Wuhan five years later: No trace of the pandemic at coronavirus ground zero

The sun peeks through the morning haze between residential and office blocks. At the intersection, dozens of pedestrians, cars, motorbikes and bicycles pass by on their way to their daily tasks. A policeman directs traffic. Street sweepers rest on a curb. No one stops to examine what lies behind the faded blue fences surrounding the building. It is the Huanan Seafood Market. Ground zero for the coronavirus has become an everyday urban landscape. The first cases of an unknown pneumonia were detected here at the end of December 2019. It was closed on January 1, 2020 for disinfection. It remains closed. And empty.

Wuhan was placed under lockdown on 23 January 2020, exactly five years ago. And, five years later, this city of 13 million inhabitants, traversed by the Yangtze River, is trying to turn the page. Although some things have not changed: after a while wandering around the market, and taking some photos, a small door opens and a security guard emerges shouting.

Wuhan has picked up the pace. Its citizens have resumed their lives. Covid has gradually disappeared from the conversation. Carrie, the English name of a 28-year-old Wuhan resident who works for an international health insurance company, says that “the city is full of hope.” It is Monday, dinner time in a packed restaurant. All around her are families, couples, happy people. The Chinese New Year is approaching and many are already on vacation. Carrie adds, as a symbol of this reawakening, that Wuhan will be one of the venues for the Spring Festival gala, the most-watched television program in China, a staple in almost every home to welcome the new year.

“Wuhan is the largest city in central China and the capital of Hubei province,” reads a recent article on state media outlet CGTN about the gala. There is no mention of the pandemic, just as the program is unlikely to discuss Covid, the first patients, the dead, or the weeks when Beijing insisted that the virus was not transmissible between humans.

Five years later, there are no official commemorations in China, and the state press, governed by strict propaganda rules, does not cover the event. After almost three years of a zero-Covid policy, the Chinese government went from confining cities and forcing the population to take PCR tests every 48 hours to declaring “victory” against the virus overnight.

But there are those who do not forget.

“On the surface, it seems that there are no obvious changes in the city and the people of Wuhan. However, you can often sense that the pain from back then is still burning in people’s hearts,” says the famous writer Fang Fang, who lives in Wuhan.

During that first lockdown, which lasted 76 days, Fang kept a meticulous record that she posted on the internet and was read by tens of millions of people. Later published under the title Wuhan Diary (2020), in the book she claims that “devastating” damage could have been avoided if the authorities had not insisted on “reporting only positive news and hiding negative news, prohibiting people from telling the truth.” The writer continues to pay for that observation.

Fang is not in town; she responds to EL PAÍS by text message. She has been travelling a lot lately. “Because of Wuhan Diary, the authorities banned the rights to publish and distribute my works, and they took away all my social activities,” she explains. “This has left me with a lot of free time. Since I am not too old yet and can still drive, I decided to travel. ‘Read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles’ [quoting a proverb] is a beautiful dream for Chinese writers. China is huge and there are many places worth visiting.”

Her words mask the bitter taste of censorship. Beijing has silenced, persecuted, and even imprisoned people who offered an alternative view. In May 2024, to give a recent example, journalist Zhang Zhan, 40, was released after serving a four-year sentence for documenting the early days of the pandemic from Wuhan. She recounted the harassment of victims’ relatives who demanded an investigation, and the arrests of other independent reporters. “The government has run this city through intimidation and threats… That is the real tragedy of this country,” she lamented in the last of her videos from Wuhan.

One of the first to deviate from the official narrative was ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who in January 2020 raised the alarm before the authorities did. He alerted close contacts that several patients admitted to his hospital were showing symptoms very similar to those of SARS, the respiratory syndrome caused by a coronavirus that in 2003 killed almost 800 people worldwide. The private message went viral. It cost him a reprimand from the police for spreading rumors. Shortly afterward, he became infected with Covid and died on 7 February, 2020. A few days earlier, he had declared in an interview: “I believe that in a healthy society there should be more than one voice.” China’s Supreme Court ended up strongly criticizing the behaviour of the Wuhan police and defended Li and other doctors who had been reprimanded.

The ophthalmologist is almost unanimously considered a hero today. His account on Weibo, the most popular social network in China, is another thermometer that indicates people do not forget. When the anniversary of his death approaches, it is filled with spontaneous messages such as this recent one: “Doctor Li, it is 2025, I hope everything goes well for you, that you are happy and healthy.”

“Others recall various events from the pandemic on social media, often playing videos and sharing photos from that time,” Fang adds. She speaks of an “accumulation of emotions” that inevitably “silently transform people,” even though the term “pandemic” has almost disappeared from “official articles.”

In Wuhan, some find it hard to forget. Mr Li, a 60-year-old seafood vendor, had three stalls in the Huanan market. It is Tuesday, and he is sitting in the midday sun in front of one of the stalls he opened a year ago in the new suburban location to which he has been moved. He admits that he was better off before: he was more central. He is wearing knee-high rubber boots. The smell of dried fish surrounds him as he recalls the day when staff dressed in safety suits arrived and told him that everything was going to be closed and that he had a couple of hours to get out. He was “a little scared.”

A widespread rumor

He has friends and acquaintances among the first people to be infected; some died, others recovered, some were treated at the hospital where the ophthalmologist worked (“a hero,” he says). He received compensation of 30,000 yuan (around $4,115) for his losses. He claims, like several of those interviewed, that the pandemic was brought by American soldiers during the military Olympic games held in the city in October 2019. It is a widespread rumor in Wuhan, and in the rest of China.

This unfounded theory was bolstered in 2020 by an unsubstantiated insinuation by Zhao Lijian, then a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “When did patient zero begin in U.S.? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be U.S. army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! U.S. owe us an explanation!” he wrote on social media.

Fishmonger Li says he saw with his own eyes a group of Americans visiting the market shortly before the pandemic: “There is no way it is a coincidence,” he speculates, also without evidence.

Two shopkeepers at a stall next to the old, closed seafood market say something similar. Mrs Liu and Mrs Li — they don’t give any further details, they are sisters-in-law, “over fifty years old,” one says — eat sunflower seeds while waiting for customers. They run a frozen meat business in a run-down alley behind the market. The shop is right next to the blue fence topped with razor wire.

Sometimes, they say, tourists come with their cameras and questions. They say they fear that their words will be distorted by the foreign press. In conversation, they do not deviate from the official narrative: “We are happy because we managed to overcome a great challenge.” “During Covid, the citizens of Wuhan were very united.” “We had a lot of confidence in the government’s measures.” “For such a huge country, they did a great job.”

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