Fang Fang - Wuhan Diary - Dispatches from a Quarantined City

But when it comes to the topic of assigning responsibility, I still want to believe that people from all levels of society will be on the same page: that this is an essential step we have to take. If we don’t investigate who was responsible for such a massive incident, I wonder how the government can ever face its people. I have been following this topic from the beginning. Looking over things carefully, among all those people connected to what happened, some of them should certainly take the initiative and resign; that’s what happened after the SARS outbreak. But for some reason, even up until today, not a single official in Hubei has resigned; I guess they know how to play the game. One thing that is interesting: When people passed blame, it was often the politicians who blamed the scientists, who, in turn, blamed the politicians. But now things are getting really interesting; now they are all placing all the responsibility on the United States. A few days ago I saw a series of curious essays by the economist Hua Sheng. In his essay he mentioned a “deepthroat” figure here in Wuhan. If it hadn’t been for this “deepthroat,” the coronavirus may not have been reported until much later. According to him, this “deepthroat” is the true whistleblower. As I read that essay, images from the Chinese television spy drama Lurking kept appearing in my head. A few days ago I told my friend that I was really dying to know who this “deepthroat” was. My friend felt the same. Sounds like the kind of person I could put into one of my novels.

Among the essays that friends keep sending me on WeChat, there was one by Professor Du Junfei from Nanjing University. Professor Du holds a PhD in sociology and his essays often hit on some very important issues. In this essay of his I just read, he points out seven items:

1. After those front-line hospitals first discovered that there was an outbreak, why couldn’t they just directly report it online?

2. Once the team of experts arrived in Wuhan, were they really unable to grasp the fact that this was a contagious virus, capable of being transmitted between people?

3. Once news of the outbreak leaked, were those government offices really placing a higher priority on dealing with the leaker than on the actual outbreak?

5. Does the fact that no one is willing to accept responsibility have something to do with the fact that Zhong Nanshan seems to be the only one with the authority to reveal the truth to the public?

6. As the Wuhan outbreak was getting increasingly serious, why couldn’t hospital administrators have taken early action to prevent the serious lack of medical supplies?

7. As both the virus and fear began to simultaneously spread, was a full lockdown really the best measure available?

After the quarantine was in place, was it really not possible to have some of the confirmed patients transferred to other hospitals with less-strained resources where they would have received better treatment?

Actually, I suspect that Professor Du had even more questions, because after his seventh question, he left a line of ellipses, which seems to indicate that he wasn’t finished with his line of questioning. Actually, for those of us here in Wuhan, we have even more questions we could raise. A shame, then, that all those questions, they remain unanswered.

Today is the 59th installment of my diary. I told quite a few people that I would stop at 60; tomorrow will be my last entry. There have been a lot of readers who have been staying up late every night to wait for my next installment to hit the internet; some of them have been so loyal that they complain they have messed up their biological clock. To them I want to say: Just one more day and, after tomorrow, you won’t need to wait up anymore. At the same time, I am so thankful that you have all been out there waiting for me.

One more thing I want to say today: This is my individual record written during the coronavirus outbreak; it represents one person’s memories. At first I didn’t even really look at this as a “diary.” That’s because I wasn’t the one who suggested using that term. It was only later that this record truly turned into a diary, one entry per day. When other people referred to it as a “diary” I didn’t object. My initial motivation was just to fulfill a publishing agreement. I thought writing daily essays would be an easy way to do that. I never expected that as I went further down this road, I would completely forget what brought me here to begin with.

March 24, 2020

I have already fought that beautiful battle.

Day 62 of the Wuhan quarantine. This is also the 60th installment in my diary; you could also refer to this as my final chapter.

Coincidentally, I saw a notice today announcing that the quarantine is now officially lifted for all districts outside Wuhan; as long as you scan your health QR code, you can now freely move about. For the city of Wuhan, the quarantine will be lifted on April 8th. Wuhan will be coming back to life again quite soon. I initially said that I would continue writing until the city reopens and only stop then. It was only later that I realized that opening the city back up doesn’t happen all at once, like when the lockdown was imposed as an emergency action. It is going to be a slow and gradual process, with each district opening one at a time. It is for that reason that I think it is perfectly suitable to bring this diary to a close, now that the virus is slowing down and people are beginning to get back to work. I shared my thoughts on this with some friends and almost all of them supported my decision. And so after completing 54 installments, I decided to extend it up to 60 entries. After going through this entire process, I never imagined that the final chapter would be published just as they announced when they would reopen the city; this is something worth commemorating. That means that this record traces the outbreak from Day 1 of the Lunar New Year all the way up until the announcement lifting the quarantine order; so the record is quite complete. On March 14 my eldest brother did some calculations based on the number of confirmed cases and how those numbers decreased over time; based on his numbers, he thought that Wuhan would be able to reopen by April 8. I never imagined that he would get it right on the nose. He was also quite ecstatic: “My rough model really was able to predict the exact day Wuhan would lift the quarantine.”

The sky was really bright this afternoon, but later in the afternoon it turned overcast and even sprinkled a bit. My housekeeper texted me to tell me that she would be probably be here tomorrow. Deep down I heaved sigh of relief. My housekeeper is a pretty good cook; my colleagues used to always come by and end up inviting themselves to stay for dinner. I’m sure once we are allowed to move around freely again they will start coming back again to crash our dinners. My difficult days are now almost behind me.

As for Miss Liang, that nurse from Guangxi, I should say a few additional words of explanation. Last night as I was writing my diary, I received a text from a doctor friend, which his friend had forwarded to him. It was a photo with a caption reading: “That nurse from Guangxi who fainted in our hospital has left us. She was also mother to a little girl; she was only 28 years old. Those people who went against the grain to come to Wuhan to help when everyone else was fleeing have really given their lives for this city.” My doctor friend was extremely moved, and I was also quite devastated. Before this, a lot of media outlets had covered the story of this nurse’s being saved. In order to confirm that this new development was accurate, I forwarded the picture to a big-shot doctor from Wuhan Union Hospital and asked him if he could verify the story. He responded with a short text: “Brain dead. A real tragedy.” I guess my level of medical knowledge is really pathetic; I took that as a confirmation that she had indeed passed away. I didn’t want Miss Liang to just quietly disappear without any acknowledgment; I felt I should write something so we would always remember her. And that is how that passage ended up in my diary. Today a lot of people raised suspicions about that news; others went on to refute it as a rumor. This afternoon I decided to get back in touch with those two doctors to see what I could verify. Both of them provided me with very detailed and technical explanations; they both had basically the same stance on the issue, and they suggested that I had better apologize. I agreed. And so, I would here like to offer my sincere apologies to my readers. More important, I would like to apologize to Miss Liang’s family. This also shows how much all of us care about Miss Liang. As that text message said, she was one of the people who sacrificed so much for this city. I sincerely hope that one day she will wake up; my doctor friends and I will be closely following her condition. And thanks, everyone, for keeping me in check.