More Concrete Than “#wuhanaddoil”: Treat Wuhaners With Kindness
Original: Zihui Wang (王梓辉), Jiaqian Zhang (张佳婧). Source: January 28, Sanlian Life Weekly (三联生活周刊). Translator: Joe. Line Editor: Wuhao Chen
Translator’s words: Recently, the Wuhan city in Hubei Province, China became the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic outbreak. In an effort to contain the spread of the epidemic, the city announced a lockdown on Jan. 23, forcepping the city’s outlets. As it became difficult to travel from and to Wuhan, many Wuhaners are trapped out of the city, and the public fear of them carrying the virus began to grow. Confronted with such fear, these Wuhaners felt wronged, since many of them actually wish to return home, rather than staying elsewhere and putting others in danger. The following editorial examined the mixed emotional experiences of such stranded Wuhaners, as well as suggesting how the rest of the public should view them.
Background: Recently, we received many complaints about how Wuhaners were treated poorly outside the province. Insomuch as the slogan “Wuhan add oil” spreads (a common cheering expression in Chinese), “Wuhaners” has in fact become targets of unfair treatment. Forbidden to return home, they are expelled by the locals, discriminated against, and their private information is leaked.
The unfounded fear made many forget that the coronavirus outbreak was not the fault of Wuhaners. Many of them left Wuhan well before Wuhan’s “lockdown” on January 23, or even before the epidemic on January 20. Most of them also have respectfully followed the quarantine and assessment procedures of local medical institutions. However, what they experience now is not only the longing for home, but more importantly the exclusion from the society.
In contrast to the irrational stereotype, many local governments started providing accomodation for Wuhaners and travelers from the Hubei province, which is a more practical response to the needs of the evacuees. As addressed by Thomas Hobbes in his treatise Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy, “the evil that happeneth to an innocent man, may happen to every man.” Treat Wuhaners with kindness, as if the kindness were for ourselves.
Qingxia Li (李青霞) and her family were driven out from her rented apartment by the landlord on January 25. Before that, her family, including her parents in law, had been on vacation and been staying in the apartment for 4 days. The first 2 days of the stay passed without a problem until Wuhan’s lockdown on January 23, when people realized the severity of the epidemic. Their vacation went out of control soon after.
Four month ago, Li and her family planned their trip to Sanya, Hainan province. On January 16, her family left Wuhan in a car with a Hubei license plate and arrived on January 18. As a resident of Wuchang district, Li claimed that she “seldom commutes to Hankou district” and barely knew that there was “some problem” with Huanan Seafood Market (the market is the identified source of coronavirus outbreak, in Hankou, Wuhan city -translator). She did not know what exactly “the problem” was at the time.
In the afternoon on January 23, the apartment owner came to their door and told them “you are Wuhaners, you shouldn’t be living here.” Of course, Li wouldn’t accept the request. With the help of their travel agency, they managed to stay.
Then again on January 24 and 25, the owner insisted that they should leave. On 25 afternoon, Li and the owner engaged in an escalated verbal clash. Li told the owner ”Why should we leave? We paid for the rent. Is there a law saying Wuhaners can’t rent an apartment. If there is, bring it to me and I’ll leave.”
They ended up bringing the police. In the video recorded by Li’s family, the police and the owner urged that Li and her family be examined at a medical institution to prove that they do not carry the virus. On the other hand, Li’s family doubted if any institution would just examine and issue an “I-do-not-have-virus certificate” upon any request. They also did not trust the police’s promise to let them stay once they get the certificate.
The two sides were unable to reach any agreement until the travel agency proposed to try to arrange another apartment for the family. However, they asked that the family hide their Wuhaner identity. Li felt discriminated against and insulted. She says, “I told them I have all my rights to rent and live here: first of all, I’m not sick, I don’t carry the virus; second, there’s no law forbidding Wuhaners from living here.” In the end, Li and her family settled in a large chain hotel under the condition of daily temperature check.
Yet as recorded in the video, an inadvertent comment from the police infuriated Li while he was recording paperworks for the case. “I have to say, you guys shouldn’t have creeped out of the town”, he said, “you should be quarantining yourselves as home.” Upon hearing this, the family’s emotion went out of control. Li protested in tears, “we didn’t creep out, we came out on 16, and the lockdown wasn’t there until January 23. How could we know things would turn out to be like this? If we knew what’s going on, why would we come out and put others in danger?”
This is exactly what most stranded Wuhaners felt wronged upon: we left Wuhan well before the lockdown on 23, or even before the outbreak on 20, and we wouldn’t have known the severity of the issue; we didn’t come out to endanger people on purpose.
Data seem to support this claim. As seen from the data provided by Wuhan mayor Xianwang Zhou (周先旺), amongst the more than 5 million people departing from Wuhan because of the Chinese New Year and/or the coronavirus outbreak between January 10 to 22, 60% to 70% of the destinations are within the Hubei province, and less arrived elsewhere in the country.
Nevertheless, people’s fear of the virus is prevailing. The few cases of Wuhaners’ hiding their identities are exemplified and criticized, and Wuhaners, already withering in the center of media, became the subjects of unfair treatments elsewhere in the country. While at least Li’s family has a hotel to stay in, in many common tourist destinations, travelers from Wuhan are having much worse experiences because of over-simplified local policies.
Yuexin (悦心) hosts a homestay hotel in Dali, Yunnan province. She informed us that, since January 25 morning, the Dali Old Town, a popular tourist destination, officially announced a closedown at 7:30 pm, and homestay hotels shall not host guests thereafter. Yuexin received a phone call from a family of 3 from Wuhan that day at 10 pm looking for a place to stay. “But we had to refuse them”, said Yuexin, “and we really felt sorry about that.”
In fact, most Wuhaners also do not want to remain out of the town; they want to return home, but they simply can’t. Although the official lockdown on January 23 only closed the departure terminals from Wuhan’s airports and train stations, airlines and train agencies cancelled also the trips to Wuhan. The remaining trains that pass through Wuhan also cancelled desembarments in the city. If Wuhaners want to go home, they have to find loopholes.
(Shown on the sign: “Hankou Train Station”, a train station in Wuhan)
Lingyu (凌玉) is a Wuhaner who registered for a six day trip to Yunnan province at a local agency on January 18. She recalls that at the time she and people around her had not started wearing masks, “everyone lived normally. No fear, no scarry news.”
The first two days after her arrival to Kunming, Yunnan passed by without a problem until the 23. “The moment I heard about the lockdown that day, I realized it wouldn’t be cleared any time soon. I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to remain out of the town alone, so I asked the agency if they can let me go home ahead of schedule.” Says Lingyu.
At first, the agency rearranged a flight for her to Changsha (a city near Wuhan -translator) on January 26, but it was still impossible to travel from Changsha to Wuhan. In the evening on Chinese New Year Eve (January 24), Lingyu did not celebrate. She was looking for train tickets. Around midnight, the agency suddenly messaged her; a new train route just opened, and it stops at Wuhan. They told her to book immediately, and she did.
After booking the train, Lingyu realized the schedule conflict between her flight to Changsha on 26 afternoon and her train ticket from Changsha to Wuhan at 1:30 am. She phoned her tour guide and asked if her flight could be changed to noon January 25. After a night of negotiation, the agency was not able to find her a solution. Lingyu decided to find her own tickets home.
She first tried to book a train ticket from Lijiang (probably where she was -translator) to Kunming, Yunnan province at 11:04 am on 25, but the booking system gave her a schedule conflict error. She had no clue about the error, so she decided to go to the train station the next morning to buy the ticket on site. She arrived at the station the next day after 9 am and discovered that the station was filled with passengers trying to depart because of a local case of coronavirus confirmed on the previous day. Since january 25 morning, the city has officially closed Lijiang Old Town, Mount Yulong, and Lake Lugu, its three most popular attractions. As a consequence, a herd of tourists came to the station, trying to depart ahead of their plans.
At the train station, Lingyu found out that the system conflict was from a ticket booked by the travel agency from Dali to Changsha. Therefore, in order to buy her ticket to Changsha this morning, she needed to first cancel the agency’s booking for her. Since everyone there was in a hurry, Lingyu was so worried that she hastened in lines for the cancelation and the rebooking in tears. “No one would let me through first,” she says, “I didn’t get the ticket until 30 minutes before the departure time.” Like this, she travelled from Lijiang to Kunming, from Kunming to Changsha, and then hopped on the train back to Wuhan just in time.
At home, Lingyu shared her experience on social media #WuhanersTrappedOutside (滞留外地的武汉人), and she commented, “Wuhaners haven’t been as united as they are now.” However, many Wuhaners trapped elsewhere, or even those who traveled home from Wuhan, do not have the opportunity to share their unified voices. Quite on the contrary, they are expelled from the rest of the society.
((Text in Korean) “The Blue House (Cheong Wa Dae)” “International Aid on Wuhan Pneumonia: Call for Medical Supplies” How could we refuse entries of the Chinese at such a difficult time when the Wuhan Pneumonia is worsening so fast? How different is such a deed from that of the ignorant and selfish citizens in the movie Train to Busan, who refused the protagonist who had returned from bravely fighting the zombies. Now is not the time for extreme measures to limit entries, but the time to provide aid. Now Wuhan is running out of medical supplies. Through sending masks and other supplies, we can boost cooperations between Korea and China, and we can defeat the virus! )
Dewen Lü, researcher at the Center of Chinese Rural Governance at Wuhan University, described his own experience in the magazin South Reviews (南风窗). During Lü and his wife’s return to their home village for Chinese New Year, they reduced the frequency of outdoor activities and canceled visits to relatives. Nonetheless, they smelled a “subtle sense of exclusion.” In the afternoon of the Near Year’s day (January 25), the villagers started keeping a distance from Lü’s in-laws on the street, avoiding eye contact. On the second day, some friends heard the rumor and called, asking if Lü’s family has been to a hospital for assessment. Lü jokes, “we seem to be the gods of plague in the eyes of the fellow villagers.”
If we were in their shoes, it is not hard to understand the feelings of these villagers. Lü commented that any normal society will expel alien things to maintain its “normality”, this is to be expected. For example, as Yuexin expressed her empathy towards travelers from Wuhan, some criticized her online as too soft-hearted. When asked if, before the regulations came out, she would take any guests from Wuhan, who had nowhere else to stay, Lingyu frankly answers no. “Our homestay only has 5 people in service, two of which work at the front desk.” She explains. “The medical support here at Dali is far from ideal. If we really get infected and there’s no help from elsewhere, I can’t imagine what will happen.” Then she added, “but if our guests get a fever, or there’s any emergency, we are here to help.”
(See what the Thai government does! Much warmer than many of us Chinese! Immigration Bureau Thailand has officially issued the document, stating that Chinese travelers from the Hubei province may stay after their original 15-day visas on arrival expire. The stay may be extended to at most 2 months. All visitors from China may postpone their return, and will not be regarded as illegal immigrant. )
This conflicting emotion is nothing but normal. People’s precautions and Wuhaners’ upsetness are fairly understandable. At such a time, perhaps the most needed and practical solution is for the government to come up with a set of reasonable acts.
A commonly mentioned solution is to provide special concentrated lodgings for travelers from Wuhan, or even the Hubei province. Wuhaners like Li also mentioned, if people have some reasonable fear about Wuhaners, they shall be checked. “After the assessment, the sick shall be treated, the healthy shall be given a health certificate, or given a place to stay.”
On the other hand, we have to note that the action of “exposing private information of travelers from Wuhan” is a violation of a citizen’s rights to privacy. It does not help contain the epidemic, but tears the society apart. Thomas Hobbes addressed in Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy that “the evil that happeneth to an innocent man, may happen to every man.” We cannot blame Wuhaners as the only consumers of wild animals in China.
Recently, many acclaimed the “hard core” measures taken by the government in Henan province. These measures rightfully deserve esteem. But we also wish to remind readers that, under these measures, it might be better if we can show more kindness and respect they deserve.
After all, no one could predict where the next epidemic outbreak will occur. The virus is emotionless, but we have emotions. Remember how we treat Wuhaners this time, since the next time, that is how we will be treated.
(“Treat Wuhaners with kindness, as if the kindness were for ourselves.”)
