Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

This evening the discussion of traditional Chinese medicine continued on my group chat. Apparently, there are quite a few old classmates of mine who are totally against traditional Chinese medicine. Then my classmate from the Institute of Chinese Medicine jumped in again to further discuss his viewpoint: “Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a true synthesis between Chinese and Western medicine. They are each theoretically incompatible, like two cars driving on completely different roads. When we talk about a synthesis between Chinese and Western medicine, what we are usually talking about is using Chinese medicine as the basis, while employing some Western medical equipment, supplies, and therapies in the treatment plan, depending on effectiveness. But actually there are a lot of problems with this approach; in fact, these two traditions are often in conflict with one another.” I’m really not well versed in the various debates between Chinese and Western medicine. Usually when I go to the doctor I seek out specialists trained in Western medicine. However, when it comes to everyday health maintenance issues, I usually turn to Chinese medicine. For instance, every winter I tend to start drinking a lot of hot water infused with Chinese herbal medicine. I even introduced this method to my colleague Chu Feng, and she said she felt like a new person after she started drinking it.

I just noticed a report online that the various stories about Wuhan people getting fed up and cursing the system were starting to be taken seriously by various government offices. Various District Heads and the Commission for Inspecting Discipline have all begun to take notice, and Zhongbai Supermarket has already begun to adopt some changes; I guess speaking out can lead to some good results. One of my friends told me that an English-language version of these “Wuhan curses” has already come out online. I’m sure that will give me another good laugh.

These Wuhan curses have also had an impact on several related topics. To be honest, after all the time that has gone by, basic things like getting enough food have become a pronounced issue for many people in Wuhan. Over time, the group-buying model has also revealed its shortcomings. Every day at pickup time there are crowds of people showing up to pick up their groceries at the entrance to each development. And all the items rarely arrive at the same time, so people often have to go down several times to pick up their entire order. It started out with us only having to go out once a day to pick everything up, but now we have to go out several times just to pick up a single order. At the same time, some residents are getting a bit unreasonable; instead of just ordering daily necessities, they are ordering entire cases of beer and other things that they don’t really need. That really puts an unreasonable burden on the volunteers, who are already past the point of exhaustion. But what are we to do? Management is a science, but never mind daily necessities; the big question is how to better manage this coronavirus outbreak. A novelist like me surely isn’t the right person to ask.

I saw an interesting post online that summed up where things stand: The first group of people with the coronavirus were infected before the Lunar New Year; the second group of people infected all flooded the hospitals; the third group of people infected flooded the supermarkets; the fourth group of people infected started to blindly sign up for online shopping groups.

According to my doctor friend, the spread is extremely difficult to contain, which is indeed our greatest challenge.

February 23, 2020

You need to be brave and accept the consequences of your decisions.

Today is another bright, clear day. I’m reminded of a book from my childhood, called Bright Clear Day , although I can’t remember what it was about anymore. A few days ago I thought that the plum blossoms must have all shed their petals by now, but yesterday I surprisingly discovered that all the crimson plum blossoms in our courtyard had broken out in a riotous bloom. In all the years past, I have never seen them blooming like that—gloriously announcing their presence amid a flurry of beauty and color.

Within the blink of an eye, the first month of the Lunar New Year has passed and we are no longer even bothering to count how many days it has been since the quarantine began. It doesn’t really matter anymore, because I just stay quietly at home, patiently waiting while trying to remain as calm as I can be. I’m not waiting for a turning point anymore; I’m just waiting for the day when I can go outside again. As far as I can tell, the turning point doesn’t really matter anymore. It has, after all, proved to be elusive, so what’s the point of just waiting in vain? Who knows; perhaps, as Director Wang of the Leishenshan Hospital said, the turning point has already come and gone? Indeed, the darkest, most tragic and painful days that Wuhan has faced during this outbreak are already behind us. Right now the coronavirus might be slow-moving and difficult to get through, but the situation is still much better than it was before. That said, we have yet to escape from the clutches of death. This morning a young doctor was taken by the coronavirus; just like Dr. Peng Yinhua, who passed away two days ago, she was only 29 years old. Her name was Xia Sisi. She leaves behind a two-year-old child. Last night another male doctor died; he had only just turned 40; his name was Huang Wenjun. We sigh and we cry; there are a lot of people sighing and crying these days. And then we silently forward these bits of news to one another. Is it a total of nine doctors who have died fighting the coronavirus now? It is difficult to keep track anymore.

Today I was thinking about the fact that they keep saying that people with preexisting health conditions are more susceptible to the virus. And don’t they say that if you don’t receive treatment early you are more likely to end up with more serious symptoms or even risk death? These doctors were all between the ages of 29 and 40 and don’t seem to fit into any of these categories; they were all healthy and received treatment early on, so how come none of them made it? I decided to bring these questions to my doctor friend. He said: “That’s right, elderly people with underlying health conditions are more likely to succumb to this disease. And when medical professionals get infected, they indeed have access to excellent quality medical care. The reason these doctors ended up dying has to do with inherent differences in the patients’ constitutions. Each person has a different level of sensitivity when it comes to how the body reacts to an infection.” He didn’t explain it that clearly to me, but he did reiterate what he had told me before: “This is a very strange virus. Yesterday I saw a news report about a 97-year-old who had completely recovered and was just released from the hospital. When I saw that, I also began to wonder if there was perhaps some other reason to account for the high death rate among healthcare professionals.” [31] While still preliminary, more recent studies have suggested that one reason so many healthcare practitioners have not only been infected but also suffered severe symptoms from COVID-19 may have to do with them being exposed to a higher “viral load.” In “Viral Dynamics in Mild and Severe Cases of COVID-19,” published on March, 19, 2020, a study of coronavirus patients in Nanchang, China, indicated a preliminary correlation between the severity of symptoms and the amount of virus present in the nose.

Today in my classmates chat group, my former Group Leader from college, Lao Yang, posted some very complimentary things about another classmate named Lao Xia. Although Lao Yang later went to Beijing, where he assumed a senior government post, since we all started out together in the same group in college, we still consider him our “little Group Leader.” Almost everyone in our college class has already retired; there are only a few of us born in the early 1960s who are still working; Lao Xia is one of them. When Lao Xia went to college in 1978 he was only 17 or 18 years old, but his baby face made him look more like he was 14 or 15! So I’m not sure why, but ever since then, we started calling him Lao Xia, or “Old Xia.”