Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

2. I still have to be careful when approaching this whole online shopping thing. This is, after all, an unusual period we are going through; sometimes even if you plan well, you can’t keep up with all the changes to how they do things. All the pork was sold out so I quickly changed my order to add 30 eggs to take the place of the pork; anything to prevent me from making an extra trip outside. It is a good thing that everyone infected, suspected, or in close contact with coronavirus in our community has already been taken away. When it was time to pick up my order, I put on a double layer of face masks; when I got there I made sure not to talk to anyone and quickly changed clothes and washed my hands when I got home.

3. This morning I received a notification from my Add More Group that my first order was ready for pickup, but the only item in our order that came in was two packages of chicken breast. I’m really annoyed at this method of online group shopping; there are too many people, so you have to wait for a long time before your pickup time comes and it is really hard to predict when deliveries will arrive. I’ve been waiting for my number to come up ever since the early afternoon; I checked the status an hour after I had dinner and they were only up to #60, but it seemed to be stuck there for a long time. But I still had to keep checking my phone, just in case they suddenly speeded up. I didn’t want to risk losing my slot. When I checked the chat group again, I saw that someone had posted a message saying the boss went to dinner and it was unclear when he would return. Someone in the group had already said that it was normal for the deliveries to go on past 10:00 p.m. Our family was #114 and we didn’t get a text to pick up our order until 10:56 p.m. There were still more than 60 orders behind me. The boss must be hungry and exhausted after doing this all day long; I hope he was able to have a good meal and take a breather; it must be damn hard on him! It’s not easy for us either, but I know that he has it harder than us. Can you imagine having to run around the city all day and night like that; he is really working himself to death; even if he doesn’t get infected, he’ll end up collapsing out of sheer exhaustion.

4. For the past few days now, the most exercise I have been getting has been going to the south gate of our development to pick up our online orders. Or perhaps I had better say that those little trips down to the south gate have given me a shot of adrenaline, as every time I go outside I tense up and can feel the anxiety kick in. I’m really not exaggerating; last night when I picked up our two bags of groceries (they weighed about 2 kg) I brought them in at around 11:00 p.m.; normally I would wash up, get into bed, watch a little TV, and then go to sleep, but last night I was still wide awake at 1:00 a.m.! This morning I slept in until 7:30 a.m., but I still feel exhausted from yesterday, but in order to keep myself on schedule I forced myself to get up and start my day. The good news is that another delivery service popped up today that allows you more control over the items you select. They had all kinds of items I have been looking for, like Angel yeast extract, tapioca, and Old Godmother hot chili sauce—I immediately put in my order.

You can see that those community workers are really thoughtful; you can also see how hard that supermarket boss works overseeing all those grocery pickups. Online shopping, binge-watching, sleeping: This is our life now.

Today is day 42 of the lockdown.

March 5, 2020

Common sense can sometimes be the most profound.

It is a clear sunny day; the sun is so bright that it almost dazzles the eyes. We have handed our roads, avenues, and parks over to the virus while we stayed at home, letting it roam the open city like a wandering ghost in search of victims. The sun at high noon is powerful enough to make you feel like it could burn the virus to death. According to the lunar calendar, today is the day the insects awaken from their winter sleep. It is day 43 of the quarantine. A few days ago I told a friend that I feel like I’m busier now than I am during normal times. I didn’t watch a single TV miniseries and although I prepared a bunch of movies that I wanted to watch, I never got a chance to see a single one. My neighbor Tang Xiaohe was showing off a video of her granddaughter eating. The way she eats in that video is so adorable. One friend told me, “I spend my days watching videos of Xiaohe’s granddaughter eating and my nights reading Fang Fang’s diary; that’s how I pass my time these days.” Those videos and my friend’s message brought me a lot of smiles.

Today is a really special day. There are three people who trigger a lot of memories for me on this date. The first one is Premier Zhou Enlai; [6] Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was the first premier of the People’s Republic of China, serving from 1949–1976. Zhou played an important role in the history of the Chinese Communist Party from 1921 all the way up until his death. He was known for his diplomacy, especially for his tenure as foreign minister, 1949–1958. he is someone that anyone from my generation would be very familiar with. Back when I was growing up, just seeing his name in the newspaper would always give me a sense of comfort. March 5 is Zhou Enlai’s birthday; I still remember the large-scale unrest set in motion after his death; it was referred to as the “April 5th Tiananmen Square Incident.” I’m afraid that a lot of young people have never even heard of this incident. At the time, there was a poem that everyone was passing around to copy; even today I still remember that poem just like yesterday: “Melancholy approaches and I hear the demons howl, I cry as the wolves and jackals scowl. Shedding tears in tribute to a great man, I raise my eyebrows as swords melt away” [7] Alternately referred to as “Melancholy approaches and I hear the demons howl” or “I raise my eyebrows as swords begin to melt,” this is a poem written by Wang Lishan in April 1976 to commemorate Zhou Enlai. The poem was widely disseminated in 1976 during the April 5th Movement before being criticized and suppressed. In 1978 the April 5th movement was officially redressed by the government. The second person, whom I’m sure many readers will be familiar with, is a man named Lei Feng. Ever since my childhood, the memory of Lei Feng has been there with me, and it has never faded. Lei Feng was a kindhearted soul who has been a companion to my entire generation as we grew up. Today is the day we commemorate Lei Feng. There was once a period of time that whenever March 5th arrived, young people nationwide would be mobilized to go do good deeds, like walking old ladies home—for a while there weren’t enough old ladies to go around! How many people in China have grown up learning from Lei Feng? But there is one more person, someone that I’m afraid may have already been forgotten or many people never even knew existed—his name was Yu Luoke. [8] Yu Luoke (1942–1970) was an apprentice worker at the Beijing People’s Machinery Factory when he wrote a series of essays on the topic of “bloodlines.” His best-known essay, “On Bloodlines” (“Chushen lun”), was intensely debated at its time of publication. Yu Luoke was arrested in 1968 and executed in 1970. His fate would go on to become widely associated with the violence of the Cultural Revolution. Fifty years ago today he was executed for things he had published. He was only 27 years old. For people of my generation who were the first group to take the college entrance exams after the Cultural Revolution, there is almost nobody who doesn’t know his name. His fate is what prompted so many of us to start thinking about the fate of our people, the fate of our nation, and our own future. Some people feel that Yu Luoke’s essays were not terribly profound; they claim that everything he said was common sense. That’s right, that’s exactly what it is. However, I often feel that people seem to be blinded by a misguided pursuit of “the profound.” Common sense emerges from the deepest truths and those things most commonly put into practice. Common sense can sometimes be the most profound, like “all men are created equal.” Bei Dao once wrote a poem to commemorate Yu Luoke; there was one line that kept getting quoted in articles for years: “In an age without heroes, I just want to be a man.” Sometimes it isn’t easy being a normal man who lives according to the principles of common sense.