´Wuhan Diary. Dispatches from a Quarantined City´

 

While listening to Wuhan Diary. Dispatches from a Quarantined City by the prolific Chinese author writing under the penname of Fang Fang - I had access to the book in the audiobook format, translated by Michael Kahn-Ackermann and read by Heidi Jürgens - I realized through how many changes the world went through in just two years. Not only at a personal level, but the society as a whole, in its national variants, had to adapt to the new limitations and challenges raised by the virus. 

All this started in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, with a over 11 million people. I bet that before the pandemics, 90% of the rest of the planet never heard about it, although it is a very dynamic and industry-oriented city. 

The Wuhan Diary is a day-by-day account of the first days of the pandemics. Fang Fang observes and shares the changes her family, neighbours, acquaintances and in general, people from Wuhan went through. Some died, some survived, some were caught into the net of conspiracy theories. Interesting for me was to follow up the political involvement not only in setting the restrictions, but also in dealing with the information policies, mainly censoring generously the online sources of information. Fang Fang herself mentions in the book how she was often the target of left extremists and how her blog posts disappeared in the abyss of the Chinese-censored Internet. A reminder what is the everyday life of writers and journalists in dictatorships. 

In a simple style yet careful to cover all the details of the newly everyday life reality, Fang Fang mentions how the new solidarity networks were created and the sadness of hearing regularly news about people dying in droves. 

In the newly Covid literature, the Wuhan Diary offers first hand information from the very epicenter of the pandemic. A testimony with a journalistic value that adds on to the new literary witnessing of the new times we are living.

Rating: 3 stars