What Makes a Wuhan Catastrophe?

Wuhan-based writer 方方, who has been a formidable force in Chinese literature, has been writing blog entries illuminating the tragedy left in the wake of the COVID19/coronavirus. She's a famous writer who won the Lu Xun literary prize in 2010 and served as chairwoman of Hubei Writers Association. Her posts - which have been deleted by censors - offer a rare insight into the pain and frustration caused by an authoritarian system trying to deal with a crisis.

Rui Zhong translated part of the posts in which she lashes out at people that consider the city’s anguish under crisis overblown.

Her Words:

武汉现在是在灾难之中。灾难是什么？灾难不是让你戴上口罩，关你几天不让出门，或是进小区必须通行证。灾难是医院的死亡证明单以前几个月用一本，现在几天就用完一本；灾难是火葬场的运尸车，以前一车只运一具尸体，且有棺材，现在是将尸体放进运尸袋，一车摞上几个，一并拖走；灾难是你家不是一个人死，而是一家人在几天或半个月内，全部死光；灾难是你拖着病体在寒风冷雨中四处奔走，试图寻得一张可以收留你的病床，却找不到；灾难是你从清早在医院排队挂号，一直排到次日凌晨才能排到，有可能还没有排到，你就轰然倒地；灾难是你在家里等待医院的床位通知，而通知来时，你已断气；灾难是重症病人送进医院，如果他死了，进医院的时刻就是跟家人诀别的时刻，彼此都永无相见之日。你以为死者在那样的时候还有家人在殡葬馆相送？还能留下他的遗物，甚至，死者还能拥有死的尊严？没有了，死就是死了。拖走，然后立即烧掉。疫情的早期阶段，没有人手，没有床位，医护人员没有防护设施，大面积感染，火葬场人手不够，拖尸车不够，焚尸炉不够，而尸体上带着病毒，必须尽快烧掉。你们知道这些吗？不是人们不尽职，而是灾难来了，人们已经尽了全力，甚至超负荷，但却无法做到喷子们所说的那些。岁月在灾难中没有静好，只有病人的死不甘心，只有亲属的胆肝寸断，只有生者的向死而生。

Rui Zhong’s translation:

Wuhan is in the midst of a catastrophe, but what is a catastrophe? It’s not just something that makes you wear a mask, that shuts you inside for few days, or seals off your neighborhood except to passholders. A catastrophe is when a death log that took a hospital months to fill completely now takes several days; catastrophe is when a car taking bodies to a crematorium carries away body bags instead of one body at a time in a coffin. Catastrophe isn’t one person dying in your family, but an entire family perishing within a few days or within a fortnight; Catastrophe is you dragging a sick body in every which way in the cold and the rain, trying to find a sickbed that will take you, and finding nothing. Catastrophe is you taking a number in the hospital queue first thing in the morning to dawn of the next day. Maybe you get called, maybe you don’t, but you already collapsed. Catastrophe is the hospital telling you a bed is free, but you’ve already taken your last breath waiting. Catastrophe is the when moment a gravely ill person enters the hospital, and realizing that if they die, that that moment is the time of farewells to the family, and the last moment they’ll ever see each other.

Do you really think that in these times there are funerary arrangements that can be made for the family? That there are wills to be written, or if the dead can have the dignity that they deserve? No. The dead are the dead. They are hauled away and then immediately burnt up.

During the early days of the epidemic, there was no man power, there were no hospital beds, and there were no protections in place for medical personnel. Infection was widespread, and there weren’t enough people to staff and transport bodies to crematoriums. There weren’t enough cremation ovens. Yet the bodies carried the virus, and needed to be burnt as quickly as possible.

Are you aware of this at all? It’s not a lack of effort from the people, but the arrival of a catastrophe. The people have given their all, even overworking themselves, but still there is nothing to stop chatterboxes from saying otherwise.

Inner peace is impossible in the time of a catastrophe. There is only the unwillingness of the sick to die, only families worried sick, and the struggle to live by those close to death itself.