Deadly Quiet City: True Stories from Wuhan

by Murong Xuecun

Overview

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Economist and Kirkus Reviews

From one of China’s most celebrated—and silenced—literary authors, riveting portraits of eight Wuhan residents at the dawn of the pandemic

When a strange new virus appeared in the largest city in central China late in 2019, the 11 million people living there were oblivious to what was about to hit them. But rumors of a new disease soon began to spread, mostly from doctors. In no time, lines of sick people were forming at the hospitals. At first the authorities downplayed medical concerns. Then they locked down the entire city and confined people to their homes.

From Beijing, Murong Xuecun—one of China’s most popular writers, silenced by the regime in 2013 for his outspoken books and New York Times articles—followed the state media fearing the worst. Then, on April 6, 2020, he made his way quietly to Wuhan, determined to look behind the heroic images of sacrifice and victory propagated by the regime to expose the fear, confusion, and suffering of the real people living through the world’s first and harshest COVID-19 lockdown.

In the tradition of Dan Baum’s bestselling Nine Lives, Deadly Quiet City focuses on the remarkable stories of eight people in Wuhan. They include a doctor at the frontline, a small businessman separated from his family, a volunteer who threw himself into assisting the sick and dying, and a party loyalist who found a reason for everything. Although the Chinese Communist Party has devoted enormous efforts to rewriting the history of the pandemic’s outbreak in Wuhan, through these poignant and beautifully written firsthand accounts Murong tells us what really happened in Wuhan, giving us a book unlike any other on the earliest days of the pandemic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620977927
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	165,678
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Murong Xuecun (nom de plume of Hao Qun) is one of China’s most famous contemporary authors. His work includes The Missing Ingredient, Leave Me Alone, Dancing Through Red Dust, and Deadly Quiet City (The New Press). He wrote a New York Times opinion column from 2011 through 2016 and has also written for The Guardian. He lives in Australia.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgements xxvii

1 I am a doctor, but I'm also a source of infection 1

2 You want me to live, and I want you to live, too 32

3 I drive forwards, but the wind blows back 57

4 A man who wants to pursue the light 83

5 My soul is singing 120

6 Just like boarding Noah's Ark 155

7 The darkest moment 177

8 I want a just explanation 223

Afterword 259

Editor's note 263

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/23/2023

Novelist and opinion columnist Xuecun (Leave Me Alone) offers a harrowing snapshot of life in the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. Noting that “many people died silently” during the 76-day lockdown imposed on Wuhan by President Xi Jinping on Jan. 23, 2020, Xuecun focuses on eight residents. These include Dr. Lin Qingchuan, who was assigned to an isolation station where admission and discharge decisions were made by Communist Party officials “who know nothing about medicine and have almost no contact with patients.” Lin’s account also reveals that the government deliberately used less accurate tests to generate lower infection rates and spread misinformation by promoting traditional Chinese medicine as a treatment. When Jin Feng, a 64-year-old cleaner at the Wuhan Central Hospital, got Covid-19, she couldn’t get a bed in the hospital that employed her; though she eventually recovered, her husband died of the disease after local officials delayed his treatment because he couldn’t show them a positive test result (the news had been delivered over the phone). Elsewhere, Xuecun profiles Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer turned citizen journalist who spent months reporting on the “violent isolation” in Wuhan before she was detained for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Throughout, Xuecun pulls no punches in blaming the Chinese government’s “deliberate coverup and misleading information” for causing the pandemic. This is a masterful exposé. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Deadly Quiet City:

“A harrowing collection of stories, grippingly narrated.”
—The Economist

“A harrowing compilation of testimonies from people living in Wuhan, China, during the beginning of COVID-19. . . . The testimonies are graphic and heartrending.”
—Foreword Reviews

"A courageous book that paints a portrait of a callous and dysfunctional state."
—Financial Times

“A shocking, heart-rending report from the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic in China.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A harrowing snapshot of life in the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. . . . This is a masterful exposé.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Prominent Chinese writer Murong Xuecun portrays ordinary people living in hellish Wuhan, a place where Orwell’s 1984 and Kafka’s immense bureaucracies intersect. . . . These stories of suffering, propaganda, and abolition of personal freedoms will inform, sadden, and enrage readers.”
—Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2022-12-09
On-the-ground reporting of the coronavirus tragedy that continues to unfold in Wuhan and the Chinese government’s severe authoritative response.

Rolling lockdowns are still ongoing in China, a harsh government imposition that Xuecun, nom de plume of Hao Qun, asserts has been a handy, efficient way for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party to control its people. Since the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, everyone has a QR code monitoring their health and legal status, allowing the government to physically remove citizens from their homes and jobs, herd them on buses, and lock them in isolation stations for long quarantine periods. The people are treated “like merchandise or livestock, destined for tightly guarded isolation centres—let’s call them concentration camps.” Xuecun came to Wuhan in April 2020, at the urging of his friend Clive Hamilton and despite the risk to himself, to chronicle stories by citizens, including that of Lin Qingchuan, one of countless doctors who contracted the virus while treating the patients in a community hospital with no medical or protection supplies. Lin offers a gruesome look inside the isolation stations and the power of neighborhood committees, and he reveals government attempts to cover up the severity of contagion and fudge the official numbers. In another heartbreaking case, Jin Feng, a retired hospital custodian, chronicles how no hospital would care for her and her husband, and he died in miserable conditions. Other stories include that of Li, one of Wuhan’s “black motorcycle” operators who “transport people illegally”; Liu Xiaoxiao, a substitute teacher who reveals how the normally compliant middle class was shocked by the Jan. 23, 2020, government shutdown of the city; and Yang Min, bereft after the denial of care to her dying daughter. “She is critically ill,” writes the author, “but the hospital can provide no treatment….Yang Min has no choice but to drag her febrile daughter to another hospital.”

A shocking, heart-rending report from the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic in China.

Kirkus Reviews