What the Chinese Received From Coronavirus
By: Lance Ng
Tags: Humanity, China, Epidemic, Coronavirus, Doctors And Nurses

What the Chinese Received From Coronavirus

A question was posted on Zhihu, the Chinese Quora. The answers were heart-rending and unexpected; and even Trump surprised.

Wuhan citizens queuing to buy masks. Source: Wikimedia

Amidst the gloom and doom, a Chinese netizen asked the following question on Zhihu, the Chinese Quora:

“What have you received from this coronavirus epidemic?”

At the time of writing, the question received 15m views, 24k followers and 11k responses.

The following are highlights of some the answers given by the Chinese, many of whom are locked down in their homes and quarantined cities.

Doctors and nurses barred from home by neighbors, children ostracized

Notice found on door of a residential compound “Medical Staff Not Allowed”. Source: Wechat

Right at the front line of the epidemic battle are the tens of thousands of doctors and nurses treating infected patients. But what some of them received in return was discrimination from neighbors and friends.

One particular doctor shared a phenomenon that was experienced by many colleagues across China.

They were barred from going back home by their own residential compound’s estate management and neighbors. At first when the stories begun circulating on social and mainstream media, many thought it was fake news.

But one doctor asked his contacts from the hospitals cited in the news and verified this to be true in his Wechat post. He also shared a post from a nurse at his own hospital who faced the same situation.

The first story broke from a nurse working in Nanyang city in Henan Province. She was refused entry into the estate where her home was after coming back from her shift one day. Despite police, hospital management and government officials arriving on the scene, after four hours of negotiations with her neighbors, she was still refused entry and ended up spending the night in a motel nearby.

The ostracizing didn’t stop at the medical personnel themselves. Stories also broke of parents telling their children not to play with the children of doctors and nurses, for fear of infection.

Don’t watch this video if you’re easily moved. The scene of this Chinese nurse ‘air hugging’ her pleading daughter is heart-rending.

A lifetime of mundane becomes a heroic story for life

But an even more heart-rending story concerning another doctor was discussed in one response.

On February 7th, 2020, a Chinese doctor in Wuhan called Li Wenliang died. He was one of the earliest to treat infected patients. Realizing this could be an epidemic in the making, he raised a warning by posting in a WeChat group of his medical school alumni about the new coronavirus.

But for that, the Wuhan police issued him with a letter for disrupting social order and threatened him with criminal charges, unless he signed the letter and promised to “stop such illegal behavior”.

That was in early January 2020. He started coughing soon after, having contracted the virus from a patient. A month later he died in the hospital.

Dr. Li was a pretty ordinary person, according to the netizen who wrote the response about him. Based on his online activities, he indulged in mundane stuff like online lotteries and Marvel movie promotions. On social media, he posted pictures of himself holidaying in Guangzhou and eating Texas Fried Chicken.

Dr Li Wenliang. Source: Weibo

In an interview with The New York Times before he died, he said that he became a doctor because he “thought it was a very stable job”. He has a four year old child and an unborn one due in June...

From his death, China received an ordinary hero. Chinese netizens poured out their anger and grief, and demanded the authorities for reform and accountability — despite attempts by the authorities to censor the social media barrage.

“I started coughing on Jan. 10. It will take me another 15 days or so to recover. I will join medical workers in fighting the epidemic. That’s where my responsibilities lie.” — Dr Li Wenliang, from a New York Times article

Dr. Li was just 34-years old. But perhaps from his early demise, China will finally receive some much needed reform on whistleblowing. According to Reuters, China’s top anti-corruption body said it would send investigators to Wuhan to probe “issues raised by the people in connection with Dr. Li Wenliang”.

The heart returns home

Not all the responses were full of grief and heartaches. The author of the most liked response lamented that it was the epidemic that finally brought him home and closer to his parents.

Like many others, having returned to his hometown for the Chinese New Year, he was now stuck there as companies all over China extended the holidays due to travel restrictions and fear of contagion.

“Without this epidemic, I would not have been home to spend the 15th day of the Lunar New Year for seven years now. The fragrance of mum and pop’s cooking, the sunshine of my hometown — how nice.”

He went on later in the article to share…

“… I’ve hardly ever spent some quiet time at home with my parents. To be honest I really wouldn’t dare to quarrel with my folks now. With the epidemic so serious I would have nowhere else to go if I skipped home. Hence I find myself getting along with my parents for a record period of time. I’m going to use this precious two weeks to keep my folks company, and let myself slow down…”

This netizen also noted — with a tinge of irony — that during last year’s Chinese New Year, local cinemas released a blockbuster called “The Wandering Earth”, about a post-apocalypse global effort to save the Earth from total destruction.

In it there was such a line:

“In the beginning, no one cared about this calamity. It was just another fire, another drought, another extinction of a species, another city disappearing. Until the disaster hit everybody…”

A not so gentle reminder

But movies are movies. We watch, we laugh, we cry, and then we go home and quickly forget about it.

Right now, the streets of China, and Wuhan in particular, are stark reminders that fiction can become reality.

In the face of calamity and death, the human spirit unites. Adversaries put aside their differences and work together. Even Trump is no exception, despite having led two years of an aggressive US-China trade war.

I believe this epidemic has given all of us something precious. A reminder that we all live on this same earth, nourished and destroyed by the same Mother Nature; that in the face of a common threat we should all remember, there is no you or I — there is only us.

Spread the word (not the disease)