Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

What family isn’t facing this burden? All day from morning until night we put up with the loudspeakers blaring: “Do not go outside! Do not go outside! Do not go outside!” How long is this going to last? How far are they going to take this? What are the conditions that aren’t allowing us to go outside? What are the reasons? All day long they are trying to attend to big and small affairs at once with a one-size-fits-all strategy. “Do not go outside, no matter what happens, do not go outside!” You have to realize that we should be quarantining the coronavirus, not the entire population of Hubei Province! Only after you really understand this and let it sink in will you be able to truly carry out the spirit of all those documents you send down.

One more thing: Everything costs money. Let me tell you, if pumpkin seeds are 15 yuan for every half kilo, are you going to buy any? When meat is 32 yuan for every half kilo, would you pay that price? What about cucumbers for 7 yuan a half kilo, any takers? Potatoes are also 7 yuan, cabbage is 8 yuan… so how about it? Are you buying? If you don’t, you still have to eat… so in the end, everyone buys. But then you have to pay. Without a job, where is that money going to come from? Who is thinking about us here?

My god…

That last frustrated exclamation at the end really makes your heart break. The people have already done everything they can to cooperate and be reasonable, but the question of taking care of their basic living needs is dangling right there before us. We have been relying on the government’s great resolution to bring the coronavirus outbreak to a screeching halt. My impression is that many places throughout Hubei Province are already down to zero new infections, yet they still have not yet lifted the quarantine order. Back when I was in college, one of my professors taught a course on Modernism and I remember us reading Waiting for Godot. Two men sitting there waiting for Godot, but he never arrives. As we now sit here waiting for the quarantine to be lifted, I am suddenly reminded of that play. Stand in the shoes of the people and think about the issue of the people’s livelihood; it is all right there on the table before you. There are a lot of things that can be handled simultaneously; you don’t need to necessarily line them up and take care of them one after another.

It is now day 54 of the lockdown; this hand of poker is over.

March 17, 2020

It is clear that life will gradually start getting back to normal.

Day 55 of the Wuhan quarantine.

The weather is nice and clear. I stepped outside to empty the trash and through the branches caught a glimpse of the peach blossoms in full bloom on the slope across the way. I’m reminded of a line of poetry: “The shrubbery conceals not the colors of spring, as a branch of crimson peonies hangs over the wall.” Besides the fact that there is not a single person outside, the rest of the Literary Federation courtyard looks the same as always.

According to the daily coronavirus report, there was only one new case of infection today. We are getting close to the point where everything can start over. An increasingly large number of patients who had been suffering from severe symptoms have been saved, but there is still a long road ahead for them before they will be able to fully recover. I know it is hard, but I hope they are able to hold on and get through this; they can always take their time recovering, once they get through this critical stage. Currently, the government is officially reporting that the death toll from novel coronavirus in Hubei Province has reached 3,000; this is indeed a depressing number to have to face. Now that the outbreak is over, I’m afraid that the job of consoling family members of the deceased should now be our most important task. Looking broadly now at the trajectory of the entire outbreak, ever since the moment the nation committed all their efforts to saving Hubei and began to enact a variety of measures to control the virus, it is clear that their methods have been very powerful and effective. It hasn’t been easy for us to get to this stage.

Even more good news is starting to flood out; I see people in my friends group posting the latest news everywhere. The most important news is that, with the exception of Wuhan, all other cities in Hubei Province have lifted their lockdown orders and people are now returning to work; a lot of workers who have been trapped outside the city are also now starting to return to Wuhan. This is great news, and it is exactly the kind of news that a lot of people have been waiting to hear. Wuhan has always been a city bustling with life, and I really can’t wait to see it get back to its energetic and chaotic old self.

Actually, besides those industries, there is another group of people even more eager for the city to get back on track again: That is those elderly people who are living alone. They normally rely on maids or hourly help to take care of them. But every year during the Lunar New Year holiday, these caregivers and part-time workers all go home to the countryside to celebrate the holidays with their own families. But due to the quarantine this year, most of these caregivers were unable to return to Wuhan, which created a lot of difficulties for the elderly whom they normally care for. A few days ago, my friend Mr. Zeng was chatting with me about his mother’s situation.

There is a very famous restaurant in Wuhan called Lao Tong City; it is located in the Hankou district and there is basically no one in the city who hasn’t heard of this restaurant. The tofu skin they make at Lao Tong City is considered one of Wuhan’s most popular delicacies. The founder of Lao Tong City was a man named Zeng Guangcheng. Many years ago, the Hubei Writers Association organized a literary program to invite local residents to write about local topics. A certain Mr. Zeng registered for the event; he was working on a book called The Story of Lao Tong City and the Zeng Family of Hankou —he was the eldest grandson of the restaurant’s founder, Zeng Guangcheng. Over the years, the Zeng family’s history has given him a lot of forward motion, but it had also brought him a lot of pain; Mr. Zeng decided to get that entire history on paper. We ended up selecting his project for inclusion in our program. Mr. Zeng went to great lengths to get his story on paper and ended up publishing it as a trilogy. A few days ago Mr. Zeng told me that his mother, who is 97 years old, was living in the faculty dorm of Hubei University. Meanwhile he and the rest of the family were all working outside the city; he only had one little brother still in Wuhan, but he was quarantined in another district and unable to get to his mother. Mr. Wang’s mother enjoyed living alone; she was still sharp and in good health; she just has a helper she pays by the hour to come and take care of household chores. But after the outbreak, her helper also ended up quarantined elsewhere, so she was left alone. All her children were worried sick about their elderly mother being left alone at home. She didn’t know her way around the kitchen and there is no way for her to buy daily necessities; she certainly didn’t know how to sign up for those group delivery services, and even if they delivered a bag of fresh vegetables right to her doorstep, she still wouldn’t know how to cook them. How was she supposed to eat? On top of that, she was almost out of medicine. And without a cellphone or access to WeChat, how was she going to get in contact with anyone if she needed something? Everyone in the family was so anxious about her that they “almost broke the phone by calling her so much.”

They were lucky that the community workers in the district near Hubei University quickly stepped up. Mr. Zeng said that the community volunteers delivered a bag of vegetables, but that wasn’t much help since she didn’t know how to cook. All she wanted was some pickled vegetables and a steamed bun you can quickly heat up. She got in touch with those community volunteers for help, and people from the neighborhood committee arranged for hot meals to be delivered right to her door. They even got in touch with the doctor on call at the university hospital to check on her. Her old colleagues and students from the university all reached out to help; they delivered all kinds of food to her door, and even after she brought the food inside, they would wait for a few minutes outside the door to make sure there wasn’t anything else that she needed. Only after they heard her say she was having trouble opening a jar of honey or a bottle of soy sauce would they ask for her permission to come in and help her open them. Mr. Zeng said he called her every day to check in and “every time I talked to her I could tell how happy she was from the sound of her voice. She even got passionate about learning and would endlessly recite poems from Qu Yuan and Li Si to me over the phone. She told me that she was writing 1,000 words a day and would recite what she wrote to me.” His mother said: “They delivered another three dishes to me; no one has ever taken care of me like this before in my entire life! The university really has their act together this time.”