Narratives & Stories

“We stay in 24 hours a day,” says Luō Dàwèi 罗大卫 via telephone from his home in Tianjin. “You can’t go anywhere, you can’t even order things, as no one is delivering. The best word to describe life right now is imprisonment.”

Luo has, like many of his compatriots, endured a sobering Chinese New Year. Despite living more than a thousand kilometers from the COVID-19 epicenter in Wuhan, he complains, “My district is the most seriously affected in the Tianjin Municipality.”

But being stuck at home doesn’t mean he hasn’t kept busy.

Since 2017, Luo has run Fēngmiàn 风面, an innovative online contemporary photography platform that boasts more than 63,000 online subscribers. The platform is currently hosting one of its most impactful projects to date, called “One Thousand Families,” featuring portraits of Chinese families affected — either directly or indirectly — by the coronavirus.

The idea for One Thousand Families (“1000个家庭” gè jiātíng) came from photographer Wú Guóyǒng 吴国勇, whose career Fengmian helped launch. His photographic series No Place, To Place, about the environmental fallout of China’s share-bike boom and bust, has been exhibited globally, including at major festivals in China and galleries in Russia, France, and Cambodia.

Wu, who currently lives in Shenzhen, hails from Hubei Province, where COVID-19 emerged in late 2019. Of the 64,000-plus confirmed cases so far, more than 80 percent are from Hubei.

“I was at home in Xiangyang (in Hubei) for (Chinese) New Year when the crisis really began,” Wu says. “I’d planned to stay some weeks but my relatives urged me to leave before it was too late. I drove back to Shenzhen and it rained the whole way, dousing all the New Year’s firecrackers. It was a somber trip. When we got back to Shenzhen, the local public security bureau told us we had to stay at home. Because I’m from Hubei, they’ve been checking up on me daily.”

It was while quarantined at home that Wu’s creative gears started turning.

“I began to think about the national mood, which is awful,” he says. “The news is terrifying. Everyone is stuck at home, frustrated. Then I thought: maybe we could all do something creative together. As it is traditional to take a family portrait over Chinese New Year, I wondered if everyone could use photography to document the New Year of the virus. But I needed to figure out how to reach a lot of people.”

Wu got in touch with Luo Dawei.

“Wu is an artist sensitive to the human struggle,” Luo says. “He told me his idea, which I meditated on for a day. I decided to work with him. We advertised on Fengmian to all our followers asking them to photograph how their New Year was playing out in either official or unofficial quarantine.”

The feedback they got exceeded their expectations.

Wu explains: “We launched on January 30 and we quickly started to receive a lot of photos. We picked the best ones and posted them online.” This caught the attention of China’s largest internet company: Tencent shared the project on its platform. More than 16,000 people have contributed to the collection so far, Wu says.

“We were really touched by the response,” says Luo. “And we began to think about an exhibition, when this crisis is over. We decided we should get our artist friends to get involved as well. We reached out to them and they responded, too, providing us with nuanced, critical, or even abstract images. They took the project to the next level.”

Among those who have contributed include Lǚ Tíngchuān 吕廷川, Zhāng Xiǎowǔ 张晓武, Wáng Xiàngyáng 王向阳, Liú Shūtóng 刘书彤, Lǐ Lín 李林, Luō Jīnqiàn 罗金倩, Qián Hǎifēng 钱海峰, and Coca Dai (戴建勇 Dài Jiànyǒng).

The diversity of images is quite extraordinary, given the topic. Both amateur and professional photographers have endeavored to capture the boredom, isolation, worry, and camaraderie that they’re experiencing.

As the audience, we see relatives peering over masks towards the camera lens, their eyes emitting a catalogue of emotions ranging from anxiety to melancholy to stoicism and resolve. We bear witness to intimate moments of caring as well as humor as people make light of the absurdity of their situation.

While some photographers employ the camera to criticize authorities, others try to capture the tender, hidden aspects of their lives, currently lived under the world’s largest-ever quarantine.

“You know jiā (家) means family and home in Chinese,” Wu explains. “Chinese New Year is the one time both jia’s come together as one. This virus has struck at the heart of our culture. We wanted to show what that meant from the inside out.”

Below are a selection of photos from the series — all captions were originally written by the person who sent the original photography, which we have translated from Chinese.

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钟南山宣布“人传人”五天前，母亲就去世了

逝者：陈敏

讲述者：逝者儿子 惠先生

采写：阿十

12月31日，我们也在微信群里看到“SARS”的消息了。就是李文亮医生的那张微信截图[1]。当时，我妻子提醒家里人做好保护。我们，包括我母亲，当时都是准备了口罩、消毒水。当然，那时候没有像现在这样。

母亲今年65岁，身体一直算挺好，没有什么严重的慢性病，就是有脂肪肝和胆结石。12月下旬的时候，我母亲和父亲还一起去了厦门旅游。到圣诞节后（12月26日），他们俩才回了武汉。

我们是在1月5日接到母亲不舒服的消息。那时候，我们在上海，父亲也在上海帮我们带孩子。我们最初都以为是一般感冒。第二天，母亲到协和西院门诊看病，也验血了。医生最后也诊断是“普通感冒”，给母亲开了药，嘱咐她回家休息、多喝水。

但母亲的病一直没有好，不仅咳嗽，还头痛、发烧。1月8日，我父亲买了火车票回武汉，照顾母亲。我记得那天是周三。周四的时候，他们俩去了武汉市中医院汉阳分院门诊，医生也是诊断“普通感冒”。那天，父亲还打电话过来，说母亲给他买了下个礼拜一（13号）的票，回上海。

最开始的时候，我还想母亲是不是患了甲流[2]。我在上海这边还有治甲流的药，就是达菲[3]，还问她要不要给寄到武汉。

后来到武汉市中医院汉阳分院门诊那，母亲做了验血报告。报告显示，那些常见的病毒检测结果都是阴性。

到11日，父亲再带母亲去看医生了。这次去的是同济医院。最初，他们去的是内科门诊，医生见我母亲连续多日发热，就让他们去发热门诊。在那里做了验血和肺CT，医生说是“疑似华南海鲜市场病毒感染”，建议留院观察。

那时候，官方统计“不明肺炎”才41例[4]，武汉一千多万人口，这个患病的概率太低了，我们都不相信会落到自己家里。而且，母亲住的地方距离华南海鲜市场很远，她也没有跟那里有过交集，我们怎么也觉得不会感染了这个病。

父亲11日打电话给我，商量取消了回上海的车票，但让我们在1月22日前回去，母亲想安排那天一起吃团圆饭。

没想到，到14日父亲打电话给我时候，母亲就上呼吸机了；15号，我再打电话的时候，人已经走了。

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昨天市区天普大学一个学生被确诊，宾大应该也快了，就看有没有人及时去医院做检测。今天是很多学校的宿舍搬离截止日，但疫情显然已经无法控制，这两天各地校园内部的病例增长很快，一些学校不得不紧急疏散。昨晚学校再次发邮件，表示大学城附近，包括校外巡逻区一律禁止任何学生群体聚会，否则宾大校警会立即介入。宾大校警是私人雇佣的强制机构，共有120名警员，是宾州最大的私人警察系统。去年，巴尔的摩的霍普金斯大学试图模仿宾大举措，推行私人校警来维护学区治安，引发了巨大争议。虽然能理解大学对病毒扩散的恐惧，但疫情带来的警权无限扩张却已经是不争的事实，这与疫情在中国导致无孔不入的大数据监控一脉相承。

周边图书馆、烈酒店和不少商圈都陆续关门了，不知道现在大麻和毒品交易还怎么进行。一方面其他娱乐和酒精用品的消费在减少，会反向催生违禁品需求，另外一方面线下交易的成本又大幅增加了，毒贩自己也面临着极高的感染风险。如果这类灰色产业进一步被挤到地下，大概会造成一些预料之外的传染机制。

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