Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

But this time I suddenly realized that I was wrong. Even though 42 years have passed, time hasn’t completely answered those questions. Our views of literature seem to have somehow returned back to those same old questions. Those people who endlessly attack me—aren’t they doing that just because I refuse to approach this catastrophe with praises, make it into a comedy, and shine a light on the positive things being done? When I think about how things have come back full circle like this, it is quite a strange feeling.

As I get to this point, a friend just forwarded me an essay from the website “Investigative Web” entitled “A Wuhan Diary Brimming with Malicious Intentions” by Qi Jianhua. I would like to begin by sending out a warning: “Mr. Qi: You can curse me if you like, but your essay is spreading false information and lies, in an attempt to portray me in a way that does not reflect the truth. I suggest you delete your post and publicly apologize. If your post is not deleted and an apology is not issued, I will use legal means to resolve this issue. This notice also pertains to the website ‘Investigative Web’; you have the freedom to criticize me every day in your posts, but by posting essays like the one authored by Qi Jianhua that attempt to publicly slander me and spread rumors and untruths, you will force me to take legal action. I don’t care about your background, or which government officials you have backing you, or how much support you have behind the scenes; I will pursue legal action against you, as well. China is a society based on the rule of law. I can tolerate your vicious curses and attacks—after all, all they do is speak to your lack of character. However, once you slander me, invent rumors, and try to frame me with lies, you are breaking the law. Here I make a special announcement to ‘Investigative Web’ and Mr. Qi Jianhua: Please get yourselves in order, or I will see you in court!”

Can’t you see? Wuhan is on the verge of reopening. I may be retired, but I still have enough energy to take you to court.

March 20, 2020

Let’s see if I’m scared of you!

Another clear day. By the afternoon the temperature was already up to 26 degrees Celsius. I still haven’t turned the heat off, and I suddenly realized that it was the same temperature inside and outside. When I opened the window to get some fresh air, I was surprised to discover a few magpies that had flown into my courtyard. They were hopping back and forth between the branches of the camphor tree and the magnolia tree; one of them even came into my doorway to drink from a puddle on the stone mortar. Just watching them was enough to really fill me with joy, and I wonder if this might be a sign of some good news coming.

There isn’t much more to say about the coronavirus. The numbers are still holding at zero. We hope that continues; if it can continue for another 14 days, we will all be able to go outside again. Yet there is some other news online that is quite concerning; it has also been spreading very quickly. One news item is claiming that there are 20 new patients at Tongji Hospital who are sick with the virus, but the hospital is afraid to officially report these cases. I sent this information to two of my doctor friends to get their opinion. One doctor said that it was simply a misunderstanding. Now that there are a lot of patients being discharged from the hospitals, some of the remaining patients are being transferred to other, larger hospitals designated for coronavirus treatment. But those are not new patients, they are just newly transferred patients. My other doctor friend was more direct: “In a strict system you either speak the truth or get out of class.”

There is a post that everyone has been forwarding like mad. A patient recently tested positive for coronavirus after being released from the hospital and is now having difficulty getting readmitted. This incident has also triggered a lot of fear. So I again reached out to two doctor friends to get their input. One doctor friend confirmed that there was indeed a case of reinfection, but that is extremely rare. The other doctor started out by saying almost the same thing as the first doctor, but he actually had a more concrete understanding of this particular case. He explained that because they had already changed which hospitals were designated as coronavirus treatment centers, the patient ended up going to the wrong hospital, which was not one of the designated treatment centers. Later he got in touch with an administrator he knew and convinced them to admit him anyway. My doctor friend wanted to confirm two points: There are very few patients who test positive again after recovery, as some of them have no symptoms and are not contagious; besides that, hospitals are keeping track of all patients, so if any of them start to feel sick again, they just need to return to one of the designated hospitals (there is no such thing as patients not being able to get admitted anymore). I’m not going to check if the doctor’s interpretation matches up with the patient’s account; I am just providing an accurate report on what the physicians told me.

For most Wuhan residents right now, no matter whether they have been infected or not, they are all in a relatively fragile state of mind and prone to anxiety. Since they have changed which hospitals are now designated as coronavirus treatment centers, I suggest that this information be made clear to the public so everyone knows. If there are any changes like this, information should be immediately updated. As for patients who are feeling sick, they should double check which hospitals are currently accepting coronavirus patients in order to avoid showing up at the wrong hospital. There is no way around it: Spending several hours in the middle of the night trying to get treatment at an ER is always a torturous experience.

More bad news just came in from Central Hospital; Medical Ethics Committee Member Liu Li died this morning from the novel coronavirus. She is the fifth doctor from Central Hospital to pass away from this illness; I still don’t know how the hospital’s administrators are able to continue on in their current posts.

Yesterday there were a lot of people writing letters in response to a certain “high school student,” and that seems to have continued all the way up until today. And today there was even a letter that appeared online entitled “A Letter from a Group of High School Students to Another High School Student.” At first I didn’t pay much attention to it; I just thought it was some kind of prank. So I was quite surprised when a friend told me it was written by a group of real high school students. This piqued my curiosity and I decided to read it. The first thing I noticed was that these high school students were indeed quite different from that other “high school student.” Not just in terms of their writing level, but they were on a different level entirely. There was one sentence that was so good that I can’t help but quote it here: “What we really want to say is that in many cases the problem does not lie with someone paying too much attention to the dark side of things, it is actually due to our overemphasis on bright and positive things—sometimes that brightness can be so blinding that it damages our ability to see things clearly.” I suppose these kids are not all as vulnerable as I imagined them to be. They really do have strong, independent thinking skills; and they reveal very strong powers of observation. From that letter I can see that, on many issues, they actually have a deeper understanding of things than many adults.

Yesterday I started off intending to write about literary debates from back in the day; I got some of that down on paper, but then I saw that article published in “Investigative Web” that derailed me for a while. I even contacted a lawyer to provide evidence in case I need to file a defamation lawsuit. This afternoon I received several messages telling me that the essay published on “Investigative Web” by Qi Jianhua has already been taken down. He surely knew what he had published was illegal and the fact that he deleted it in some ways indicates that he knows he was wrong; I will consider whether or not I want to forgive him. Then in the afternoon some ultra-leftists from Shanghai seemed to have trouble accepting this outcome; they started screaming and hollering that Fang Fang wouldn’t dare to sue, she wouldn’t dare! That is quite an interesting response; okay then, don’t delete the essay, and let’s see what happens!