Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Next the government should make haste and beg for the people’s forgiveness. This is the time for reflection and assuming responsibility. A rational government with a conscience that listens to the needs of its people and understands how to console them should, at this very moment, quickly establish an independent investigative team to piece together the full details surrounding the outbreak, who was responsible for delaying the response, who decided to withhold information about the outbreak from the public, who were the leaders that in order to save face decided to twist the truth when reporting to their superiors and hide the truth from the public, who was it who put political correctness above the lives of our people, how many people contributed to this disaster? Whoever had a hand in this should take responsibility; the people need someone to assume accountability. At the same time, the government should urge officials from various departments whose actions misguided the public, leading to massive numbers of deaths, to resign. Individuals to be investigated should include high-level government administrators, top officials from the Ministry of Propaganda, those in the media who helped cover things up, and top officials from the Department of Health. If any of them are criminally liable, let the courts decide their punishment. However, based on my observations, most Chinese government officials are lacking when it comes to self-reflection, not to mention those willing to take the blame and resign. In a situation like this, citizens should, at the very least, draft a public call for all those officials who took politics as the center of their world while treating people like trash to resign. How can we let these people with blood on their hands continue strutting around in front of the people of Wuhan, gesticulating as if they are heroes? Supposing that 10 or 20 officials stand up and resign as a result of this, at least we will know that there are at least a few officials left who still have a conscience.

Tonight around dusk a famous writer sent me a text. He wrote something that I found to be quite profound: “Who could ever have imagined that a second catastrophe would befall the Chinese language itself?” Gratitude is a beautiful word, but I’m afraid it has been forever sullied. I wonder if, moving forward, it will now become a “sensitive term” that we aren’t allowed to use.

March 8, 2020

When clues appear, shouldn’t we follow through with them?

It’s raining again, quite a downpour, actually. It is also quite chilly and all day the sky has been as dark as it normally is at dusk. A certain Mr. Liu all the way out in Chengdu had his friend in Wuhan deliver some fresh fish to me; I tried to politely refuse, but in the end I wasn’t successful. The fish had already been prepared for cooking; in fact, he even sent over sliced scallions, ginger, and radishes so I could conveniently make fish soup. And because they figured out from my diary that I have diabetes, they also delivered some dried fruits. They left the package with a letter at the main entrance to my compound. I felt quite embarrassed to accept their kind gift, but I was also quite moved. Thank you, my friends, for caring.

Today is March 8, Women’s Day in China. Everyone is sending flowers to women online today. Every March 8 when I was a kid, my girlfriends and I would always sing: “March 8 Women’s Day, the boys will work, the girls will play, the boys will stay inside, doing their homework all day.” We would sing it in the Wuhan dialect, which created a certain melody and rhyme scheme that you could never get tired of. Thinking about it now, if feels like such a distant memory.

In Wuhan dialect we called children ya . Boys are referred to as nanya and girls are referred to as nüya . When kids grow up, we replace ya with jiang , so men become nanjiang and women become nüjiang. These forms of address function irrespective of a person’s status, class, or title; everyone is either a nanjiang or a nüjiang . The word jiang often refers to a “general” in the military, but here there is no association with anything military. It is really an interesting way to refer to people; I’m not sure if other regions in China also use it.

While it seems that in Wuhan the nüjiang always look like they are in charge, inside the home it is usually the nanjiang who calls all the shots. But what is interesting is that if a family runs into trouble, it is mostly the nüjiang who step up to deal with it. It’s not that the nanjiang is incapable of dealing with these things, it is just that the nüjiang seem to have an innate instinct to protect the nanjiang of the family. Sometimes, she takes the lead on things because the nanjiang has a profession of some social standing that doesn’t allow him to behave in certain ways in public; however, nüjiang never care about those things. Most women are relegated to a lower social status than men, which means that when trouble comes, the nüjiang are the ones who step in to put things back in order. Wuhan’s nüjiang speak quickly in high-pitched voices, and it is rare to see them lose an argument. And when you get two nüjiang arguing with each other, now, that is a quite a sight. During the Cultural Revolution, my former father-in-law was a professor at Huazhong Normal University when the Red Guards stormed his house to struggle against him. That’s when my former mother-in-law told him to sit tight and she brazenly strutted outside and started arguing with those Red Guards! Those Red Guards had nothing on my former mother-in-law—she was a real nüjiang —so, in the end, those Red Guards had no recourse but to scurry away. I’ve told this story before in other essays. But now in this age of the coronavirus, a lot of nüjiangs feel like it’s their duty to deal with things like all the complications of online shopping and dealings with the community. Since that is the case, you usually see more nüjiang taking care of these issues. Wuhan nüjiang are brimming with energy and tend to talk loudly; there have been a few videos of them circulating on the internet that have really shocked a lot of people. So at this time, I’d like to take a moment to wish all the nüjiang a happy Women’s Day!

It’s day 46 of the quarantine. At this stage in the outbreak there is an increasing amount of positive news coming out. Some districts are beginning to start incrementally easing the quarantine orders; I’ve also been hearing some occasional rumors that people might be getting back to work soon. One friend told me that the airport was already preparing to resume flights. This news is both encouraging and frightening at the same time. If this is all true, then the city should be opening back up soon. My fellow Wuhanese, I think the light of day is almost here?

The messages I’m getting from my doctor friends are also positive. It has now been two days since we entered this new low-infection-rate stage, and the numbers of patients are clearly dropping. The temporary hospitals have begun to successively shut down, and the largest one that was set up at the Wuhan Keting Expo area just announced today that they are shutting down, too. New patients can now all be directly admitted to regular hospitals for treatment. Some hospitals have gotten their outpatient clinics back up and running again. In this fight to control the spread of the coronavirus, we are currently clearing the battlefield; the day we can start over again is now in sight. But right now we still have over 5,000 patients with serious symptoms, and more than 17,000 people are still hospitalized. Thanks to the coordination of a team of leading medical specialists, doctors are now able to share their experiences treating the coronavirus and improve on standard treatment methods, which has helped to ensure that all patients receive the best care possible. My friend’s optimism makes me believe that it won’t be too long before these final 17,000 patients will be discharged.