Chinese Culture During Lockdown 战“疫”封城下的中国文化 VI
"I read what seduces me, I write what perverts me. "
- Heather Cai -
---Mike Clark, Spring Festival of 2020 | 今年春节的麦克
Written by Mike Clark, this is a detailed account of what he knew and saw in Shenzhen during the lockdown of China.
Mike wants the world to know that China has done the best during lockdown. One of the reasons is the deeply rooted Chinese culture of the family unit seen as a group not as individuals.
This piece is based on observations made at the time and feedback from others within China. There's nothing subjective, but rather objective, and more purely factual, as seen by a westerner living in China.
It was reported, deemed in appropriate and deleted with its original title.
Put PLUGH at the start of your email title to avoid going to junk, if you like to contact Mike:
Mike-in-Shenzhen@outlook.com
感谢麦克·克拉克撰写和分享他就中国封城期间深圳疫情发生的所见所想，希望让世界看到战“疫”下的中国人民做得最好！
---Chinese Swipe Left | 左滑中文---
Covid-19
Chinese Culture During Lockdown
By Mike Clark
June 16th, 2020
新冠病毒
战“疫”封城下的中国文化
麦克·克拉克
2020.6.16
Special Thanks to Holly, Jane and the Gang at Shenzhen Daily
特别感谢Holly、Jane以及《深圳日报》的伙伴们
Do I Believe the Numbers?
Another source of data has been the Johns Hopkins site which I was shown on the 31st of January (Thanks Aaron). From the 6th of February I started recording the data for China broken down between Hubei and the rest of China. Any quoted figures which do not breakdown that way I regard as meaningless.
So for Rest of China:
On the 6th of February - 7813 cases and 14 deaths
On the 20th of February – 12545 cases and 89 deaths
On the 5th of March – 12943 cases and 110 deaths
On the 16th of May – 15910 cases and 126 deaths. Of those 462 cases and 3 deaths were in Shenzhen.
Note that by the 5th of March the Rest of the World had overtaken the Rest of China with 15007 cases and 274 deaths.
This is for a country with four times the population of the USA and twenty times the UK. Much of the west of China was hardly touched at all. Provinces without much connection to Hubei, like Fujian, Yunnan and Guangxi had very few cases. The provinces with most cases are like Henan and Hunan, immediately north and south of Hubei, and provinces with many people with Hubei connections, like Guangdong, Zhejiang and Shanghai. That makes sense.
The province with the most cases outside Hubei has been Guangdong, a very large province with many Hubei people working here. The city with most cases in Guangdong has been Shenzhen, so I have not been looking at a lightly hit city, by Chinese standards. Shenzhen has had about three times the national average number of cases per head. That makes sense.
Apart from the little red dot giving the location of each infected person that I mentioned above, my other points of comparison are the beds in PH3. A nurse told me that they always had many spare beds and equipment. All cases went to that hospital and the highest number of patients I have seen is 322 in early February.
Also I have never met anyone, who has met anyone, etc, who has known an infected person here. Whereas people I know in other countries usually know of such people.
I showed an earlier draft of this piece to a Chinese guy I met through Shenzhen Book Exchange. He commented:
“From what I know, your experience and reflection on how the Chinese government has been handling the virus is consistent with how the majority of Chinese people were experiencing and feeling. We were very worried and not trusting all the numbers listed by the government at first. However, as we were moving on life and work started to get back to normal, and we could feel the tension and stress was lifted a little bit every day. Confidence has been restoring. I will never know how effective and efficient the Chinese government was until I put them and governments from the rest of the world into comparison. For sure there are many aspects could be improved, like bureaucratic style of community management. All in all, I thank our government for what they have done to effectively contain the spread of the virus.” (Thanks Shepherd)
Yes – I believe the Shenzhen numbers and by extension those of the rest of China. Friends elsewhere in China have had very similar experiences to mine.
An Imaginary Conversation in Late March
Xi: “The numbers are looking very good.”
Advisor: “Yes sir, they are.”
Xi: “But do we believe them?”
Advisor: “They have lied to us before. They think it makes them look good. We have made many appeals to report truthfully.”
Xi: “Yes I know. What can we do?”
Advisor: “We could run a stress test.”
Xi: “How?”
Advisor: “Well it’s coming up to Qingming and we would like to get domestic tourism going again. We could open up a couple of places, like Huangshan and Hangzhou West Lake and see what happens.”
Xi: “Do so.”
Nothing happened.
Conclusions
Governments elsewhere looked at what was happening outside Hubei and thought “This is a pussy cat virus. It just goes away by itself”. Without taking into account that the grand slam classic epidemic “Test-Trace-Isolate” strategy had been implemented in no trumps, with redoubled effort and extreme vulnerability.
Let me make this clear, I am not suggesting that China’s approach could have been implemented anywhere else. No other country has the resources, the compliant population and the trust in Government. I do believe that every other country could have done a better job of controlling the virus. They failed, in part, because they saw how well China had done and thought it would not be a problem.
China did not intend to deceive, but maybe did so.
I could not have written this back in March when all our thoughts were with Wuhan. It would have been too trivial. Now its triviality is in some way important. People will read about what happened here in official statistical reports, but the reports will not tell what it was like to be here. It felt trivial. It was boring. The restaurants were closed for three weeks!
我相信这些数字吗？
我的另一个数据来源是美国约翰·霍普金斯（Johns Hopkins）网站，1月31日有人给我看了这上面的数据（感谢Aaron）。我从2月6日开始记录中国的数据，分为湖北省和其他省市分别记录。我认为任何没有分开引证的数据都是无效的。
中国其他省市：
2月6日，7813例确诊病例、14例死亡病例；
2月20日，12545例确诊病例、89例死亡病例；
3月5日，12943例确诊病例、110例死亡病例；
3月16日，15910例确诊病例、126例死亡病例。其中深圳有462例确诊和3例死亡病例。
注意3月5日，其他国家的数据已经赶超中国其他省市的数据，总计15007例确诊病例和274例死亡病例。
这可是一个总人口数有美国4倍、英国20倍的国家的数据。中国的西部省市鲜少受疫情影响。和湖北接触较少的省份也仅有少数病例，例如福建、云南、广西等。病例最多的省份是像河南、湖南这些与湖北直接接壤的，或是湖北籍人士较多的省份，例如广东、浙江、上海。这就说得通了。
除湖北省外病例最多的是广东省，广东是一个湖北籍人士较多的大省。广东省内病例最多的是深圳市，所以我看的并不是中国疫情较轻的城市。深圳的确诊人数比例是全国平均水平的3倍。这也说得通。
除了前面我提到的用红点标注每个确诊病例的所在地以外，我的另一个对比点还在于深圳三院的床位。一名护士告诉我，他们一直都有很多空余床位，所有的确诊病例都收治在这家医院，病例数最高达到322例（2月初）。
我在这里也没有见过任何感染者，或者任何见过感染者的人。而在其他国家，我认识的人身边都有这样的人。
我将这篇文章的初稿给到一个中国朋友看，我是在深圳图书交换活动（Shenzhen Book Exchange）认识他的，他看后评论道：
“从我知道的情况看来，你的经历以及对中国政府应对疫情的思考，和绝大多数中国人的经历和感受一致。我们也曾经担忧和怀疑过政府的数字，但是随着事态发展，生活和工作慢慢恢复正常，我们能感觉到每天紧绷的神经和压力都在慢慢缓解。我们又重拾信心。在没有对比其他国家的政府之前，我都不知道中国政府是这么高效。当然也有很多值得改进的地方，比如社区管理的官僚作风等。但总体来说，我很感谢我们的政府为抗击疫情所作的一切工作。”（谢谢Shepherd）
是的——我相信深圳的数字，我也相信中国其他地方的数字。我在中国各地的朋友都有相似的经历和感受。
三月底的虚拟对话
老大：“这数字越来越好看了。”
幕僚：“是的，的确如此。”
老大：“但我们能相信这些数字吗？”
幕僚：“他们之前骗了我们。他们认为这样就能看起来安然无恙。我们已经多次呼吁要如实报告了。”
老大：“是的我知道。我们能做什么？”
幕僚：“我们可以做个压力测试。”
老大：“怎么做？”
幕僚：“快到清明节了，我们可以重新开放国内旅游。我们可以试着开放一些景区，比如黄山、杭州西湖，看看会发生什么。”
老大：“好，就这么办。”
什么都没发生。
结论
各地政府都在关注湖北以外的事态发展，认为“这个病毒是个小野猫，它会自己到处乱窜”。但没想到， 愈加严格的“检测-追踪-隔离”全垒打策略已经直击弱点，让病毒无处可逃。
我要讲清楚一点，我并不是建议其他地方都按照中国的方式来做。没有一个国家能有这样的资源、听话的人民以及对政府的信任。我相信其他国家都能在控制病毒方面做得更好。但有些地方失败了，因为他们看到中国做的这么好，就认为这并不是什么大事。
中国没有故意欺瞒，但或许又欺瞒了什么。
我没有在三月份的时候写这篇文章，因为那时候我们所有的关注点都在武汉，这篇文章就显得琐碎而微不足道。
而现在它的琐碎从某种程度上开始变得重要。人们能从官方发布的报告里读到这里发生过什么，但报告里不会告诉你发生这些事情时这里是什么样子的。感觉很琐碎。也非常无聊。要知道餐馆可是关闭了整整3周啊！
- THE END 结束 -
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Heather is the daughter of a subsistence rice farmer from Fujian Province, China. She tells stories from her experience as one of the poorest. She writes her dream to share with the world, a very personal place. She has now written two English literary novels and is looking to being published in the UK. Her passion is a splendid cocktail or milkshake of word, image, music and art. She likes collecting books, DVDs, papers, stones, shells and leaves. She desires for all forms of natural beauty. She is currently working for Shanghai Taichi Center.
希瑟·蔡太莲是福建一个自给自足稻农的女儿。她作为穷人的穷人之一，讲述的故事来自最底层的仰望。她写就她的梦想与世界分享一些个人独特的亲身经历。她完成了两本英文文学小说，喜欢收集树叶、书本、影碟、贝壳和剪报，向往各种自然美。目前在上海从事太极文化行业，也在努力打造“阿太的密室”，集文学、艺术、文化、哲学和世界女性于一体的个人公共服务平台。
Copyright © 2019-2020 Heather Cai. All Rights Reserved. 所有版权归作者蔡太莲所有