Book: Wuhan Lockdown
Author: Goubin Yang
Release Date: Feb 22, 2022
Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.
As I
start typing this review, my city is still under a mask mandate, among other
things. To say this history of the Wuhan
Lockdown is still hitting a bit close
would be an understatement.
Yang’s
overview and discussion of the Wuhan Lockdown focuses mostly on the societal
and aspects of the lockdown – what were the various responses, how various
aspects of society acted and so on.
There is also a quick overview of the Chinese government so those of us
who are not experts will not get confused and can understand the context.
I
particularly found the sections about the use of language and translations (as
well as the manipulation of how text
appears, not just in terms of characters, but the overall presentation) to be absolutely
fascinating, for it showed a variety of responses as well as how, in some
cases, information or views were able to slip by censors.
Yet it
is a bit strange that in a book that makes a good deal about the diaries that
Wuhan residents kept in various forms, there aren’t more quotes from them. Don’t get me wrong, Yang does cite from the
various diaries and media, but there are sections, overly long sections where facts
and descriptions are presented but by third person instead of first person
quotes. While it is clear the reason for
this is the needed for brevity to cover the large amount of material, it also
can make those sections lag a little.
Also sometimes there are too much that seems to be too much off topic,
or too much time spent explaining things that could be dealt in a smoother and
shorter way – for instance in the discussion
about nationalism, it feels like too much time is spent discussing the nationalism
that occurred in countries like the UK or US whose mention is needed because of
Chinese reaction to it, but the depth of detail seems to shift the focus for
too long to those other countries (it also moves into a discussion about Chinese
media, that while interesting, doesn’t really need to be that detailed).
However,
sometimes those little factual details and the discussion surrounding them are
needed. An example of this would be when
Yang discusses the international relief supplies that were sent to Wuhan. Yang discusses the reaction of residents to
the Japanese supplies that included messages.
In this case, it is possible to argue that Yang spends too much space on
a detail, but he takes the time to present the detail in context for people to
understand the importance. It is this rather small detail that illustrates
larger and more important points.
Considering
the largely simplified view of what
happened in Wuhan by the Western (and perhaps all non Chinese press), this book
is a must read for those trying to understand and develop a knowledge about
what happened during the start of the outbreak.
Yang does an excellent job relating the various day to day concerns of
residents and the measures that were taken as well as reactions to those
measures. He presents a far more
detailed and nuanced view than the US media ever did, allowing those of us
would limited knowledge about China and the Chinese lockdown to have a greater
and clearer understanding of what happened.
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