"The Coronavirus Seen from Elsewhere"

“The Coronavirus Seen from Elsewhere [Le coronavirus du d’ailleurs],” from the podcast “Les pieds sur terre,” by France Culture, broadcast April 17, 2020, available online here.

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

Introduction

The texts translated here were not written by Chinese intellectuals, but the themes complement those addressed by other authors we have translated, so I decided to make them available.  In fact these are translations of interviews presented on the French podcast “Les pieds sur terre [Feet on the ground],” one with a French woman who has been living in Peking for 14 years, the other with a French-speaking Taiwanese woman living in Gaoxiong, Taiwan.  Inspired by the American podcast “This American Life,” Les pieds sur terre is a delight, reason enough to learn French à tes heures perdues (look it up).

What struck me in listening to the interviews was the contrast between the chaos of  Beijing, in the account of Marianne Daquet, and the calm of Taiwan, in the account of Chen Bishun.  The Chinese government is of course packaging itself as having defeated the virus through a great show of strength and science (a claim subtly interrogated by other texts translated on this site), while Daquet cites the panic response of the Beijing population, worried about health security and weary of government lies, as the prime mover (the government was of course quick to take advantage of the panic).  By way of contrast, Chen Bishun, the Taiwanese, stresses the transparency of the information conveyed by the Taiwanese government and the resulting confidence she feels.

Of course, these are subjective snapshots, to be taken with a grain of salt (for a much more substantial commentary from a foreigner who lived through the coronavirus in China, see Peter Hessler's masterful "Life on Lockdown in China").  I never had the sense that I really knew what was going on when living in China, and wondered about Marianne Daquet's claim that there were no lockdown directives from the Beijing government, but her portrait of the situation remains interesting, if partial.

Translation

Beijing

My name is Marianne Daquet.  I have just turned 42, and I’ve been living in Peking for 14 years.  I have three daughters, including a little one born three weeks ago.  I opened an art school eight years ago, a nice school with three spaces and 250 students, and I had to close it down completely with the arrival of the virus, because the Chinese government shut all the schools and educational institutions without warning.  So now we’re waiting to see where the wave produced by the virus is going to take us. 

Everything stopped, I would say, during the week of January 24.  At the beginning, the authorities were a bit absent, and things were chaotic, and it was the people who isolated themselves.  We never received government orders about confinement, at least not in Beijing. The only place they imposed restrictions was in Hubei, but from the moment they closed the province there was a huge panic.  People here are so afraid of lies, and are so worried about their safety, that they isolated themselves right away.  I didn’t, I kept going to work, thinking, no, it will be okay, we’ll keep our students, but I had to close because parents started to say that we weren’t paying attention to the children’s health and if we stayed open they would report us.

Every day there was more news, and we followed the number of cases and the number of deaths, and then they started taking your temperature pretty much everywhere, in the grocery stores, in the restaurants, in the entries to residential buildings, they took your temperature everywhere.  We were 32.3 [Celcius], but no one cared, because they never really stopped anyone because the thermometers didn’t work, or because they stayed away from us [because we are foreigners].  And then, in February, little by little the administrative measures were tightened, although we were already in less danger, because in any event there were fewer and fewer cases in Peking.  According to the official figures there were only 300 cases of the virus here, which meant that we found ourselves in a situation a bit absurd where we have been confined for weeks, many of us having lost our jobs, and we could not understand what was happening…For a month I was stupefied, trying to figure out why everything had stopped in Peking for 300 cases.  There was no one in the streets.  Beijing is a city in constant movement, a city that never stops, and now we can hear the birds.

Now the people are starting to come out of their houses, walk in the streets, get a little sun, play with their kids, and it’s the same thing, I don’t understand it, because we haven’t received any orders regarding the end of lockdown, but there is a kind of natural movement, because there are no more cases in Peking.  And the city is closed, we can’t leave the city.  We are locked inside the city, but we can move around our parts of town and go to the parks, there are restaurants opening up.  So you can leave your apartment but not the city. 

Now the government has turned things around and has closed the country to foreigners, saying that the virus comes from abroad.  It’s the foreigners who are the source of it, so we have closed the borders and the foreigners can’t come in.  So it’s kind of a racist public discourse on the part of the government.  And now in Beijing there are bars opening up but they can’t allow foreigners to enter, which is something that frightens me a little, I don’t want to be singled out when I’m walking in the streets with my daughters, and I know that happens in China because I’ve read the experience of other people, that you go into a restaurant or a bar and hear someone say that you can’t be there because you’re foreigners.  It’s aggressive, and of course it’s not the boss, but it’s national policy, to seek out a scapegoat or to hide the reality of what happened here, and instead of listening to the people in Wuhan, it’s better to blame the foreigners. 

From the beginning, we said, me and my friends and family, that it’s not possible, that they are not going to close the country for 3,000 deaths in Wuhan, in Hubei, 300 cases in Peking,  it’s not possible that we’re going to lose everything for 300 sick people in Beijing, and I don’t know how many died in Beijing, not too many I think…And there are lots of Chinese who lost everything, everybody who works in tourism, everybody who has bars and restaurants.  It’s terrible, all the others that work in factories, in the construction, people who are poor, they have lost everything.  They haven’t worked for two months.  It’s millions of people, everyone is working at reduced wages.  You hear people talking in the streets, young Chinese who say they get maybe thirty or forty percent of their salary. 

I have a little of money, I don’t know what we’re going to do.  The landlord gave us a month of rent, which is a bit of a break, but there you go.  I’ve been here for 14 years.  My daughters were born here.  In fact, Peking is my home, but bit by bit, with the loss of my job…my daughters’ school won’t reopen, we imagine.  Well, maybe in September, but that means we’ll have to wait here in the apartment for four months with only the income from my partner.  It’s not enough, because life in Peking has become quite expensive, the rents are expensive, insurance is expensive, we pay school fees…Do we have enough to keep living here for three, four, or five months, with only one salary?  No.  Then can I find something else?  These are the questions we’re confronting. 

I am a little worried, because the other day my girls went to the park and there were lots and lots of people, and I’m a little afraid that there will be another outbreak, and if that happens it won’t be at all like the first time, when everyone pretty much isolated themselves.  If there’s another outbreak there will be extremely severe confinement measures.  I’d really like that not to happen, because the measures put in place since the beginning of the virus are state measures and are designed basically to control the population.  Streets blocked and people who take your temperature.  I never had to show my passport before and now I have to show it constantly.   You can’t go in any building without taking out your cellphone to show where you’ve been recently.  And now, people who are in quarantine, their doors are sealed by some kind of magnetic thing linked directly to the police, so if you open the door the police call straight away. 

I don’t want that, this kind of super-control, because there lots of measures put in place that have nothing to do with the virus, and to my mind they are things that are going to continue.  This is why I’m afraid of another outbreak, because we’ll be subject to terrifying controls, and it will be awful.  I’m 42, and I think it’s going to be a new world at the end of this story.
 
Taiwan
 
My friends call me Inès, but my Chinese name is Chen Bishun.  I’m 28 years old and I live in Gaoxiong (Kao-hsiung, Taiwan).  I got up at 8 o’clock today, I had breakfast at home and did a bit of cleaning and watched a documentary on Netflix.  Then, my neighbor had asked me to take delivery of a package for him, because he had to go to work and couldn’t be home to receive it.  He bought frozen food online in anticipation of confinement measures.  I feel like ordering things online as well, just in case.  My mother sent me an email two weeks ago with a message—to my mind it was a rumor—that grocery stores would run out of food soon, so she panicked and went to the store and bought what she needed to stock up.  The next day, the government said not to worry, because food production here in Taiwan is completely adequate for our needs.  With that, the situation calmed down immediately. 

For the moment, we are handling the coronavirus pretty well.  To date they have announced 322 confirmed cases, including, sadly, five deaths.  But when we compare things with the situation we see elsewhere in the world, the Taiwanese government is managing quite well.  We discovered the first case on January 21, and right away, within two days, the government prohibited the export of masks.  In fact, 93% of our masks are imported from China, which means that we don’t make enough masks here in Taiwan.  And then, a few days later, they prohibited travel from China to Taiwan, as well as ships from China, Hong Kong, and Macao.  In March, the measures became more restrictive, for example, Taiwanese who continue to take unnecessary trips abroad might be subject to fines.  At present, we are not in lock-down because the government reacted very quickly and got control of the situation, which is why we are still free to travel around the island.  Everything is open on Taiwan today.  I’ve heard that the universities are talking about the possibility of distance-learning in case it becomes necessary to close the universities, which is not the case at present.  There is a greater impact on hotels, because there are no more foreign travellers, but I read today that there are quarantine hotels used to fight against the virus, and the government has organized taxi companies to transport people subject to quarantine. 

Now I’m making an effort to limit the number of times I go out.  For example, I used to work in a café every day, but now I go only twice a week.  And with friends, we used to get together in a café or a restaurant and now we do it at home.  When I go to a restaurant, the people who work there will take my temperature to make sure that I don’t have a fever.  Most stores make alcohol available so we can disinfect our hands before leaving.  I wash my hands frequently, and when I go out, if it’s an enclosed space, I wear my mask.  I have the right to buy three masks a week, which is changing this week so that I can buy nine masks for two weeks. 

I remember working with some foreign journalists in March, a French production team.  They were wearing masks, and I was surprised because this isn’t something they do in Europe.  But they explained to me that the taxi driver had given them the masks because they are required.  I remember one of the journalists made a little joke about the Taiwanese being overly careful.  But then he saw things getting worse in France and was interested in acquiring masks in Taiwan, but since sales are controlled by the government, I went to the pharmacy and stood in line to get masks for him.  In addition, the Taiwanese were afraid of being in contact with the French, because we have heard that there are more confirmed cases in France than Taiwan, and in a very short period of time.  And I found that a little ironic, because at the beginning of the crisis I heard that some people in Paris were not very nice to Asians, because they could not distinguish Asians in general from the Chinese, and so there were some Asians who were harassed by the French, or who were made fun of because they were wearing masks.  It was the other way around in Taiwan, with the Taiwanese being afraid of the foreigners. 

​The Taiwanese follow the government rules without much problem.  Part of this is cultural, for example, I have confidence in my government because the information provided is clear.  In addition, we lived through the SARS virus before, which gave the government the chance to review the administrative system, putting in place medical protocols, etc.  So I think that the government in Taiwan has more experience in dealing with this kind of epidemic, and I have confidence in my government.