Even as the virus tears through their communities
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskA mood of pent-up celebration can be felt in Goulin, a scruffy township strung along a busy highway in the south of Henan, a poor central province. On a recent weekday, locals throng a street market selling red, the new-year banners that will soon hang above and to either side of front doors, bearing poetic couplets expressing wishes for good fortune and health. Other traders hawk red underclothes, worn for luck.
In Goulin hospital a faded poster from 2016 announces that the emergency department employs five doctors to cover a population of 200,000 . A doctor says the situation has stabilised, though many severe cases remain. His patients have low expectations. For instance, only a few have even heard of Paxlovid. In China’s big cities, that potent antiviral treatment for covid has become an obsession, with boxes of the imported drug changing hands on the black market for staggering sums.
Chaguan was not in southern Henan by chance. When the pandemic began three years ago, he headed to Goulin and nearby villages, because they lie on the border with Hubei, the province that surrounds Wuhan. Hubei was locked down on January 23rd 2020. Your columnist visited Weiji, the last Henan village on the road to Hubei, four days later. He found its muddy streets brightened by red lanterns and new-year banners, but largely emptied by fear.
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