“The people who did not experience tragedy, they have forgotten [the lockdown] already. They only think, everything is good now,” says a woman who asked to be identified by her last name, Zhong. Her 39-year-old son died from the coronavirus in Wuhan last year.
Her son, an elementary school teacher, came down with a fever in early February. But the severity of the lockdown meant no one could drive him to any of Wuhan’s strained hospitals to look for care.
Eventually, her son hitched a ride on the back of an open truck in freezing rain looking for an open hospital bed. He finally found an open hospital spot, but no one attended to him for two days. He texted desperate messages for help to his wife before he died several days later.
“My biggest regret is that I sent him to the hospital. At least at home he would have gotten something to eat, people to care for him,” Zhong said to NPR. “Now when I think of him, my heart hurts more than I can bear.”
Zhong asked that only her last name be used because authorities have arrested people who documented how local governments struggled to provide care in the onset of the pandemic.
Others who spoke out about what have been imprisoned. Zhang Zhan, a lawyer-turned-blogger, was sentenced to four years in prison last month for “fabricating lies.” Until her arrest in May, Zhang walked around the city and uploaded videos to YouTube about the desperation of Wuhan’s residents throughout the lockdown.
Now behind bars, Zhang is on a hunger strike to protest against her sentence, according to one of her lawyers who requested anonymity as his law license would be revoked for speaking to foreign media. Ren Quanniu, another lawyer who represented Zhang, had his license revoked this week for taking on politically sensitive cases, including Zhang’s.
Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua, two other well-known bloggers who said what kinds of things during the lockdown, remain in what is effectively house arrest. A third, Wuhan businessman Fang Bing, has simply disappeared.
Police have rebuffed inquiries from Fang’s family regarding his whereabouts and prevented them from hiring a lawyer, according to Zhang Yi, a friend of Fang’s.
Fang became famous after filming a video of eight corpses being unloaded from a major Wuhan hospital just a week into lockdown. The video shocked Chinese viewers.
“At first I thought, what’s so serious about this virus? Why are they locking down the city? It was only after watching this Fang Bin’s videos that I realized how bad things were!” recalled a volunteer from Wuhan who delivered medical supplies and food during the lockdown. He also requested anonymity.
Many health experts say a Wuhan lockdown should have begun earlier and would have slowed down the virus’ spread. This volunteer says nonetheless, he cannot forgive the cost it placed on the city’s residents – a cost he feels other Chinese citizens do not grasp: “The lockdown created a run on medical resources and a sense of panic. Many people with conditions other than the coronavirus could not get care as a result and died during lockdown.”
Fang’s disappearance and the death of whistleblowing doctor Li Wenliang still rankle for Melanie Wang, a Wuhan resident.
“When I recall the anxiety of the lockdown, I am very sad. Especially because people who told the truth were arrested and even jailed. What has this world come to, where officials get to escape blame for such a tragedy?,” says Wang, crying.
Wang remembers the only cars she saw on the streets for weeks bore the logo of the local mortuary. Her elderly father was in the hospital during the pandemic and had COVID-like symptoms. That sent the family into a panic until he tested negative. In the meantime, two other relatives died from chronic illnesses for which they normally received regular treatment that was interrupted during the lockdown.
“We’re still living, by some fluke,” says Wang. “But who knows what could happen the next minute? What will tomorrow bring?”
For some, the severity of the lockdown is a point of pride. It showed how well China’s top-down political system could work.
“Wuhan people are the safest people. Every one of us have all been tested at least once,” says Huang He, a masseuse in Wuhan. Her business was shut down for nearly half a year during and after the lockdown but she applauds the strict lockdown measure: “The virus could not possibly come here again.”
Then there are thousands of people like Zhong, who lost her son. They bore the brunt of these measures.
“All officials see is a statistic of total deaths. But each was a sacrifice made by us common folks. A pointless sacrifice,” she says, quivering with grief, her dry eyes fixed on some distant point in the past. “Who wants to be a hero in that case?”