en.humanrights.cn: Yang Chengchen is a reporter with China News Service. He went back to his hometown in Wuhan to visit his family on January 21, 2020 and joined the frontline reporting team for the COVID-19 epidemic just the next day. During the 86-day stay in Wuhan, he did a series of timely, objective, factual and professional firsthand reports based on interviews carried out in the epicenter including the Huanan Seafood Market, Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital and Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University. Yang was awarded the honorary title of “National Role Model in Fighting the COVID-19 Epidemic” on September 8, 2020. Hello, Chengchen!
Yang Chengchen: Hello!
en.humanrights.cn: At the end of January 2020, Wuhan, the epidemic epicenter in China, has come to a head in terms of epidemic prevention and control. How did you feel when you were assigned the task of doing reports on the frontline?
Yang Chengchen: I returned home on January 21, 2020 for the Spring Festival just like I did every year. I was born and raised in Wuhan. Well, nobody expected the epidemic to develop into such a serious situation that it finally led to the lockdown of Wuhan. The actual situation was that no person asked "Yang Chengchen, can you do the job tomorrow?". There was no time.
On the evening of January 20, 2020, academician Zhong Nanshan informed people about the epidemic in an interview with the CCTV News 1+1 program hosted by Bai Yansong. As a reporter, you are naturally curious about it and you try to find out what it is. You just feel obliged to do something within your capacity under the circumstances. So, I contacted the Hubei branch of China News Service and engaged myself in the news report work because I felt that I was supposed to do that.
At 10 pm on January 22, 2020, the Wuhan Municipal Leading Group issued a notice on the lockdown of the city starting from 10 am on January 23. And our frontline reporting team was formed in the early morning the same day. The job continued for about three months. In fact, I did not have the time to figure out whether I was excited or scared because when I received the message, there was news taking place everywhere and the Hubei branch was shorthanded. The bosses in and outside of Wuhan all expected us to dig for more news facts. Therefore, one person would be assigned multiple tasks at one time. So, I just started to get my hands on the work, pretty much overwhelmed.
en.humanrights.cn: You did not have much time to consider the risks but just devoted yourself to the work at that time. But you did have a little bit of fear in retrospect, right?
Yang Chengchen: I certainly did. I was assigned the first interview task at noon on January 23 about three or four hours after the lockdown. My colleague on the frontline told me to take a photojournalist and a video reporter to the exit of the Wu-E Expressway. I drove two of my colleagues there. They had just been to the fever clinic of the Wuhan Union Hospital the day before. To be honest, you would be under considerable psychological stress when you worked in that kind of situation. The traditional Chinese New Year's Eve was coming soon. You would probably still meet with the elders in your family, you would worry about getting the whole family in trouble. When I look back, it was indeed worrisome.
en.humanrights.cn: You mentioned the lockdown which is a very effective measure to "prevent domestic spreading and external input" of the disease. We also know that the citizens of Wuhan sacrificed a lot in doing so. What were the lives of Wuhan citizens like during the lockdown?
Yang Chengchen: Nobody had expected the lockdown to last as long as 76 days. To Wuhan citizens, the 76 days could be divided into several stages based on the changes they underwent. Actually, everyone was in a panic at the beginning of the lockdown from January 25 to the first few days of February because nobody knew what the lockdown meant.
Starting from February 6, makeshift hospitals were being built up one after another in Wuhan, temporary isolation places quickly covered the three towns of the city and medical teams from all over China, totaling over 30,000 people, rushed there to assist in the fight against the epidemic. Wuhan gradually restored order and the people's confidence gradually recovered during the lockdown. Starting from February 6. Wuhan opened at least one makeshift hospital each day and all the 14 makeshift hospitals in Wuhan were completed by February 20, accommodating almost all patients with mild and latent symptoms.
We can see that starting from February 20, all the comments on the makeshift hospitals were absolutely positive. Everyone spoke highly of the phenomenal speed at which the hospitals were built saying that it was only possible in China under its unique state system to dispatch such a large amount of medical supplies and deploy so many medical workers.
An official in charge of the building of makeshift hospitals from the National Health Commission of China disclosed a detail during an interview with us. Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan visited the Wuchang makeshift hospital to check the final situation on the afternoon of the day it was scheduled to open. She noticed that all the hospital beds were put side by side leaving no space for patients. Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan remarked that it needed to be changed. First, the patients should still have some privacy, even if they were patients. Second, without privacy space, if one patient's condition gets worse, everyone else would be negatively affected psychologically. It was not good for treatment. So, we divided the beds with board to allow private space for each patient.
en.humanrights.cn: While everyone's life was threatened by COVID-19, the medical staff, the volunteers, the community workers and the journalists worked against the odds during the epidemic. So, how was your life and safety safeguarded?
Yang Chengchen: We were not very clear on even the basic personal protection at the beginning. We got better equipped as time went on and the deficiency of supplies was made up bit by bit, too. The supporting team of China News Service also sent us timely supplies as our interview work progressed.
The supplies for the medical staff were a problem at the beginning. At the earliest stage, some ICUs in Jinyintan Hospital were converted from common wards. However, the beds in those wards were lower than the standard beds in an ICU, therefore, when a patient needed non-invasive intubation the doctor had to squat down. The droplets might come from the patient after intubation. So, how could the doctor protect themselves? At that time, protective masks were not yet sufficient. Many doctors had to wear self-made protective masks made of raincoats or other plastic materials. We were so shocked and sad to see that. There were also some doctors and nurses who simply restrained themselves from eating or drinking or using the bathroom after putting on personal protective equipment just because they wanted to save supplies.
The supply of materials got improved step by step. Hubei was the largest producer of masks in China. So, at that time, the state mobilized enterprises in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places to manufacture masks at full speed. All those masks and materials were quickly sent to the "eye of the storm" in Wuhan to protect our medical staff.
During the epidemic, we've heard people talking a lot about the ECMO machine which is considered a relatively new technology in China. Maybe some hospitals such as Jinyintan Hospital only have one or two ECMO machines. As far as we know, at that time many provinces and regions in China such as Sichuan and Anhui and those provinces neighboring Wuhan in particular, including Hunan, sent their ECMO machines over in no time to support Hubei. And medical professionals, especially those experienced doctors and nurses who work in the operating room, emergency room and ICU rushed to help Wuhan out of the difficulties.
en.humanrights.cn: You entered the epicenter in Wuhan many times during the 86 days of interview and reporting work. Were there any people or things that impressed you deeply?
Yang Chengchen: We interviewed a street cleaner at that time. He said that “the restaurants and shopping malls on this street used to be open all night on holidays such as the Chinese New Year. We had to work morning and night shifts in turn because there would be endless rubbish coming in. But only one shift per day was enough during the pandemic”.
When doing interviews in the communities, we learned that most of the community workers were volunteers. I mean, the girls took the initiative to make a squad. They helped the elderly in the community who did not know how to shop online. But how were they supposed to respond to some elderly people who may be cigarette addicts and wanted them to buy cigarettes at 2 am? How would they persuade these elderly people? And how they should block narrow streets extending in all directions and prevent people from travelling around in those old city areas meantime try to make people more understanding?
en.humanrights.cn: On top of some powerful measures taken by the state, these community workers were relatively close to the daily lives of the community residents. Their contributions were indelible.
Yang Chengchen: One of my classmates is a community worker in Hanyang District. He lived in a tent for two months in the freezing winter in Wuhan. Every morning, he sent supplies to the community and tried to soothe people. That was a pretty tough job, however, few people noticed what they did and many people who did notice may not understand them. He told me that he knew that the work at the grassroots level was difficult and he truly knew how difficult it was when things really happened. You had to solve problems like a shortage of eggs in one household and a lack of some vegetables in another. How do you deal with them? Would you be allowed to come inside when you were screening fever residents door to door? Would fever residents receive the call and tell you about it? What would you do when an elderly person insisted on going out for a walk although he was not allowed? They faced real questions every day.
One of the volunteers we interviewed had been driving doctors and nurses to and from work at night during the early stage of the epidemic. He had kept this from his parents, wife and children. The reporter asked him "Were you concerned about getting yourself infected?" He replied "A nurse told me that a mask is supposed to be changed after two hours. And she could wear a mask for four hours since I picked her up every day. In this way, she could save one mask a day. She would like to give me that mask." Gradually, a team of volunteers was gathered by him. They wished to engage themselves in the battle and the team was capable of doing more things than him alone.
en.humanrights.cn: As one of young journalists who were born in the 1990s, what kind of responsibility do you think we should shoulder after working on the front line?
Yang Chengchen: I have a new understanding of journalism as a profession by doing reports about the epidemic. What are journalists supposed to do when facing such an event? I think the answer is "being professional". In my opinion, being professional is the most important thing. You should give full play to your professional ethics professional skill and professional spirits, especially when doing reports about this kind of major event.
Of course, the unspoken words behind "professional" are "scientific spirit". By "scientific spirit", I mean, on the one hand, you should deliver reports based on science and facts, on the other hand, you should bring scientific information to the audience so that they will believe in science and think in a scientific way.
When we were writing a review article, I wrote down the following words "I feel that at the 'darkest moment', we journalists didn't wait for hope and passed good news to everyone, instead, we looked for hope for people, including ourselves, through our pen and camera".
en.humanrights.cn: The younger generation has played an active and important role during the fight against the epidemic and has displayed such great spirits when China was in crisis.
Yang Chengchen: Maybe you can still remember the news about female medical staff, especially nurses cutting short their long hair to protect colleagues from the risk of infection. We happened to interview a supportive medical team from Xinjiang. When the young nurses took off their hats in front of us. I saw they were wearing the same hairstyle as mine. I was speechless and shocked and could not ask any question.
Well, there were young fellows who wrote their names on their protective clothing because if you didn't, other people couldn’t recognize who you were. Later, they would come up with more creative ideas like writing down their English names or drawing, their favorite pattern or putting even a picture of their idols on their chests. You would be touched by what they did and impressed by, how adorable those youngsters were.
We are not in a place to say that, we have now become the backbone of society, but we can see that when society needs us or when we can make a little contribution, our generation will definitely spare no effort to contribute our share just as any other generation would, in other words, we will be able to give full play to our capabilities.
en.humanrights.cn: In this special battle, journalists have brought us true anti-epidemic stories in verbal, audio and visual forms based on in-depth interviews and tireless work on frontline. They have made special contributions to the prevention and control of the epidemic and well fulfilled the responsibilities of Chinese journalists. Let's salute journalists like Yang Chengchen who worked on the front line in the epicenter of Wuhan. Thank you for watching. See you in our next episode.
