Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Something else occurred today that I cannot ignore; I suspect that many of my readers are actually awaiting my response. Someone who claimed to be a 16-year-old “high school student” published an open letter to me online. There were a lot of details about the letter that didn’t feel right, and numerous friends thought it was obvious that the letter could not have been written by a 16-year-old; it felt more like something one of those men in their 50s who impersonate teenage girls online would write! However, whether that’s the case or not, I decided to go ahead and respond to the letter as if I were writing to a 16-year-old high school girl.

What I want to say is: My child, it’s a good letter that you have sent me, filled with the uncertainties of someone your age. The ideas you expressed are quite what one would expect, and I’m sure that those things that are bothering you came directly from those people who have been educating you. But I need to tell you that I’m not the one who can dispel the doubts you have. Reading your letter actually reminded me of a poem I read many years ago. It is a poem by Bai Hua; [18] Bai Hua (1930–2019) was a novelist, poet, and playwright. He is generally best known for his play Unrequited Love ( Ku lian ). I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of him, but he was a talented poet and playwright. I first read this poem when I was 12 years old; that was in 1967 in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. All summer long that year, Wuhan was filled with Red Guards fighting in the streets. I was in the fifth grade, and that was the year I received a copy of Bai Hua’s collection of poetry called Distributing Flyers in the Face of the Iron Spear. One poem in that volume was entitled “I Too Was Once Young Like You.” There is one line in the poem that goes: “I too was once young like you, and back then we were as you are today.” I was so excited when I first encountered that poem, so much so that I remember that line even today.

My child, you say you are 16 years old. I was 16 years old back in 1971. If someone had tried to tell me back then that “the Cultural Revolution was a terrible calamity,” I would have thrown down my gauntlet and gone at them until we were both bruised and bloody; and I know that even if this person had spent three straight days and three straight nights trying to talk sense into me, there was absolutely nothing they could have said to change my mind. That’s because ever since the age of 11 I had received an education that repeatedly reinforced the fact that “the Cultural Revolution was good.” By the time I was 16, I had been exposed to those views for a full five years. Three days of trying to change my mind wouldn’t come even close to doing the trick. So it is based on that same principle that I know it will be impossible for me to clear up those things you have misgivings about. I’m afraid that even if I took three years trying to convince you and wrote eight books explaining why, you probably still wouldn’t believe me. That’s because, just like me when I was young, you have received at least five years of that sort of education.

That said, I still need to tell you, my child, that you will one day find an answer to dispel all your uncertainties. But only you can provide that answer for yourself. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years there will come a day when you will remember this and realize how childish you were back then. That’s because by then, you will be a brand-new you. Of course, if you end up following the path of those gangs of ultra-leftists, you may never find that answer you are looking for; instead, you might into fall into an abyss of lifelong struggle.

My child, I also want to tell you that when I was 16 years old, I was much worse off than you are. At that time, I had never even heard of words like “independent thought.” I never knew that people needed to learn how to think for themselves; we just did whatever our teachers told us to do, we followed whatever the schools told us to do, we followed whatever the newspapers told us to do, and whatever the radio broadcasts instructed us to do. The Cultural Revolution broke out when I was 11 and it wasn’t over until I was 21; that’s the world I grew up in during those 10 years. I never thought of myself, because I never thought of myself as an individual person; I was just one screw in a much larger machine. I functioned in step with that machine; when it stopped I stopped, when it moved I moved. This is probably quite similar to where you are today. (When I say “you,” I am not referring to everyone from your generation, because there are actually a lot of 16-year-olds today who have very strong independent thinking skills.) But I got lucky because I had a father whose greatest dream in life was to send all his children to college. I still remember when he told me that. So even when I was working as a porter, I knew that I had to do whatever it took to make sure my dad’s final wish was realized. I ended up getting accepted into Wuhan University, which has the most beautiful college campus in China.

My child, I often feel that I have been quite fortunate. Although the only education I received during my childhood was filled with nothing but stupidity, I was still able to somehow get into college. While I was there I read and studied like someone who had been starved for knowledge for her entire life. I discussed all kinds of fascinating topics with my classmates, I started writing fiction, and finally one day I came to understand the importance of independent thought. I am also fortunate to have witnessed the early days of the Reform Era and then go on to experience the entire series of reforms that would unfold from there. Emerging from the catastrophic toll of the Cultural Revolution, I watched as, one step at a time, China turned itself around from a backward country to a powerful one. You could say that if it were not for the Reform Era, we wouldn’t have any of the things we have today, including the right for me to publish my diary online and the right for you to publish your open letter to me. We should both be thankful for that.

My child, do you realize that for the first 10 years of the Reform Era I was basically struggling against myself for that entire decade? I needed to clear all that accumulated garbage and poison out of my brain. I had to fill my mind with new things, I needed to try to view the world through my own eyes, I needed to use my own mind to think through problems. Of course, all this is built on the foundation of my own childhood experience growing up, what I have read, what I have observed, and what I have worked so hard for.

My child, I always thought that this process of struggling against myself that I went through in order to clear out all the garbage and poison inside me was something that only people from my generation had gone through. I never imagined that you and some of your peers will also go through something similar in the future. You too will one day need to struggle against yourself in order to purge all that garbage and poison that infected your brain as a child. It is a painful process; but with each purge comes a kind of liberation. And with each liberation you gradually transform from a dead, fossilized, rusty screw into a real person.

My child, do you understand what I have been trying to say? Now I’d like to leave you with a line of poetry: “I too was once young like you, and back then we were as you are today.”

March 19, 2020

I may be retired, but I still have enough energy to take you to court.

Day 57 of the quarantine.

That news we have been waiting day after day to hear has finally arrived: Today there are no new cases of novel coronavirus in Wuhan and no new suspected cases! My doctor friend also seems to be extremely excited: “We are finally at zero! Zeros across the board! The outbreak has been contained and we can now control all traffic from the outside coming in; now the main task is treating the patients we already have.”