V Shanshan, "Why are you Forcing me to Embrace Solidarity?"

V Shanshan, “Please Tell Me:  On What Basis are you Forcing me to Embrace Solidarity?”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

Introduction
 
The text translated here represents a slight departure from my usual concerns in that the author is not a public intellectual.  The text is instead a brief Weibo post from someone whose uncle had died from complications from covid the previous day, writing to express his anger and bitterness at the hectoring calls in China’s official media to “come together” and “look to the future” as China decides to live—and die—with covid.  That such calls ring hollow for many Chinese makes perfect sense, since China’s mighty messaging machine seems to have turned on a dime, suddenly arguing that Omicron is no big deal and that “everyone is responsible for their own health” after insisting for years that the virus is deadly and that collective behavior was the only way to control it.  For those who fell ill, or lost relatives, following the change in policy—precisely what the message machine had insisted would happen prior to the sudden change—the new message could only seem like rank hypocrisy.

The author could have asked why China’s authorities had no plan B?  Why China’s government did not vaccinate China’s elderly population before deciding to live with the virus?  Why it did not import more effective vaccines from the West?  All of these are perfectly legitimate questions.  China’s authorities might argue that their “transition” has been no more chaotic than that experienced elsewhere in the world, which is true enough, I guess, but could not China have learned something from observing that chaos from a distance? 

But the author’s question is more basic:  Do you, China’s authorities, not have the fundamental decency to allow me to grieve in peace and in silence, and instead insist that I join with those now claiming that “everything is for the better” and “all’s well that ends well?”
 
In another text translated this week, Sun Liping talks about the “scars of the pandemic.”  Surely one of these scars is a widespread loss of faith in the credibility and competence of the Chinese government, as they forced an unpopular policy on the people for months and years, and then abandoned it overnight and moved on, insisting that “there’s nothing to see here.”
 
Translation
 
New Year’s for me means going to my relative’s funeral.

My uncle died yesterday.  He had some underlying health issues, but had been living with them for some years.  His quality of life was a bit reduced, but he was getting by and life was okay.  But then he caught covid and it was too much for him, and once he was invaded by this incurable virus, the effects of the disease took him away.

So I’m at my uncle’s funeral today, together with my loved ones.  I’m in no mood for New Year’s festivities.

It’s not enough for me to seek comfort in mourning.  What I really want to understand is why you are compelling me to accept this one-sided social message that everything is working out for the better.  Even if this has been defined as the mainstream view in society, does that mean I have to follow it and unconditionally submit to this value arrangement?  Are you going to force me to link arms with people whose feelings are completely different from mine? 

Why?

Given that in fact we are no longer a proletarian society but instead are driven by consumerism, this surely means that “people do not share the same joys and sorrows.”  And since this is the case, why insist on solidarity?  If we don’t think the same way, can we really come together?
 
Do you have to insist that people with different experiences, even people who are living things that are completely contradictory or opposite, people’s whose heads are in completely different places—that they are all in the same boat?  Is this true?  We can be living at the same time and you can be happy and I can be sad.  Our emotional demands and moods are not the same.

You can of course feel the joy and blessings that come with the passing of the old year, you can even overflow with happiness and be completely unaffected my loss of a relative, because this has nothing to do with you.  We have no feelings of class solidarity, and there is no reason we should feel empathy for one another.  You have your rights and your freedoms, and can feel good about today’s social climate, or even lucky.  Or you might even be thinking that it’s time to make up for three lost years by joining the party.  That’s all up to you.

But I can’t be like you because we’re too different.  I’m still sick with covid and the symptoms have not subsided.  And then my relative died after catching the virus, and will not be recorded among the statistics of those who died with covid, which taints his passing somewhat.  I now know what the history books referred to when they talked about “everyone dressed in mourning clothes, preparing to bury their loved ones.”

We may live in the same country, and share the same space and time.  But someone like me, still suffering himself from covid and having lost a relative, and someone like you, who cares only that everything is great, who only wants to satisfy your own desires and only cares that you are free to move about—we are on separate, parallel paths, and need not empathize with one another or understand one another or share the same views.

In the media you even see people saying “let’s unite and look forward,” avoiding antagonisms, fragmentation, to say nothing of attacks and name-calling.  Let’s wait until the spring flowers bloom, believing that we’ll all put the pandemic behind us without paying much of a price.

？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？

How can I unite with someone who doesn’t think like I do?  And is it really “not much of a price?”  For those who are losing their relatives?  What do spring flowers mean to someone who’s dead and buried?

If you want me to look toward the future, do I have to start by adapting to the already established fact that “everyone is primarily responsible for their own health?”  How do I convince myself that I first have to pay a huge personal and family price to protect myself and my family, because there is no one or no social mechanism willing to tell the whole truth?

How can I manage to unemotionally accept the solidarity of people who are no help to me, who offer no empathy, and who have even hurt me?

There is nothing strange about me; I am a normal, ordinary person.  I don’t ask much of today’s society except to be able to live a healthy life so as to continue my family line and protect my family members.

I would like to ask those who have had the same experience as me, who have lost relatives in this last little while:  is it indeed the case that they should set aside what they are currently thinking and forget about everything that has happened and unconditionally unite with everyone else?

Is this kind of unity the most important thing for people with experiences like mine?  For whom and for what should we unify?

I might ask:  who was is that finally destroyed the social solidarity we once had?  And why do not those who destroyed that social solidarity first apologize to us, before asking us to rally round once again?
 
Notes

[1]V闪闪, “请告诉我，凭什么逼我团结?” posted on Weibo on Jan. 2, 2023.