Wuhan Diary is celebrated Chinese writer Fang Fang’s 60-entry-account of lockdown in her native city, epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak.[1] The Diary was originally published online daily on microblogging sites Weibo and WeChat, and it attracted millions of followers, though her own access to the latter was blocked after the death of famed ophthalmologist, Dr. Li Wenliang. The Diary has since been translated from the Chinese and is available to e-readers, also recently published in book form by HarperCollins. It runs from January 25 to March 24, 2020.
The Diary gives readers great insight as to how uncompromising the lockdown was for the people in Wuhan in particular, for example: one man placed on quarantine was forced to abandon his disabled son resulting in the latter’s death by starvation. In another incident, hospital workers and patients were required to sing patriotically, while officials remained apparently oblivious to the fact that the coronavirus is a pneumonic disease affecting the lungs.
But Fang
Fang also reveals the apparent degree of complacency in the three week period of the
outbreak prior to writing, which included concealment and its close cousin, censorship. Officials repeatedly touted the line that it
was “not contagious” and even “preventable”, and the author reminds the reader
of this throughout, along with calls for accountability for their malfeasance. A conference of some 40,000 people went ahead
in this same “lax” period, and, according to the Mayor of Wuhan, about 5
million people vacated the metropolis in advance of the Lunar New Year. No wonder the virus spread beyond China’s
borders.
Elsewhere
the author remarks how on how Chinese abroad rallied to the cause (likely also
prompted by the United Front, a product of President Xi’s machinations for
overseas influence), and cleaned out store supplies of Personal Protective Equipment
(PPE) in their respective countries to send back to China. Being a humanitarian, Fang Fang notes with perplexed
sadness how the virus spread beyond China’s borders resulting in a shortage of
PPE’s in the very countries from which these supplies first came. One wonders, however, if President Xi’s
decision to continue with air travel between China and the rest of the world
was motivated, in part, by a less than benevolent desire to monopolize these materials.
Wuhan Diary is a valuable account by a singular writer, and it is important to read to get a flavor of China under President Xi, under lockdown, and under quarantine. One can appreciate Michael Berry’s predicament of translating a month behind Fang Fang’s real-time entries while coronavirus events are catching up to him in Los Angeles, where he is based. Surely, if we had all read the Diary from the start we too would know to look out for our seniors in their care homes and our prison population. But one finds a degree of naïveté with the undertaking: why publish with HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News? Aside from - or because of - her acclaim, Fang Fang also has countless online domestic detractors (left wing nationalists), and this will only continue – and get worse – given knowledge of the choice of publisher. Surely the translator could have been a bit more sensitive to Fang Fang’s plight, helping to guide her to a different publisher.
In the end,
Fang Fang waxes most philosophically – to Western readers, at least – when she
compares waiting for the lockdown to lift with Waiting for Godot: it never seems to happen. Sadly, the reference seems more pertinent
these days for those of us outside of China.
[1] Fang Fang, Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City, tr. Michael Berry
New York: HarperVia, 15 May 2020.
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