Wuhan Diary
Dispatches from a Quarantined City
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak.
On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In the days and weeks that followed, Fang Fang’s nightly postings gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus.
A fascinating eyewitness account of events as they unfold, Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information. Fang Fang finds solace in small domestic comforts and is inspired by the courage of friends, health professionals and volunteers, as well as the resilience and perseverance of Wuhan’s nine million residents. But, by claiming the writer´s duty to record she also speaks out against social injustice, abuse of power, and other problems which impeded the response to the epidemic and gets herself embroiled in online controversies because of it.
As Fang Fang documents the beginning of the global health crisis in real time, we are able to identify patterns and mistakes that many of the countries dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic have later repeated. She reminds us that, in the face of the new virus, the plight of the citizens of Wuhan is also that of citizens everywhere. As Fang Fang writes: ‘The virus is the common enemy of humankind; that is a lesson for all humanity. The only way we can conquer this virus and free ourselves from its grip is for all members of humankind to work together.’
Blending the intimate and the epic, the profound and the quotidian, Wuhan Diary is a remarkable record of an extraordinary time.
About the author
One of contemporary China's most celebrated writers, Fang Fang was born into an intellectual family in Nanjing in 1955, and spent most of her childhood in Wuhan, where she witnessed many of the political movements of Mao's China, from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution. She graduated from Wuhan University with a degree in Chinese literature, and her novels, novellas, short stories, and essays have appeared in nearly 100 different editions. She has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Lu Xun Literary Prize, and the Chinese Literature and Communications Prize for Outstanding Writer.
Customer Reviews
Fanging it
4.5 stars (4 for the writing, 5 for bravery)
Author
Chinese. Pen name of Wang Fang now 65. Celebrated author who won the Xu Lin Literary Prize, one of China's highest literary awards, in 2010, among others. She was born and raised in Wuhan.
Summary
First hand report of the 76-day Wuhan lockdown January-April 2020 from a local who was there, and still is as far as we know. Her daily diary entries were originally published on Weibo and other social media, although a number disappeared again fairly quickly. (Imagine that, in China of all places?) Undaunted, she kept going, and spent as much or more time dealing with internet trolls as she did keeping her journal. The American academic from LA, who was working on translating on of Fang Fang's books, originally contacted her to se if she was all right, heard what she was doing, and voila: an English translation was published internationally in early June, much to the chagrin of 'The Global Times,' among others. You won't be surprised that Mr Berry found himself the victim of internet trolling too.
Writing
The warmth and sincerity of the prose shows how much Ms Fang loves her country and its people. Those in authority not so much, although she is relentlessly polite in her discussion of them, and even in her responses to the trolls. Turns out trolls from the far left are indistinguishable from the ones from the right more familiar in the West.
Bottom line
Blowing the whistle on errant, or non-errant, officials, which happens everyday in the West, is a BIG NO-NO in the PRC, even when you do it in the nicest possible way. One wonders how long before Ms Fang finds herself in a re-education facility, or the morgue.