Wuhan lockdown diarist Fang Fang on writing to preserve the truth
Chinese novelist Fang Fang, the pen name of Wang Fang, was in a funk when she decided to become the unofficial chronicler of life under coronavirus-included lockdown in Wuhan, where the virus was first discovered in December 2019.
Fang Fang criticised local officials’ early mistakes and cover-ups, aspects of the response the ChinÂese Communist party has since airbrushed out of the official narrative. Her descriptions of chaotic events also elicited sympathy for the people of her city, in a tacit rebuke of rightwing commentators in the US who labelled the disease the “Wuhan virus”. Her posts were translated into English and collected as a book, Wuhan Diary. The April announcement of its publication sparked onÂline abuse as leftists in China accused her of “handing a knife to foreigners” and spreading “distorted values”.
She has stuck to her criticisms of the Wuhan authorities, even as the party intensified efforts to spin its response as an unblemished success.
Source: FT #Dec04
https://www.ft.com/content/a8995095-7379-4e01-8070-2a54d4b47180?fbclid=IwAR0z3EvrsqivaKNPfrRvf9rrrGfyudlb_KhCjNCQrryAoI0pziYWVziYd_M
#Wuhan #China #Covid19 #Coronavirus #WuhanPneumonia #FangFangDiary
Chinese novelist Fang Fang, the pen name of Wang Fang, was in a funk when she decided to become the unofficial chronicler of life under coronavirus-included lockdown in Wuhan, where the virus was first discovered in December 2019.
Fang Fang criticised local officials’ early mistakes and cover-ups, aspects of the response the ChinÂese Communist party has since airbrushed out of the official narrative. Her descriptions of chaotic events also elicited sympathy for the people of her city, in a tacit rebuke of rightwing commentators in the US who labelled the disease the “Wuhan virus”. Her posts were translated into English and collected as a book, Wuhan Diary. The April announcement of its publication sparked onÂline abuse as leftists in China accused her of “handing a knife to foreigners” and spreading “distorted values”.
She has stuck to her criticisms of the Wuhan authorities, even as the party intensified efforts to spin its response as an unblemished success.
Source: FT #Dec04
https://www.ft.com/content/a8995095-7379-4e01-8070-2a54d4b47180?fbclid=IwAR0z3EvrsqivaKNPfrRvf9rrrGfyudlb_KhCjNCQrryAoI0pziYWVziYd_M
#Wuhan #China #Covid19 #Coronavirus #WuhanPneumonia #FangFangDiary
Ft
Wuhan lockdown diarist Fang Fang on writing to preserve the truth
Censors tried to erase the novelist’s unvarnished accounts of the Covid-19 pandemic’s frightening early days