At the end of 2020, Voice of America is asking listeners and viewers for year-end testimonials, and we want to know what you’ve been through this year and what you have to say that you don’t want to say.
“I am writing my story from mainland China,” wrote Yin, who works part-time in a northern Chinese city, in an email.
The 44-year-old is the breadwinner of his family, earning more than 3,000 yuan a month, with a wife who suffers from heart disease and is unemployed and at home caring for his 12-year-old son. Diagnosed as a diabetic seven years ago, Mr. Yin was hospitalized this summer after his condition worsened because he couldn’t be bothered to buy test strips and needles to monitor his blood sugar.
“The damned Chinese Wuhan virus is hurting my whole family because once I get it, I develop a serious illness and die, there is no specific medicine, no vaccine,” he wrote.
“These people at the bottom can’t afford to get sick,” said Xie Junbiao, a 39-year-old resident of Chengdu. “It’s really one day when we encounter a major illness or an epidemic like this, we all feel helpless.”
After the outbreak of the new coronavirus, Xie Junbiao was one of the first part-time workers to return to work. Once the Chinese New Year was over, he went back to work at the factory with a stiff upper lip. He worked as a packer in a food factory in the suburbs of Chengdu, six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, with a monthly base salary plus performance of more than 3,000.
On May 1, he was laid off because of the factory’s poor performance. Xie Junbiao told the Voice of America that the economy is in the doldrums, and a stroll around the county will tell you. Many stores are closed, and stores that used to be in high demand are now hanging out “discounted rent, no transfer fee” signs. A friend doing catering in Guizhou has lost a hundred thousand this year.
“This year, ouch, from the beginning of the year is fearful,” he lamented.
In addition to worrying about the epidemic, he said he is more worried about being convicted for his words.
“You have to shut up, you have to shut up, you have to shut up on the Internet,” he says, constantly reminding himself that he worries about talking too much about the epidemic and being accused of rumor-mongering if he’s not careful.
In February, he was repeatedly “teared up” for signing an online petition to erect a monument for Dr. Li Wenliang, the “whistle blower” of the epidemic. In May, he was detained for 30 days for holding a sign in support of Huang Qi, a well-known Chinese dissident, and is still out on bail.
“It’s a shame that I have to get tea and warnings for delivering meals and sending postcards,” Xie Junbiao said. “Delivering meals” refers to providing help and support to imprisoned dissidents and their families.
After leaving the detention center, he opened two WeChat public numbers to earn some advertising money to get by. After a few months, one of them was blocked, and he had to be more careful with the only one he had left, fearing that one day this one, called “Love Everywhere,” would also be killed inadvertently.
The name “love everywhere to say” was inspired by Wuhan doctor Ai Fen. Like Li Wenliang, she was one of the first medical professionals to share news of the epidemic online and be admonished by officials.
In March, as the epidemic began to spread around the world, People magazine in China published an interview with Ai Fen entitled “The Man Who Sent the Whistle”. The article was quickly blocked, but was forwarded by countless netizens in a huge response.
Countless Chinese remembered Effen’s words, “Had I known there would be today, I don’t care if he criticizes or not, ‘Laozi’ goes around saying that, doesn’t he?”
In folklore, “Laozi speaks everywhere” and “A healthy society should not have only one voice,” which Li Wenliang said before his death, were selected as the top 10 buzzwords of 2020.
Voice of America contacted the author of the “Top 10 Buzzwords” – a Chinese post-95-year-old who requested anonymity. He said the buzzwords were selected based on “words that really resonated with Chinese netizens, especially young people, during the year.
The list of buzzwords resonated with the Chinese people and received a lot of retweets, both inside and outside the Great Firewall. What the young writer didn’t expect was that Dr. Effen also retweeted it on Weibo. However, the microblog was quickly “crabbed”.
At the end of every year, the official Chinese media takes stock of the year’s buzzwords, and at the top of this year’s list is “People First, Life First. This is what China’s top leader Xi Jinping said in September at a national commendation ceremony for the fight against the new pneumonia epidemic. Also on the list are “The Retrograde” and “Double Cycle.
“It’s supposed to be a political mission, and the officials used ‘promoting positive social energy’ as the selection criteria.” That Chinese post-95 said. He also said that although the two lists also have some overlapping terms, such as “back wave,” “inside volume” and “beat worker,” the reasons for selection are obviously different.
“What I see behind these terms is that they reflect the class-consolidation dilemma and underlying political demands faced by young people today, while officially it’s more like seeking a kind of ‘unification war’ against young people,” he said. “But I don’t think this ‘unification war’ will work well because there is a huge generation gap between them and young people.”
William, a male student from Hubei who attends college in Guangdong, said 2020 is a “dark and miserable year. In an email to Voice of America, he wrote: “For 2020, I just want to say it’s sad. It’s sad that after all the suffering, there’s nothing left for this nation, nothing left for this society, not even for people to reflect on.”
Mr. Sun, who has worked in China’s financial industry for many years, said, “We basically can’t speak the truth about the U.S. in China, much less the truth, and that elaborate strategy of using the U.S. as an imaginary enemy in China is really too successful, and the effect of brainwashing the people seems evil and crazy.”
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Sun and his family traveled to the U.S. to visit relatives, only to be stranded by the viral storm that is rapidly sweeping the world. Last month, the family celebrated Thanksgiving in the United States for the first time. On this day, Mr. Sun had mixed feelings and wanted to say a sincere inward word of thanks to the United States and to the American people.
In an email to Voice of America, he said, “Although the American people have suffered from the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in China since March this year, it still made our family feel more friendly and treated well in the United States for nearly half a year. We are both touched and apprehensive, with unspeakable feelings of regret, guilt, anxiety, and powerlessness. We can only pray that may the epidemic pass quickly and that we wish America continued greatness.”
What are your New Year’s wishes for 2021?
“Wishes? No, just muddle through,” replied Xie Junbiao of Chengdu.
After the interview, he sent this message: If I can physically climb over the wall, I will definitely take my children everywhere to get some real fresh air and freedom in the future.
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