2020.2.22 31st Day of the Wuhan City Closure 中文日记最下
Today I got an express package delivery – something I had ordered on January 22 before the city closed – that took a whole month to be delivered. That’s a new record for me.
Now that all of the gates of our building have been blocked, I was only able to get my package because the delivery person slipped through the gap beneath the barrier. It was a pain but as least it got delivered. The alcohol cotton swabs I ordered for my cousin on January 26 still haven’t been delivered. On January 28 they went out of stock and so we can’t buy it anymore.
It has been rumored these past two days that Wuhan will be opened to express deliveries. I hope it is true but I am afraid that many express company personnel who went home for the holidays still haven’t returned. However, a friend today ordered food delivery on his phone’s KFC app. I tried it but the KFC near me is still closed. Regardless, its a sign that things are returning to normal.
When I went downstairs to get my express package, I saw a puppy lying near the gate. The puppy belongs to a man who runs a small business opposite. Normally the dog would be tied up there on a leash but these days with the gate closed the owner doesn’t have to worry about the dog running out into the street. The little guy was rolling back and forth on the ground, basking in the sun. The sight warmed my heart.
The Wuhan Red Cross Society Hospital yesterday issued a notice that Dr. Xiao Jun from i
its General Surgery Department died in the line of duty on February 8 after contracting new coronary pneumonia. February 8 was two weeks ago but they waited until yesterday to announce his death. No doubt this is because Dr. Li Wenliang had passed away the previous day and they were afraid of “pour oil on the fire” of popular outrage. Their cold and calculated methods of repressing public opinion have no trace of humanity in them.
I recall that evening when the news of Dr. Li Wenliang’s death was announced, there was also all kinds of “counter-propaganda” about strenuous efforts to save his life. Many people passed around a screenshot from an American TV series with the words “Only a physician can declare death, not the news”. I don’t know if the person who made that was a foreign resident in the US who had been there so long that he thought he was an American but here in China neither physicians not the news can declare death. Only leaders can.
“Sealing the mouths of the people is harder than stopping the flood of a mighty river” goes the old saying. The reason Chinese people are constantly and vigilantly watched to serve the needs of monitoring public opinion and maintaining social stability and not out of any genuine humane concern or friendliness.
Dr. Xiao Jun and I are no different. We can both die twice – once as flesh and blood and a second time for the purpose of maintaining social stability. The only difference is whether the authorities feel a need to make things happen that way.
The day before yesterday I saw a video online in which a middle-aged man yelled at a
nurse, asking her why she hadn’t cleaned the toilet in his sickroom. The nurse explained that another patient was being resuscitated but he kept going on and on. That arrogant and bossy attitude and way of talking to people is very common in our daily lives. Naturally it turned out that that middle-aged man was a petty official who worked in the logistics center of the Hubei Provincial Market Supervision and Management Bureau.
The words and actions of Mr. Zhu are very typical of the bureaucratic style of Mainland China officials. He had not reached the rank of commissioner or deputy commissioner in Hubei Province judiciary, or else he most certainly would have been just like Deputy Commissioner Chen Beiyang and have refused to be in a shared sickroom. I am most familiar, I think, with his eyes. Although his face is half-covered by a face mask, his eyes burn bright with anger, resentment and hatred. This is something we often see and not just from officials.
For a very long time I could never figure out why people from Mainland China could tend to indulge in that kind of anti-social behavior. I see it online in this videos about fights and arguments, in those cases of physicians murdered by their patients, in nursery school teachers molesting children, and those parents who batter their children. There are just so many malicious people intent on harming one another. The words and actions in these incidents make it look like a person is doing something like avenging the murder to their father. But actually what these things are about is often very petty that escalated into a full-fledged battle. I don’t want to claim that I am any different. I have to admit that I myself feel this evil tendency in myself, sometimes when I realize that I have these kinds of feelings, I can be astonished at myself.
This society is full of anger, like a powder keg that could blow up at any moment. Where does all this anger come from? Why are there no routine means for achieving reconciliation? Why is it customary to take out a knife when facing the weak and to act with violence against people of lower social status?
Lu Xun wrote about these aspects of the Chinese national character. Bo Yang wrote about it as well. It seems like a curse written into our very genes.
Moreover, if you have read Chinese microblogs, you would discover that these emotions have in no way diminished in young people who have had the opportunity to come into contact with modern civilization. On the contrary, the narrowly partisan attitude and actions as well as their enmity towards those who do not share their views, can be seen everywhere in emotions expressed as if they were about a son avenging the death of his father, getting even more virulent as time goes by. The Chinese Communist Party is well aware of that anti-social tendency. However it has not only not tried to curb it or guide it, it has taken advantage of that evil written into Chinese genes to strengthen their rule.
If you too have seen this, then perhaps you will feel as hopeless as I do because the venomous insects fostered by the Chinese Communist Party will certainly ensure that they forever rule this land.
has finally concluded. I bought a legal copy of the TV series from a mainland video website but I still looked for a pirated version of the Taiwan edition to see the conclusion. Watching foreign movies or videos inside China’s internet firewall is not easy. Most TV series and movies are not imported but even if they are, they will always be censored in one strange way or another. For example in the eight episode of Someday or One Day the opening scene some details about homosexuality were censored even though that scene was shot very beautifully.
Today when I read on a microblogs comparison of the Taiwan and Mainland editions of Someday or One Day, I discovered that the homosexual content had been cut and that a reference to the menstrual period of the female lead was cut from a dialogue between the male and female leads. I thought that was ridiculous. It seems that neither women’s menstrual periods nor homosexuality are in line with the core values of socialism!
2月22日 武汉封城第31天
今天收到了一个快递,这是1月22日封城前一天我在网上下单的酒精棉片,整整一个月的时间,今天才收到,创下了历史记录。
因为楼栋门口全部硬性封闭了,还是靠派送员从挡板下面的空隙里帮我把包裹塞进来的,真是太艰难了,好在不论怎样至少还能收到;我在26日给表弟买的那一份酒精棉片到现在还没有发货呢,28日这个商品就下架了,想买都买不到了。
这两天有传言武汉的快递近几天会开工,不知道是不是真的,毕竟很多返乡的快递员现在恐怕还没能回来呢。不过今天有朋友在KFC的APP上买到了外卖,我也试了试,我家附近的KFC依然停业中。不论怎样,这也算是一些正在恢复正常的标志吧。
在楼下拿快递的时候看到门口空地躺了只小狗,是一楼做小生意的门面老板养的,以往不论白天晚上都拴着狗绳,今天倒是把链子取下来了,大概是因为封闭了楼栋,主人不用担心它跑丢,小家伙四仰八叉在地上打滚晒太阳,我看着它惬意的样子,心都暖化了。
市红十字会医院昨天发了公告,该院普外科的肖俊医生因为感染新冠肺炎,于2月8日殉职。
2月8日,半个月以前的事情了,却拖到昨天才发公告,无非是因为李文亮医生在前一天去世,怕为当时滔天的舆论“火上浇油”。这套压制舆论的手法真是冷静精准,没有一点人情味。
还记得李文亮医生死讯传出的那天晚上,各种“反转”的抢救情节,很多人在转发一张美剧截图,图上台词是“医生才能宣布她死亡,新闻不能”,不知道转发这张图的人是不是外宾装得太久了真的以为自己是美国人,在这里,医生和新闻都不能宣布死亡,只有领导才能。
“防民之口甚于防川”,老百姓是舆论和维稳需要时刻警惕的对象,不是表达关怀和人情味的对象。
我和肖医生并没有什么不同,我们都会死两次,一次是肉体死亡,一次是维稳死亡。区别只是在于是否需要而已。
前天在网上看到一个视频,一个中年男人叫嚷着护士为什么不去打扫他们病房的马桶,护士解释说刚刚有病人在抢救,他依然不依不饶,那副颐指气使的神态和语气日常生活里实在是太常见了,果然,第二天通报出来,是湖北省市场监督管理局后勤中心的一个芝麻绿豆官。
朱大人的语气动作确实是非常典型的内地官僚风格,而且我相信他只是没有爬到湖北省司法厅副厅长的位置而已,否则这种需要跟人合住的病房他肯定会跟陈北洋副厅长一样,绝对不会去住的。我觉得更熟悉的是他的眼神,虽然被口罩遮住了半张脸,但是那种充满了愤怒、怨毒、憎恨的眼神,在日常生活中太常见了,并不是官员独有。
我从很久以前就常常想不通,大陆人为什么会有这么重的戾气,在网上看到的那些争执打斗的视频、那些杀医案、那些幼儿园教师的虐童事件、那些亲生父母虐打孩子的事情……那么多互害的恶毒念头,很多的语气和表达仿佛是有杀父之仇一般,但其实很多时候只是一些非常琐碎的小事,就能演变成全武行的争斗。我不想表现得仿佛是置身事外,必须承认,这种戾气我自己也会有,有时候意识到自己有这种情绪的时候,我自己都会很诧异。
这个社会就像一个一点即着的火药桶,充满了愤怒,可是哪里来的愤怒呢?为什么没有正常的排解渠道?为什么惯常抽刀向更弱小、社会地位更低的人施以暴力?
其实这种国民性的东西,鲁迅先生早已写过,柏杨先生早已写过,仿佛是刻在基因里的诅咒一般。
而且如果你看过微博,你会发现,这种情绪没有因为一茬茬接触现代文明成长的年轻人而淡化,相反,那种党同伐异的做法、杀父之仇般的情绪随处可见,愈演愈烈。CCP知道这种戾气的存在,但是它不但没有制止和疏导,反而在利用这种刻在基因里的诅咒巩固自己的统治。
如果你也看到这些,也许你也会如我一样感到绝望,因为CCP养的蛊确实能保障他们的江山永固。
我追了好久的台湾剧《想见你》最近完结了,大陆有视频网站买下了正版版权,但我还是在网上找的盗版台湾版资源看完的。在墙内看外国影视剧可不是件容易的事情,因为绝大多数剧根本不会正版引进,即便引进,也总会出现一些莫名其妙的删减,比如这部剧第八集开头的同性恋情节就被删掉了,即便这一段拍得非常唯美。
今天在微博上看到有大陆版和台湾原版的对比,才发现除了同性恋内容,男女主角对话中一句涉及女主例假的台词也被删了。想想真好笑,原来女性的月经跟同性恋一样,都不符合社会主义核心价值观哦。
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