleted again. Besides helplessness there is only helplessness. Where can I share this record of my life in this besieged city? Mooring on the misty bank the messenger is filled with sorrow . To observe, to reflect, to experience, and, ultimately, to set my pen down to paper and write. Don’t tell me this is a mistake?

February 18, 2020

Amid the outbreak the people weep … why do we need to push one another?

Today the weather remains clear and beautiful; it is enough to make one feel as if there are new possibilities for life everywhere. The clouds today have a lot of character. I was even discussing the clouds with my neighbor who lives next to my place out in the suburbs; I wondered what kind of weather could form clouds like that. They looked like what you call “fish scale clouds,” but my neighbor said that’s not what they were. Last year I spent almost the whole year out there in the suburbs writing; I only returned to my apartment at the Literary and Arts Federation building in Wuchang just before the Lunar New Year last year. My neighbor told me that they still didn’t have a single case of infection out there in the suburbs. Oh my, I wonder when I’ll be able to go back there. The flowers outside my front door and in the courtyard are probably all dead by now. That said, I never had much of a green thumb; almost every flower that ends up in my hands usually ends up facing a rather tragic fate. Either they grow for a while and then wither away or they simply stop blooming.

It has been almost a month since the quarantine began. When I first saw the lockdown order I had absolutely no idea that it would last this long. It is obvious that these severe quarantine restrictions that have been put in place have helped Wuhan emerge from its darkest days. By now people seem to have finally begun to grow accustomed to this new form of sheltered life. Even those spirited little kids bursting with energy have somehow managed to put up with this. Life’s ability to adapt and tolerate changes is really something.

Those frantic pleas from those people desperate to get treatment have completely disappeared from the internet. Nowadays all the discussion you see online is information about how to order vegetables and groceries. Now that people are spending all their time paying attention to life matters, our days are looking more and more like the weather today, filled with new possibilities for life. All the large supermarkets have begun to roll out meal plan delivery services; each delivery carefully denotes the name of the district and drop-off site as well as the name and cellphone number of the contact person. This has made things endlessly more convenient for the manager of each grocery delivery group. I heard that the delivery group started by the Literary and Arts Federation has been a big hit; quite a few people from the nearby neighborhoods have also joined. The only issue is that there are tightly enforced restrictions when it comes to going from one neighborhood to another; I’m not sure how those people from nearby neighborhoods are able to pick up their deliveries. Just as I was wondering about this, I suddenly discovered that some of my colleagues had ordered groceries online and they were hoisting them up with a rope! The fact that they came up with this is quite amazing, but I suspect that there are a lot of other people doing similar things.

The order that my old classmate Lao Geng (his wife manages the grocery group and he helps her run it) put in for me arrived and, besides the different types of bread that it said it would include, it also included some fresh green vegetables. There is not much pleasure in cooking when you are home alone, so I usually just take the easy route and cook a bowl of noodles or boil some shredded potatoes. But the range of dishes waiting for us when this all ends is actually quite something. Today Pan Xiangli [25] Pan Xiangli (b. 1966) holds a PhD in literature and is a writer and editor based in Shanghai. Pan is also the vice chair of the Shanghai Writers Association. She is the author of numerous books, including That Age When You Still Believe in Love ( Xiangxin ai de nianji ) and The Lotus That Penetrates the Heart ( Chuan xin lian ). sent me a WeChat message; she tried to console me by promising that she would treat me to a proper Shanghainese feast next time I was in town. “We’ll pig out for three meals straight!” she promised. Okay then, it’s a date! Others who have written to try to cheer me up have also repeatedly brought up the topic of food. Wuhan people love discussing which restaurant makes the best food in town, and that is even more the case now than ever. I’m not a member of too many WeChat groups, but the largest one I am a member of is a group made up of my former college classmates. For the past month or so the discussion has been dominated by talk of the coronavirus. While most of the members of the group are from Hubei, there are also quite a few members who are from Hunan. Normally there are a lot of jokes within the group that attempt to mimic the accent of those Hunanese classmates by referring to them as “Fulanese,” which is how they sound when they say “Hunanese” in their local dialect. First thing this morning one of my classmates clicked “like” on a post about the “Fulanese”; it said that there were no new cases of infection reported in the Huagang region where the Fulanese have been providing medical support. I didn’t carefully review all the data, but I had heard that the Fulanese had sent a lot of aid to Huagang some time ago. The recovery rate in Huagang is also the highest in all of Hubei Province, and the recovery rate in “Fulan” is the highest nationwide. Although my daughter was born in Wuhan, her residence card still lists her official hometown as being “Fulan.” The relationship between Hubei and Hunan has always been particularly close. I’m reporting these comments about Hunan here but, in all fairness, places all over China have really been doing their best to help out with the situation in Wuhan. Those backup forces have allowed Hubei, which has been under siege, to finally heave a sigh of relief. The fact that things are now really starting to improve has a lot to do with the support and contributions we are receiving from other provinces.