When pneumonia broke out in Wuhan, the writer Fang Fang wrote a “diary of the city’s closure”, which was later compiled into a book, “Wuhan Diary”. In a recent interview with French media, she said that the book cost her a lot of money, and that she was not only rejected by the Chinese Communist authorities, but even threatened with her life.
On January 14, France inter published an interview with the mainland writer Fang Fang. In the interview, Fang Fang said that her literary career changed forever after the diary she wrote during the closure of Wuhan was edited into a book (“Wuhan Diary”).
Fang, 65, said she was rejected by the Chinese Communist Party authorities and the literary community, losing the opportunity to publish reviews or articles in magazines, and unable to participate in various literary activities. This is the first time since she started her literary career in 1982; she has even been threatened by leftists and now tries to leave her house as little as possible.
According to Fang, this shows that ultra-left nationalism is deeply rooted in Chinese society, especially in the minds of government officials.
As previously reported by the media, on April 8, 2020, the English and German versions of Fang Fang’s diary hit the shelves of Amazon. In the aftermath, many mainlanders and pinkos accused Fang of being a “traitor” and “endangering the interests of the country,” and some said they would form a team to kill her in Wuhan. There were also large posters threatening Fang to “repent for her mistakes in the form of death”.
Fang recalled that she was trapped at home in Wuhan during the city’s closure and that her diary, which she wrote on Weibo, was widely circulated, and while it was praised by some as deeply emotional, it was also attacked by many. She said some netizens cyberbullied her, questioning her about rumors and making life-threatening comments, and even a year after the incident, these attacks still haven’t stopped.
In the interview, Fang also talked about how she started writing these diaries.
Fang Fang said that at the beginning of Wuhan’s closure, she had received an offer from Harvest Magazine in Shanghai to write an article about the closure, which she declined at the time; because she just wanted to write it down in a diary, her first article on Weibo appeared.
It is reported that Fang Fang wrote a daily “Fang Fang Diary” on Weibo from January 25, 2020, for 60 days, until she stopped writing on March 25.
In an interview, Fang Fang said that on the 10th day after she published her first article on Weibo, a publisher contacted her, hoping to collect her stories and insights from Fengcheng into a book. At first, Fang said she refused, but through communication and the improvement of the epidemic, she gradually changed her mind.
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