Wuhan Lockdown: Day 10 | The City Through My Lens
Original article and pictures by CaiXiaoChuan. Translated by Yunyi Zhu. Edited by Xin Wen.
[Translated Article] This article was originally published in The Lifeweek Magazine on February 1 in Chinese by CaiXiaoChuan. The original article can be found here.
Ladies and gentlemen, your train has arrived at Wuhan Station. Please get off the train in order…
As the train announcement started, the room got filled up with anxiety. Everyone turned their eyes to the dark city outside the windows. An attendant rushed in — “Two people said they wanted to get off here. Anyone else?” I turned to her. Without saying a word, she understood. “You want to get off? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Give me your ID!” This brought the entire coach in an uproar. Everyone started looking at me, some saying “I didn’t know anyone who would get off here!”
This was the night of January 27, five days since the lockdown of Wuhan, and I was on train G69.
The day before, Wen Song, the photography manager texted me, asking whether I would be ok with going to Wuhan. “Yes.” I replied immediately. My colleagues at the social news department of The Lifeweek Magazine have been in the city long ago. As for me, during the Chinese New Year, I spent time with my parents and visited my grandparents’ graves. I didn’t have anything left to worry about. I had been thinking over how to explain to my parents that my trip to Wuhan would be safe and meaningful, but surprisingly, they let me go easily, only saying that I should be careful with protecting myself. This might be because I have always been travelling, and they were used to it.
But how could I enter Wuhan, the city that is under quarantine? All the trains to Wuhan are cancelled. Journalist Shan Wang showed me a way — to buy the train ticket from Beijing to Guangzhou, and the train has a stop at Wuhan. “You get off there.” Before she hung up, she urged me to bring more masks, saying that they only have medical masks while N95 masks are recommended in the hospitals.
With some masks from my mom and three protection suits, three medial masks and three pairs of goggles from Wen Song, the photography manager, I got on the train to Wuhan. The train was quite crowded. Everyone covered themselves with clothes and masks. I can hear coughs from time to time, and it felt grim. However, I also saw a careless family, who took off their masks and started feeding their kids tangerines, which scared me. To relax myself a bit, I texted my friends that I was going to Wuhan. They apparently didn’t know what to say, and only replied with two words: Take care.
With my heavy luggages, I was waiting for the train doors to open. Ten seconds, Fifteen seconds… The door opened with the sound of a gas leak. Around ten people got off. They walked down the train quietly, looking down. There were also people trying to get onto the train: at the exit of the station, a man tried to force his way in, but got surrounded by the station workers. He was holding on to his phone, where the screen shows two characters: Wuhan (武汉).
Since the entire transportation system in Wuhan had been shut down, my colleague Pan Hong and a journalist Zhang Congzhi managed to get two cars for me. A volunteer sent me to a resident who volunteered to let our team use her car. When the resident saw me, the first thing she did was to give me two bottles of alcohol disinfectants so I can clean myself in time. In Wuhan, alcohol disinfectants are scarce. She also told me that she didn’t have time to clean her trunk so it was full of empty liquor bottles. I then drove the car to meet the reporters in the cling-clangs.
Seeing the reporters felt like seeing the families. Before our day ended, we drove a source back home. He couldn’t drive, which made it very hard for him to go out once the public transportation shut down. They were talking about the current situation in Wuhan as our car passed through the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge. Seeing the now empty bridge, we sighed.When we got back to the hotel, a reporter told me that a doctor he interviewed that day was diagnosed with infected lungs. We looked at each other, but we couldn’t say a word.
Below are scenes in Wuhan that I captured with my camera.
Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University is located at 169, Donghu Road, Wuchang District. It is a Grade Three hospital, one of the larger hospitals, and it is the first hospital that I took pictures of.
Before I came here, I didn’t know what exactly I could do as a photographer here, or what I wanted to express through my photos, but I thought it would be heartless not to record the things happening here.
I quickly put on the mask when I arrived. There is an emergency room in the outpatient. We could see that patients are getting emergency treatment.
I waited for a long time before the patient finally came out of the emergency room. She was being sent to the ward with the breathing tube. I felt bad for her, but on the other hand I felt lucky for her — unlike the patients waiting outside, at least she had been treated.
I saw families of patients wearing masks that were not up to standard. At this point, probably love could overcome fear from the virus.
I took pictures in the emergency room for a long time and finally needed to go out for some air. That environment was too depressing.
The pictures could capture some feeling that couldn’t be described with words. The old man’s hand, his old-fashioned glasses and his white hair. We couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but anyone can feel the anxiety in the room.
Inside the hospital, words started to lose their meanings. All the patients’ families and the medical staff were saying their problems, but no one had a solution: hospital beds were all occupied and patients couldn’t stay in the hospital.
Outside the hospital, a woman kept coughing, but she couldn’t get a bed in the hospital. I saw the despair in the two people, but I could only capture their silence.
The overpasses are empty, and so are the roads.
Reporter Zhang Congzhi went to college in Wuhan, and he told me that this used to be a busy road near Chuhehan Street.
The old people are still used to hanging the clothes in sunlight.
The old man playing music at the lower left corner brings the street some life.
We were driving to the hospital in the morning mist.
This doesn’t look like a city in 2020.
Wuhan №7 Hospital is a local Grade Two hospital, as well as one of the first listed coronavirus-only hospitals. The buildings look old — kind of similar to the hospitals in rural areas.
The long gloomy Wuhan finally saw some sun, and the hospital looked less cold.
Before I went in, I saw signs saying that the inpatient department is full. I passed through a door, and saw a room for IV administration. Rows of people on rows of chairs — I had never seen so many people getting intravenous drip at the same time.
Only pictures can show the situation. To prevent further infection, most patients came here alone. I saw many old people walking in, trembling, and I didn’t know how they managed to come here without any public transportation.
The medical staff were all wearing protective suits. The suits made it hard for them to recognize each other, so they wrote their names and departments on them.
The physician in charge of the CT scan says that they wouldn’t go off from work because of the large number of patients.
Our magazine team received eighteen N95 face masks on January 30, but when the reporter Wang Shan knew that the hospitals’ shortage on masks (one mask for four days), she asked us to donate all of our masks to the hospital. I didn’t agree, saying that we should keep the masks until the planned KN95 masks arrive. Wang Zhan angrily criticized me and donated the masks to the doctors, but the doctors said the masks were not up to the standard for medical operations.
The residence building next to the №7 Hospital. The woman on the left was knitting while the couple on the right were drying clothes. This scene gives us hope for life after the epidemic coronavirus.
The light on the building says “Cheer up, Wuhan,” but no one could see it since everyone was home.
Another day has gone. Two reporters were asleep at the back of the car, while I was driving to the hotel.
