don’t sneeze at others
It’s late April, nearly six months after the deadly SARS virus launched its sneak attack on southern China, and Shanghai — the country’s most populous city — has just seemed to take notice. About a week ago, we went from inaction to overreaction literally overnight. I remember the day well. It was a pleasant day: not too hot, not too cold. I went for a run that night, and I could actually see the stars. I took a deep breath, and the air actually felt fresh. Little did I know that, all of a sudden, I would be surrounded by one of the most rapidly spreading infectious diseases known to man … fear.
Calm can quickly turn into confusion when you live under a government that throws out lies like disposable chopsticks. By trying to hide SARS, by covering it up for so many months, the Chinese government was trying to save its image, trying to avoid widespread panic among its 1.3 billion citizens. But the pile of dead bodies just got too big to bury. Who knew that you can’t eliminate an epidemic by ignoring it? (Well, who knew besides the rest of the modern world?) So China’s image — not to mention its economy — is in the shitter. The people are panicking. And that pile of dead bodies gets bigger every day.
Last week, for example, the Chinese government admitted that the number of SARS cases in Beijing was not in the thirties, as had been the party line — it was in the thousands, and it goes up by triple digits daily. A minor miscalculation that cost the jobs of Beijing’s mayor and the nation’s health minister — evidently the only two men in China who had access to the real SARS statistics. Now the Chinese government admits the disease is a “grave danger” — hell, the Rolling Stones knew that a month ago — and the Communist Party is aggressively attacking the virus both on the streets and in the state-run media … just like they should have been doing back in December.
Officially, Shanghai, a city of at least 16 million that regularly plays host to travelers from Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and variety of other virulent locales, has two — count ‘em, two — SARS cases. That’s fewer than Ohio. Of course, there are rumors to the contrary. There have always been rumors. Rumors are all you have to go on when the government routinely doesn’t tell you the truth. Two could turn into two hundred tomorrow. I’d hate to see what this city would look like if that came true. Right now, to borrow some Tom Ridge terminology, the national SARS threat system appears to be at Level Gray. It’s pretty gloomy here.
Surgical masks are now tres chic. Some students have even been sporting them to class. It’s like living inside Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Fucking scary! I don’t wear a mask, but if I do start sporting one, it won’t be to keep out SARS. It will be to keep out the scent of whatever Chinese herbal crap they’ve been spraying inside my hotel room in the name of disinfection. If SARS doesn’t make me sick, this shit sure will. I think the going theory around here is that if something smells clean then it must be clean. In the school lavatories, they have started hanging mothballs from the urinals. The elevator in the Le Lu Guesthouse is so crammed with chlorine that it reeks like a swimming pool locker room. After a trip to the fifth floor, your eyes are red.
On the day of the outbreak of SARS news in Shanghai, Shanghai University issued all of the foreign teachers thermometers. “Remember, every day,” the girl at the front desk said as she handed mine to me. “If you feel sick, I suggest you go to the hospital.” Gee, thanks. More helpful health tips can be found on posters recently slapped up across my neighborhood. These slogans are real … scary:
“Don’t sneeze at others.”
“Don’t spit everywhere.”
My students, too, are looking out for my well-being — every freakin’ time I scratch my nose. “Don’t touch your face, Dan.” And later, after another lapse: “Dan, your face.” One of my favorite restaurants has taken to covering its dishes with plastic bags. Last Friday, most of the bars on Maoming Lu — if Shanghai has a bar street, this is it — were closed. Those that weren’t had no customers. The bar staff sat around playing cards. Nearby, one bar did its best to make customers feel protected … or paranoid. A man stood at the front door and wiped the handle — after each person touched it. Walk upstairs, and he followed, wiping down the banister you just touched. Go to the bathroom, and he was waiting by the door with his rag when you left. Masks and mass hysteria are not as prevalent in my neighborhood as they are downtown. During a nighttime stroll a couple of days ago, I saw no masks — just a large group of people outside Zhabei Park ballroom dancing.
Back on campus, however, things are slightly more crazed. Yesterday, all of the foreign teachers had a meeting with administration to map out the school schedule for the next several days. As you may have heard, the Chinese government has canceled the week-long holiday for Chinese Labor Day (May 1) — the equivalent of scrapping Thanksgiving in America — in an effort to curtail traveling and stop the spread of SARS. So, at school, we went from a seven-day holiday to a five-day holiday to our current one-day holiday: today. (It should be noted that holidays here aren’t really holidays … we still have to make up the classes we miss on the weekends.) After today, per orders from the Shanghai Municipal Government, students are not allowed to leave campus — for anything — until May 9. This mandatory quarantine has me confused: How are students safer here, packed four to a room, than they would be at home with their parents? Teachers can come and go freely with the new ID cards we’re supposed to get tomorrow, even though, as I understand it, it much easier for older people to catch this disease than younger people, like, say, college students. Not to worry: At the meeting the university supplied all of us with boxes of “Life Element,” a “natural fruit & vegetable nuteritious lozenge” from “Shanghai High-Tech Products” designed for “biological cell wall breaking.” Ouch! (Life Element ingredients: Western greens, carrot, young cucumber, Western calabash, spinach, pumpkin, coriabder (sic), Western celery, balsam pear, apple, orange, litchi, grape, mango and something known as “shepherd’s purse.”)
Many of my students have known about SARS for some time. Over the past two months or so, we’ve discussed it several times in class. But they didn’t show much concern until their government showed concern. It’s all anyone was talking about last week. Remarkably, after six months of subterfuge, many still have faith in the Chinese government … well, kind of. “If we can’t trust our government, who can we trust?” one student queried. “We want to trust someone.” Others felt angry, embarrassed and helpless. “I think this is the worst thing that our government has ever done,” one student said, bringing to light an even worse PRC boo boo: rewriting the history books. Another student was exasperated: “Of course we’re pissed off” — a phrase he recently learned in class â€â€� “but what can we do?” Well, you can start by not trusting anything you read on Chinese websites. Students told me that allegedly legitimate news sources ran a story that claimed SARS was the result of chemical weapons created by the United States, Japan and Taiwan. Another story said SARS was nature’s revenge for years of environmental abuse.
Some Shanghainese I have talked to hope that the SARS debacle — which at least one of my students has euphemized in e-mails as “the special time” and “the situation” — will bring about some change in China. Perhaps it will open up the media, open the government, improve the country’s healthcare system or simply just make Chinese people more concerned about health and hygiene. Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.
Well, actually, I am holding my breath. But for entirely different reasons.
answers (subject to change)
Many have e-mailed wondering how SARS has changed my China plans. Well, right now I’m planning on staying for the remainder of the semester, which means I’d be heading stateside in early June. Originally I was planning on staying through July to travel a bit. But traveling in China doesn’t seem like the best idea right now — I’d rather visit my brother in Hawaii. Many of my neighbors have already started packing their bags, and the school has told us we can leave whenever we want. If it looks like the U.S. government would start enforcing a mandatory quarantine for folks arriving from infected countries, or if they were to hint at an all-out ban on such arrivals, I’ll start packing my bags, too. I’m still planning on coming back to teach here next fall. We’ll see if it seems safe then. If not, I’ve got to figure out what the hell I’m going to do: I don’Ât think “The Bloomsburg Diaries” would attract too many readers.
mask-n-tape
I appeared as an extra in my second television commercial on Sunday. I played the roles of White Man No. 1 and White Man No. 2. The ad, for China Mobile’s wireless Internet service, should air throughout China this summer. I will write more about this strange bit of side work I’ve stumbled upon later. I just wanted to let you know that when all of the “talent” gathered in the minivan at 5:30 a.m. to head to the shoot, we all had to have our temperatures taken with an ear thermometer before the driver would turn the key. Most people involved in the ad wore surgical masks the entire day, but the on-screen personalities took theirs off during filming. I guess SARS stays away after they say, “Quiet on the set.”
04.29.2003, 4:02 PM · Observations, Politics
3 Comments
Sounds more exciting than Gainesville, eh, Dan?
yeah. gainesville was too disease-free for my taste.
Dan dont feel bad I am traveling to Shanghai at the end of May and my family told me not to come near them when I return.
You are correct its the fear not the disease. The WHO has not issued any warnings for Shanghai and although there are officially six cases even if there maybe more I bet more people are dying from other things everyday. The odds are out of 17 million your chances are about zero.
I am sorry to here Mao Ming Lu is getting hit I know many of the owners and its one of my favorite places to hang out. This trip will be boring if this is the case.
I was there at the end of March the city was blissfully ignorant as the Iraq war was the key item of interest.
I know Shanghai they will awake fast.
Ironically Sars is a media darling I see news in the states “three more Sars Deaths in China” is the top headline and at the bottom 50 people die in tornado go figure.