WASHINGTON - On Jan. 23, Chinese authorities locked down Wuhan, the Chinese city of 11 million at the center of the global coronavirus outbreak.
International health experts say to the rest of the world by two or three weeks.
For many residents of Wuhan, the lockdown is a personal hell. VOA’s Mandarin Service spoke to several people about their experiences in a once-bustling city that has been reduced to an almost-deserted landscape because most people cannot leave their homes.
One month ago, Yang Jingjing posted the government-promoted slogan “Wuhan Jiayou!” (Wuhan Be Strong!) on her WeChat, showing solidarity with her fellow countryman. WeChat is a superapp online messaging platform that anchors China’s digital life.
One month later, the 28-year-old real-estate saleswoman said her world had collapsed.
On Feb. 21, Wuhan police notified her that her father’s body had been found on a roadside. He had been dead for several days.
Yang Yuanyun, 51, an employee of Wuhan Jiahua Automobile Plastic Parts Company, was the pillar of the Yang family.
On February 16, his wife discovered he hadn’t cooked for the day, as was the norm. Without his cellphone and wallet, he had left their home in Wuhan, leaving a last note to his wife on his cellphone:
“I’m gone, won’t be able to accompany you for the rest of your life. There is no way out.”
Yang never pushed the “send” button. Today, the message remains in his draft box.
On the day he left, Yang also wrote some final words in a notebook:
“If this epidemic is playing a joke on me, I can make peace with that. If my sick body can be put in any use, I will dedicate it to medical research. May this disease not torture the world anymore!”
“He had been hiding it from me and my mom. He wouldn’t talk to us about his physical condition,” said his daughter Yang Jingjing, who had been quarantined in her apartment in Wuhan’s Wuchung district after returning from her parents’ home across town in the Hannan district. “I just want to find my dad.”
At the time, February 20, she had no idea that her father had died.
A few days after Yang Yuanyun’s disappearance, Yang Jingjing and her mother discovered he had been in touch with the family’s community social worker for several days via his WeChat. He told the social worker — repeatedly — that he had a fever and his chest was tightening. He begged them to put him in a hospital.
His community social worker responded that they could not find a hospital bed for him. Her words sounded indifferent.
“I don’t think you have any disease. You just think too much,” she replied in a WeChat text message.
Yang Yuanyun was last seen by a police surveillance camera on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, near Shamao Town in the Hannan district.
The Yangs’ neighborhood community center has not responded to inquiries from VOA.
“My mom never knew he asked for help from the community,” Yang Jingjing said, sobbing. “I called the community for accountability. They said I was harassing them. They said they have no liability at all. They asked me, ‘Why didn’t you, as the daughter, take more responsibility?’”
According to Chinese official statics, as of midnight Feb. 21, the day Yang Yuanyun’s body was discovered, there were 53,284 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2,345 deaths nationwide.
Yang Yuanyun is not counted among these figures. The number of deaths like his — undiagnosed, unseen by medical practioners — remains a mystery.
Xu Wu, 51, a former firefighter at Wuhan Iron and Steel Company, sobbed over the phone as he recounted his father’s ordeal.
On February 4, Wuhan doctors diagnosed his father with coronavirus. The community social workers said no hospital beds were available, and if there had been, there was no transportation available. Xu pushed his 80-year-old father in a wheelchair from one hospital to another. Yes, the old man’s condition was severe. No, he could not be admitted. No resources.
They visited another hospital Feb. 14. It rained heavily that day in Wuhan. On their way home, Xu accidentally dropped his father’s medical records, including lung X-rays representing weeks of effort to obtain a diagnosis. That evening, he watched his father eat a serving of Chinese red kale. Each mouthful was difficult. As for rice, he couldn’t even keep it down.
“I was so sad,” Xu said, his voice cracking. “I stayed up until 1 a.m. that day and contacted many people. I thought my father wouldn’t make it. I posted a message online for help.”
One day later, on February 16, a local hospital finally agreed to admit Xu’s father.