The Unrecorded is a volunteer organization, dedicated to collecting information on cases of those who are suspected to have died as a result of COVID-19 but are not included in the official statistics. Humans of Wuhan is currently collaborating with this organization to translate the oral stories of their relatives. If you are willing to share a story about a relative or friend who you have lost, please complete this form. Help us record their stories to ensure that those we have lost are not forgotten.
Original Author: 未被记录的Ta们Original article:https://www.notion.so/0de06536e58c474c9f10d4473ca85bd0Originally post date: 03/13/2020Translator: IronmongerEditor: WQ
Name of the deceased: Wu XianAs told by: Wu Xian, the niece of the deceasedMy aunt, born in 1940, was the youngest of my father’s siblings. I had a great relationship with my aunt as from a young age, my mom said that I looked a lot like her. I’ve seen some photos of her when she was young and they are remarkably similar when compared to photos of me. Something else that we had in common is that we both played volleyball – my aunt used to be a member of her university’s women’s volleyball team.After graduating from college, my aunt went to Wuchang (Editor’s note: part of Wuhan) to work for a Design Institute where she spent her whole career working as an engineer. Even though she was nearly 80 years old, she was physically healthy and thanks to being an athlete in her youth, she was still in great shape. At the end of last year, she even traveled to Zhangjiajie with several members of the family. After she retired she continued to live a very full life, happily spending her days playing gateball (Editor’s note: a game similar to croquet, popular among elderly people in China) and Shengji (Editor’s note: a card game) with her old colleagues.On January 19th this year, a relative came to Beijing on business. We grabbed dinner together that evening and she told me that my aunt was in a serious condition, and had already been in ICU for a few days, with what appeared to be pneumonia. I couldn’t stop myself asking: is that the infectious viral pneumonia? I’d recently seen several WeChat groups had been reposting that the infectious viral pneumonia situation in Wuhan was really severe and that the doctors were even wearing protective gear. My relative said: it’s possible, but I can’t be sure. Straight away, I called my cousin in Wuhan to get the latest news, he said that my aunt had been infected with viral pneumonia. She was in a bad way, and it had developed really fast. On the evening of January 7th, my aunt had gone out to play cards, returning after 7pm. She said she was so tired she could hardly move, and she had a high fever. That evening, my cousin took her to the ER department at the hospital where she was given an IV. On the 8th, she [went back again and] was given another IV but the fever persisted. There were no beds available in the hospital but we managed, with great difficulty, to get a bed in ICU through family connections. On the 9th she was admitted to hospital. At the time my aunt was still conscious and she was still sending WeChat messages to the family, but her high fever persisted. On the 12th she suddenly experienced heart failure and fell into a coma. They tested her for 12 different viruses but it wasn’t any of them, so she was ultimately diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown cause. It seemed unfathomable that this pneumonia of unknown cause could infect one’s nearest and dearest, but the next day, news started to report that Zhong Nanshan had confirmed human-to-human transmission, and there was confirmation of 136 new cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan. Over the next few days, I called my cousin every day to get the latest news and started to worry whether or not he’d been infected. My cousin said that he had started to experience a low fever. On the evening of the 21st, the doctor asked my cousin to go to the hospital to sign a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] order for my aunt. My cousin spent the whole night at the hospital and told me that my aunt might not make it through the Spring Festival.On the 22nd, I persuaded my cousin to go and get tested. I was worried that he had also been infected and asked him if he needed me to do anything for him. My cousin said that there was nothing I could do to help. There was no medicine to cure this disease, and if he had been infected, he’d have to listen to the will of the heavens. At that time, in my office, I started to cry. It was the first time I’d felt so helpless and it had all come out of nowhere. During SARS, I’d been living in Beijing and hadn’t felt scared at all. I hadn’t worn a mask and had continued, as ever, to fly to Shenzhen for business. However, this time, I felt utterly petrified – this was actually happening to one of my relatives.At 7am on the 23rd, I watched the TV in bed. The news was reporting that Wuhan was going to be locked down from 10am. Before I finished watching the news I received a call from my cousin: my aunt had passed away at 7am. I asked my cousin about how to deal with the funeral arrangements. He told me that the hospital would organize an immediate cremation, as those with infectious diseases couldn’t be kept. I told my cousin that Wuhan would be locked down from 10am and asked him what they were going to do. He told me that he wasn’t able to worry about that right now and that he had to first organize the funeral arrangements for my aunt.The 2pm high-speed express train I was taking to see my parents in Changsha, stopped in Wuhan. I wore a mask for the trip, not daring to remove it for the entirety of the seven-hour journey, not even daring to drink or eat anything. When we went through Wuhan station, as normal, we stopped for a couple of minutes. No one got on, no one got off. The station was deserted. I stood by the door and took a photo of the platform, tears streaming down my face. I didn’t dare to use my hand to wipe them away. It was all so sudden, I’d had no way to prepare myself mentally, I’d not been able to say goodbye to my aunt, I’d not been able to get to see her when she was sick, and I wasn’t even going to be able to accompany her on her last journey.
I still remember going to my aunt’s home during the winter break of my first year at college. That was the first time I’d been to Wuhan and my aunt took me to see the Yellow Crane Tower and the Guqin Lute Platform. I also remember one time when my aunt came to Beijing to attend a student reunion. At the time, I was going to be away on business so I called my aunt and asked her to stay for a few more days and help me look after my kid. Although my aunt was from the generation before me, she seemed more like an older sister, bubbly, optimistic, never one to say she’d seen it all before – she really understood the younger generation. Being highly educated for her generation, my aunt had a strong ethic in both work and life and was both a teacher and a friend to me.My cousin told me that, the first thing on the 24th, Lunar New Year’s Eve, he went to the funeral home with his wife. In addition, one of my aunt’s close friends and my cousin’s best friend somberly accompanied my aunt on her final journey. On the same day, my cousin‘s results came back negative. Despite this, he was still experiencing a continual mild fever. He was concerned that he might have been infected while taking the test. He’d had to wait the whole day for 600 numbers to be called ahead of his turn. He didn’t want to have to go back to the hospital again, preferring to monitor his own condition in isolation at home. During that time, hearing the daily reports of new cases in Wuhan, I was also very concerned for him. Apart from being a family of three themselves, three others were also living with them. My aunt had been living with them, and when she got sick, two more relatives came up from Changsha to see her, but they were unable to leave once the lockdown came in. In addition, my cousin’s mother-in-law was also there. They had all been in close contact with my aunt, what if they too were infected?Fortunately, after a week of self-isolating at home, my cousin’s fever receded, and no-one else in the home had any symptoms. My cousin said that out of the four people who played cards that day, three had been infected. Two of them had died and out of them, one’s entire family had also been infected.I often recall my aunt’s smiling laughter as if it were only yesterday. After seeing the news about Wuhan on TV, my dad asked me how my aunt, his sister, was doing and noted that he hadn’t received a call from her over the New Year. I didn’t dare to tell my dad, who is 90, the awful news. I told him that they were all safe, but that it wasn’t easy to contact them during the lockdown. Spring has already sprung. I hope that the pandemic in Wuhan can be over as soon as possible. I want to go to Wuhan and give my aunt a proper send-off. The people of Wuhan have had to go through the Spring Festival under lockdown, and have had to endure an astoundingly tough winter. Many of them have experienced a living hell and some families have been torn apart overnight. That kind of deep cutting pain cannot be remedied with a chant of ‘Wuhan jiāyóu!’ (Wuhan stay strong!). A city of 10 million was locked down. For the sacrifices they have made, the entire nation owes the people of Wuhan a ‘thank you.’
