Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

Originally I really wanted to continue the discussion about literature from yesterday; I wanted to pick up from where I left off and cover the period up to the present day. But then I received another essay forwarded from a friend, which interrupted me again. It’s a good thing that the discussion about literature is an old topic that I can come back to anytime.

It seems that Peking University Professor Zhang Yiwu [20] Zhang Yiwu (b. 1962) is a literary critic and cultural studies scholar at Peking University. He is the author or editor of more than 18 volumes of essays and academic studies. He also serves on numerous governmental committees. has now personally come out to address what has been happening. Zhang Yiwu is a really big name in the field. Is he the one who has been supporting the group attacking me? Or is he the one who has been directing their attacks? This is something that I cannot ignore. I heard that Professor Zhang uploaded an essay on Weibo, but I haven’t yet had time to read it. Instead I will just post an excerpt that one of my friends just forwarded to serve as a record. Professor Zhang writes:

There is an author who has been focusing specifically on a diary about the outbreak. She has been raising all kinds of criticisms and suspicions about these [letter] writers, saying how dark they are and hinting that they may all be following orders from somewhere; there was also a letter from an anonymous high school student that she criticized for being so stupid, etc., etc. To be perfectly frank, if you want to know why people don’t trust her diary, it’s because when the outbreak was at its peak, she employed a reportage literary style to describe a photo of a pile of cellphones on the floor of a crematorium; it is said that the photo was sent to her by one of her doctor friends. This brought widespread attention to her diary and became the incident that garnered her a lot of followers.

But a lot of people have suspicions about this incident; some are asking if this photograph even exists. The author has consistently been unwilling to address this question; instead she repeatedly brushes it under the rug while telling everyone that there are people out there trying to incriminate her. But the crucial issue here is that every writer should abide by a basic fundamental standard when it comes to the pursuit of truth. You cannot sacrifice the basic principles of human dignity; you cannot fabricate information to deceive naive readers who trust you; moreover, during a crucial time like this, fabricating facts will certainly not be tolerated; such acts are only committed by those without a conscience and shall become a mark of eternal shame on a writer.

Reading Professor Zhang’s comments makes it clear to me that he has not even read my diary; perhaps he just read a summary that someone prepared for him? A summary tailor-written for his specific tastes at that. Take, for instance, the sentence “there was also a letter from an anonymous high school student that she criticized for being so stupid.” I clearly never said anything like that. He also wrote, “if you want to know why people don’t trust her diary.” I wonder about these “people” he is referring to; how many people are we talking about here? Is he referring specifically to the people in his circle? How would Professor Zhang know anything about how many people trust me? If we follow Professor Zhang’s methods to make judgments and inferences, then I could say that I have basically never met anyone in the field of literature or academia for that matter who trusts Professor Zhang. Moreover, there is that line about fabricating “information to deceive naive readers who trust you.” I wonder if in using such categorical language Professor Zhang might be going a bit too far with his own fabrications? But that’s okay, he has always been quite fierce in the way he pushes his viewpoint. When he was complimenting Zhou Xiaoping on what a wonderful example of a model youth he was, Professor Zhang’s language was also quite over the top; he used language that was so exaggerated and laudatory that one would think Zhou Xiaoping was even more qualified to teach at Peking University than Professor Zhang himself. [21] Zhou Xiaoping (b. 1981) is a popular essayist and blogger who is known for nationalistic essays like “Don’t Let This Era Down” (“Qing buyao gufu zhege shidai”), “Your China, Your Party” (“Ni de Zhongguo, ni de dang”), and “Nine Tricks of the United States Cultural Cold War Against China” (“Meiguo dui hua wenhua lengzhan de jiuda juezhao”). During October 2014, Zhang Yiwu published an essay entitled “The Meaning of Zhou Xiaoping” (“Zhou Xiaoping de yiyi”) in which he praised Zhou for giving the Chinese youth something to dream about and strive for. Actually, Professor Zhang likes to use his own petty mind to speculate about other people, and in the past he has also paid a price for that. Didn’t Professor Zhang once accuse a famous novelist of “plagiarism” but only ended up losing the case and embarrassing himself so badly that he could barely show his face?

As for that photograph, I have already explained that in great detail in an earlier post. So it is a real shame that Professor Zhang seems to have never taken the time to read what I wrote. Actually, Professor Zhang should really come out to Wuhan to understand the true situation firsthand: Then he would understand things like just how many people died each day, how the dead bodies were transported from the hospitals to the crematoriums, what happened to the personal articles of the deceased after they died, what kind of situation the hospitals and crematoriums were in, why lithium batteries cannot be burned, what kind of sterilization methods are being used, and why so many crematoriums all over the country have been supporting Wuhan. But I will have to stop here. For Professor Zhang and others who are willing to understand what is happening, all the information is here; if you don’t want to see the truth, that is your choice. I’m sure that one day everyone will see that photograph; but it won’t be from me, it needs to come from the person who took that photo. I really recommend that Professor Zhang visit Wuhan so that he can conduct his own firsthand investigation; of course, I should add that all these things occurred during the early stages of the outbreak, not later and not now. I think it would be more in keeping with Peking University’s standards if Professor Zhang first took some time to understand the true situation before rushing to make categorical conclusions. I’m sure that will also make the parents of the students he teaches feel much more at ease.

I’ll stop here for today, but I want to emphasize one thing: The presence of those ultra-leftists represents an existential threat to China and her people. If the entire Reform Era is destroyed at their hands, it would be the ultimate slap in the face to my entire generation. So come at me with all you’ve got, bring out all your dirty tricks, and tell all your big-name supporters to show their faces too! Let’s see if I’m scared of you!

March 21, 2020

The coronavirus outbreak seems to have stabilized, but people’s hearts have not.

We are now 59 days into the quarantine. It has been such a long time.

The sun was so bright yesterday but today it suddenly turned cloudy. There were even some light afternoon showers; but this time of year, my plants and trees in the courtyard all desperately need that rain. Two or three days ago the cherry blossoms on the Wuhan University campus blossomed; and although the campus is empty, I suspect there must have been some reporters there taking pictures, because everyone in my classmates group was forwarding photos of cherry blossoms in bloom. There is something so perfectly beautiful about seeing cherry blossoms in full bloom, devoid of any humans in sight.