Four Years of Living, Learning, Teaching, and Becoming Half-Chinese in Suzhou, China
| Home Page ABOUT THE BOOK Why a Memoir? Meaning of the Title Book Format What/Where Is Suzhou? Why Suzhou Is So Fitting for This Book Where Can I Buy The Book? SELECTED PREVIEWS Chapter 5: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Chapter 20: A Precious Belt Chapter 29: A City Shuts Down UPDATES SINCE 2006 Our Story Suzhou's Story EXTRA PHOTOS Related to the Book Suzhou 2001-2006 Suzhou Since 2006 ABOUT: The Author My Next Book My SuzhouPlus Website |
 
 PREVIEW FROM CHAPTER 29,
Author's Note: The excerpt below does not include the chapter's sidebars. "A CITY SHUTS DOWN" “Ping Ping, you’re not going to believe this!” I cried, jumping from my improvised pillow seat on the floor in front of our Legend computer. “The New York newspaper has a story about an army hospital general in Beijing who says SARS is much worse there than the government is telling everyone. This man says as many as a hundred people are sick in just one hospital and some people have already died, but the government is hiding the information. He says SARS is very serious in Beijing, that it could spread all over China if they aren’t careful.” “I’m not hear this on the television,” she answered. “I ask my father. Maybe he see something or have some newspaper.” “I doubt if he’ll know anything about it,” I said, deciding not to add a short lecture on freedom of the press. The New York Times report had made it quite clear that the retired military physician, Dr. Jiang Yan Yong, had broken ranks with the Communist government’s official line by signaling a public health alert in the capital city. Five minutes later, Ping Ping had the response I expected. “My father not hear this story. Nothing on the TV, nothing in Suzhou newspaper. He ask me how you know is true?” Ai-yah-h-h-h, the typical Chinese expression over headache-inducing troubles, flashed through my mind before answering. “I think the New York Times story is true about the general, but they don’t know yet if what he says about SARS is true. Maybe you will hear something in the China news tomorrow or the next day.” If the general’s claims about SARS were true, I could just imagine the panicked meetings taking place in Zhongnanhai, the Communist leaders’ high-walled, high-security compound in Beijing located next door to the old Forbidden City. The first sketchy stories I noticed about a new strain of flu had begun in mid-February, coming from the Guangzhou area. I was moderately disturbed to learn that the disease had actually first appeared in November, since Ping Ping and I could have been unknowingly exposed when we traveled there for Ping Ping’s December 23 visa interview. But that was then; we were in Suzhou now, feeling fine. By early March, reports of a potent new flu were emanating from faraway places like Hanoi and Bangkok, crowded Third World cities where diseases could develop and spread easily. This new strain had also been given a name: Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS. Hong Kong came next, and soon after, the virus hopscotched its way via international airlines to Singapore, Germany, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. I followed developments carefully from the online New York Times as the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert and the U.S. State Department authorized non-essential personnel to leave Guangdong Province. Serious, but still far away, confined in China to the southeast—nothing yet about nearby Shanghai, for example. Even when I read online about a low-level outbreak among Beijing hospital workers, I saw no particular reason for concern. No one else in Suzhou seemed worried, either. The news on April 20, more than a week after the New York Times story about Dr. Jiang, struck the Huang family dinner table like a lightning bolt. CCTV evening news finally reported that, indeed, a large number of people in Beijing, perhaps three or four hundred, had been infected by this strange new flu. Many of them had been sent to military hospitals in the area, possibly as a form of quarantine but more likely to hide them by exclusion from reported counts of civilian infections. Either way, the problem was suddenly serious. Not only were the Minister of Health and the Mayor of Beijing being summarily fired, but the upcoming May Day holiday, China’s version of Labor Day, was being shortened to just one day to dissuade people from traveling. Reducing one of the country’s three annual huang jin zhou, those aptly named golden weeks that had become national travel and spending spree extravaganzas, to a single day was unparalleled, an unmistakable measure of the government’s fear of a nationwide epidemic. An explosion of Suzhouhua erupted around the table—even the normally reticent Jian Ming was actively participating. Everyone was half-talking and half-listening to the newscast. I had no idea what anybody was saying, but I could guess. They seemed concerned by the news, but not as angry as I would have been about the cover-up. “My father say this no good,” Ping Ping relayed to me across a bowl of curry chicken and potatoes. “Maybe is more badder.” Chinese people were conditioned by years of state press evasion to believe any bad news was probably worse than they were being told. “The government cannot hiding this,” she continued. “Must tell people. How they can know they are sick?” “What are they saying on TV?” I asked, curious to know what “truth” Beijing was actually releasing. “TV say some people sick other places in Shanxi Province. Before have Guangzhou and Beijing, now more cities maybe have the SARS. My father say the train. You know China train so dirty, crowded. So many country people every day go home, leave Beijing. Can make another body sick in the train.” “So they think SARS is spreading to other provinces?” I asked, trying to confirm what I feared might be happening. “My father say China government now have problem. So many people traveling the train, go home see their families. More people now want going home, scary if stay Beijing. How can control this?” “I don’t know,” I replied. For the first time since reports of SARS had emerged, I envisioned the very real possibility of living in China during an epidemic. Ping Ping continued recapping the news report for me in fragmentary English. “Some foreigners maybe coming Beijing, helping. From this…what is this place, have Ah-nan?” “The United Nations?” I guessed, assuming she meant Kofi Annan. “Yes, some foreigners the United Nations coming Beijing. TV say people must careful. If have coughing, cannot stopping, have little hot, must go hospital, see doctor. Maybe must three days or four days staying the hospital, doctor can watching you.” SARS became the lead story on the news every evening. The virus was spreading, and new provinces were added to the list of those reporting suspected cases. Within days, CCTV began broadcasting the data in tabular form across the screen: province, number of suspected cases, number of confirmed cases, and number of deaths. The list of provinces grew steadily until one screen’s worth was no longer sufficient, and the number of confirmed cases and deaths multiplied just as steadily. The list of foreign countries also expanded to a second TV screen page. Bad news was mounting both north and south, with accompanying collateral damage. The Rolling Stones had already canceled a Hong Kong concert, and discussions about another concert in Beijing had ground to a halt as well. The Women’s World Cup soccer tournament was abruptly yanked from its planned Beijing venue, with an alternate host country to be determined. Suzhou received its own bad news when the United Nations World Cultural Heritage meeting, scheduled for June, was canceled. Years of planning and untold millions of dollars invested in local beautification projects might go for naught. No SARS cases had been reported anywhere in Jiangsu Province yet, but Suzhouren were starting to grow uneasy, sensing they were being squeezed in a virus-borne pincers movement. The kerosene of fear had already been liberally poured around Suzhou when two matches struck almost simultaneously: Shanghai reported its first suspected case of SARS, and local television reported that a man from Beijing had been admitted to Suzhou #1 Hospital with a persistent cough and fever. Within a day, dread turned to fear bordering on panic. The first sign on the streets came in the form of white surgical masks on traffic police, taxi drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Suzhou television reported runs on surgical masks and offered advice on the relative virus-screening effectiveness of different mask grades and types. Waiting at a bus stop, riding a bus, or walking through a supermarket—suddenly every dry cough became suspect, reason for those nearest the cougher to edge away. Rush hour buses quickly went from packed to traveling with unused seats. Despite Ping Ping’s misgivings, I refused to stop taking the #60 bus to SCEC. Until SARS was actually confirmed in Suzhou, I felt cautious but not unduly worried. Others obviously disagreed, such as the surgically-masked woman I watched one morning on Nan Yuan Lu opening a taxi door with a plastic-enshrouded hand to admit her surgically-masked daughter. While everyone waited to hear about the Beijing man at the #1 Hospital, Suzhou’s city government took precautionary actions that all but confirmed people’s worst fears. Bars, theaters, karaoke clubs, and bathhouses were ordered closed. Taxis were ordered spray disinfected every night and required to post a daily log of their cleansings on the back of the driver’s seat, in plain view of passengers. Harsh new fines were imposed for public spitting, a deeply ingrained habit among both men and women in China. Suzhou television began running a steady stream of public service announcements in an organized anti-SARS education campaign, complete with cartoon drawings. Wash your hands regularly. Don’t spit in public. Get plenty of exercise. Keep your windows open for fresh air. Cover your mouth when you cough. Public response was immediate. Suzhouren who couldn’t vote in a political sense knew how to vote with their feet. Stores and restaurants stood open but nearly vacant, and the city’s retail jewel, Guan Qian Jie, went from pedestrian-choked plaza to ghost town. Buses ran nearly empty now, and an alternative form of transportation gained sudden popularity: electric bikes from Suzhou Small Antelope Electric Bicycle Company. The city was taking on its first faint resemblance to Camus’s plague-ravaged Oran. “What do you plan to tell the students?” I asked Professor Xu as the situation grew steadily more serious. “I think we should keep them as busy as possible with school work.” He agreed. “We’re going to tell them that classes will continue. They should not go out in the evening, and they should not go to Shanghai on the weekends. If the teachers agree, we will also cancel our holiday for May Day so the students cannot travel.” I understood why he was concerned. I had read in the online New York Times (which miraculously remained accessible throughout the duration of SARS) that seventy million people had traveled during the previous year’s May Day week. Government officials rightly worried that train travel could turn SARS into a national plague. “I can’t speak for the other teachers, but it’s fine with me,” I answered. “I don’t think the students should have any free time on their hands right now. It’s safer for them to be in a classroom, and safer for me, too.” “Suzhou University will be closed to outsiders,” Professor Xu continued. “We will give the teachers ID cards to come into the campus. Ping Ping, too,” he added, before I even had the chance to ask. I called Xu Lei’s home that same night. “Do you want me to keep coming to your school on Tuesdays?” I asked him. “Yes, you come next Tuesday,” he replied. It seemed too simple an answer; perhaps he didn’t understand what I was asking. “Suzhou University is now closed to outside people. Are you sure you want me to come to your school? I am a foreigner, and I am with so many students every day from Taiwan and Malaysia.” I was imagining his school’s parents being outraged that a foreigner could be carrying SARS into their children’s classrooms. “You are our teacher, so you can come. You are not a foreign person, you are Suzhouren. You live here, same as other teachers.” I was impressed by Xu Lei’s level-headedness when it seemed everyone else in Suzhou was panicking. It was also the first time anyone had called me a Suzhouren. When I arrived at #2 School the following Tuesday, however, I discovered that Ms. Xu, the English teacher for one of my Senior 1 key classes, would be absent for two weeks. Teacher Chen filled me in on the details. “During the weekend, Teacher Xu went to a wedding in Wuxi. She sat at her table with a man from Beijing. Yesterday, when she told Principal Shao, he said she must go home and wait for two weeks to be sure she did not get SARS from the Beijing man.” I taught my lesson that day without Teacher Xu; she returned just fine two weeks later. We watched the numbers climb every night on television, not just far away in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, but progressively closer, in neighboring Anhui, Henan, and Zhejiang Provinces. Even Shanghai’s numbers rose to a modest six cases. Rumors swirled about suspected cases and large-scale quarantines in Nanjing, only a few hours to our west. As far as we knew, Suzhou still had no confirmed cases; the infamous Beijing man had been released from Suzhou #1 Hospital after recovering from a standard fever. Then the “foreigners’ letter” arrived, a personal missive from Suzhou Mayor Yang Wei Zi delivered to us as teachers at Suzhou University. Dated April 12, it read in part: As you know, there appeared atypical pneumonia (serious acute respiratory syndromes SARS) in some areas in the China….Thanks to the concerted efforts of central and local governments and medical staff in China, the spread of SARS had been effectively curbed and most of the patients discharged from hospitals….We have adopted a series of measures to ensure the health and security of foreigners residing and visiting in Suzhou. I believe it is for sure that residing, traveling, and business activities here in Suzhou is safe and all the activities in the city go properly. At least among the foreign teachers at SCEC, Mayor Yang’s fractured English letter had precisely opposite the intended effect. Beijing’s earlier performance regarding the SARS outbreak was proof enough: the more stridently government officials asserted everything was fine, the more convinced we were that they were covering up bad news. Why else bother to distribute such a sugarcoated letter? We began relying on news from a few of our Taiwanese students with parental connections to the local Taiwan Business Association. If anyone knew the real story, they would. In the meantime, we watched the numbers, listened to rumors of another suspected case at the Suzhou #1 Hospital, and waited. Late April and early May marked the low point. Hong Kong’s death count had climbed past eighty, and the case count in Beijing soared past two thousand. Shanxi, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Guangdong Provinces had been named in WHO travel advisories, as had Taiwan and the industrial city of Tianjin, not far from Beijing. Yet even as SARS threatened to become a crisis, a sense of gallows humor emerged. One website chuckled over Hong Kong’s suddenly inappropriate new advertising slogan: “Hong Kong. It will take your breath away.” Trolling the Internet for information, I stumbled on the website SARSart.org, a collection of iconoclastic cartoons and photos. One picture poked fun at people’s fears by displaying a facial close-up of an olive-skinned Asian woman whose surgical mask had created snow-white “tan lines” over her mouth and chin. Darth Vader appeared on another SARSart graphic in a white surgical mask, as did a collection of fourteen Mao era military posters. Eerily reminiscent of the Get Your War On clip art comics posted on the web after 9/11 by David Rees, this Chinese version displayed a running dialog in cartoon balloons: Comrades! Bad news! SARS is here! How could this happen? What can we do? What’s to fear? I’ve got a gun! Won’t work! The enemy is crafty. Guns won’t work! Hey, what about grenades? No go! SARS is only afraid of disinfectant! But we’ve got none! Brothers, chill! First of all, we must pay attention to hygiene to prevent SARS. Right! Bathe! Wash! Hey, where’s the soap? And don’t forget to wear a mask! Good thinking! I’m off to put up posters to tell everyone to wear a mask! Comrades! The disinfectant is here! Excellent! We’ve washed so much, we’ve taken off a layer of skin! Spray! Spray it all! Victory! We have defeated SARS! Great! As a matter of fact, I hate washing. No more masks, no more anti-rash powder! Now we can eat whatever we want! Even Suzhou’s local newspaper found its sense of humor. Leafing through the paper one afternoon, I came upon a single-panel cartoon showing two briefcase-wielding businessmen wearing masks as they faced each other on the street. “What does this say?” I asked Ping Ping, pointing to the caption on the bottom. “This say, How city people now say hello to each other.” “And what are the men saying?” I pointed to the dialog balloons over each man’s head. “First man say, Good morning, Old Fei. What today is your temperature? Second man say, Good morning, Little Fei. What today is your temperature?” Our nervousness crested in late April when Beijing ordered a two-week national school closing and suspended all marriage approvals to keep people away from large gatherings. On May 2, Beijing officials reported the outbreak had peaked in their city, only to report two hundred new confirmed cases and nine more deaths the very next day. One day later, on May 4, they were ordering the city’s schools closed for another two weeks. Walking through a nearly deserted Guan Qian Jie one May afternoon, Ping Ping and I stumbled upon a novel sign of China’s newfound entrepreneurialism. Three or four people—practically a crowd now that SARS had appeared—stood watching a lady storekeeper gyrating like a Hawaiian dancer on the walkway outside her door. “I don’t believe it,” I laughed. “She’s selling Hula-Hoops!” Behind her, two dozen hoops of various colors and thicknesses stood upright against the store window. “What is hoohoo hoop?” Ping Ping asked. “Hu-la Hoop,” I pronounced more slowly. “When I was a little boy, I had one of these. They were very popular with kids for a while, but then they sort of disappeared. You can still buy them in toy stores, but they haven’t been popular in America for a long time.” The lady shop owner was a real saleswoman, chatting up her onlookers, showing them how easy it was, and cajoling first one prospect, then another, to give it a try. In most cases, the hoop wobbled once around the waist, once around the knees, and once around the ankles as it flopped to the ground. Everyone laughed politely and good-naturedly, seeming more tolerant of one another than usual for China (much the same way New Yorkers began behaving toward one another after 9/11, their hair-trigger, edgy wariness noticeably relaxed). “What is she saying?” I asked Ping Ping. “She say this toy good for the exercise. You know television say everyone now have exercise for the SARS. This toy cheap, fun to do it, and give you exercise. You want try it?” “OK. Let everyone have a laugh at the waiguoren.” I stepped forward, and the lady handed me a hoop. I tried three times, but apparently Hula-Hooping was more easily forgotten than riding a bicycle. I smiled and gave up, shuffling meekly to the edge of the small crowd. “I used to be able to do it, no problem,” I told Ping Ping. “I guess I need some practice.” The lady sold two Hula-Hoops while we watched. Walking through Guan Qian, we saw more shopkeepers hawking this new anti-SARS exercise device, and more people carrying their plastic hoops home. After the preceding several weeks’ hysteria over SARS-fighting herbs, soups, and teas, this seemed like an honest if modest alternative. Hula-Hoops were retro, but they were also the perfect Chinese response: uncomplicated exercise on the cheap, without having to break a sweat. Despite the increased exercise and hand washing and the decreased public spitting, it was hard to know whether this outbreak would end badly. When the government announced in mid-May that anyone deliberately violating a SARS quarantine order could be executed, we felt certain a nationwide outbreak must be imminent. Then, improbably, the epidemic suddenly broke. Numbers started falling faster than we had any right to expect, cities and provinces fell off the WHO travel advisory list, and strains of SARS were traced to their sources, three species of exotic Asian animals, including wild cats and dogs often eaten as delicacies in Guangzhou, near where it had all begun. “SARS Outbreak Fading Away, Officials Say,” announced a New York Times headline on June 6. People had died to be sure, but the numbers were far fewer than they could have been. Jiangsu Province had dodged the bullet entirely, suffering a few suspected but no confirmed cases of SARS. Shanghai, fifty miles east of Suzhou, had had six confirmed cases with one death. Spring edged into early summer, and a subdued sense of normalcy returned after four months on hold. Beijing recovered from a horrific loss of international face by crowing over its open reporting and strong actions to control the virus’s spread. CCTV fairly gushed over the construction of an entirely new SARS quarantine center in Xiaotangshan on the northern outskirts of Beijing. Built in just eight days by seven thousand workers, the new hospital demonstrated that the human wave theory of problem solving seen in projects like the Great Wall was still useful in modern, technocratic China. Proof as well that a sow’s ear could indeed be sold as a silk purse. In Suzhou, the white surgical masks and plastic gloves disappeared, the buses gradually filled up again, the bars and KTV joints reopened, and restaurants grew busy. Students prepared for final exams at Suzhou #2 School, but SCEC still took the precaution of shortening its semester break from three weeks to one to discourage the Taiwanese and Malaysian students from traveling outside the country. While the developed Western world breathed a collective sigh of relief over a pandemic avoided, life in China simply resumed, if a bit cautiously at first. SARS was just a blip in a long national history, and not even a very bad one. Not so many people had died, at least not on the Chinese scale of past famines, earthquakes, floods, typhoons, droughts, epidemics, and industrial accidents. Fate was fate; one’s whole life could change—or end—in an instant. It had happened to hundreds and thousands of Chinese people every day for centuries. |