Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City By: Michael Berry, Fang Fang

Author: Fang Fang, Michael Berry – translator
Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak.

On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In the days and weeks that followed, Fang Fang’s nightly postings gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus. 

A fascinating eyewitness account of events as they unfold, Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information. Fang Fang finds solace in small domestic comforts and is inspired by the courage of friends, health professionals, and volunteers, as well as the resilience and perseverance of Wuhan’s nine million residents. But, by claiming the writer’s duty to record she also speaks out against social injustice, abuse of power, and other problems which impeded the response to the epidemic and gets herself embroiled in online controversies because of it. 

As Fang Fang documents the beginning of the global health crisis in real time, we are able to identify patterns and mistakes that many of the countries dealing with the novel coronavirus have later repeated. She reminds us that, in the face of the new virus, the plight of the citizens of Wuhan is also that of citizens everywhere. As Fang Fang writes: “The virus is the common enemy of humankind; that is a lesson for all humanity. The only way we can conquer this virus and free ourselves from its grip is for all members of humankind to work together.” 

Blending the intimate and the epic, the profound and the quotidian, Wuhan Diary is a remarkable record of an extraordinary time.

35M	Wuhan Diary - Part 01.mp3
28M	Wuhan Diary - Part 02.mp3
29M	Wuhan Diary - Part 03.mp3
31M	Wuhan Diary - Part 04.mp3
28M	Wuhan Diary - Part 05.mp3
28M	Wuhan Diary - Part 06.mp3
27M	Wuhan Diary - Part 07.mp3
26M	Wuhan Diary - Part 08.mp3
28M	Wuhan Diary - Part 09.mp3
30M	Wuhan Diary - Part 10.mp3
28M	Wuhan Diary - Part 11.mp3
30M	Wuhan Diary - Part 12.mp3
32M	Wuhan Diary - Part 13.mp3
17M	Wuhan Diary - Part 14.mp3
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