How 3 Women From Wuhan Cope With COVID: Rap, Poetry And Moonpies
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From left: Deng Ge is a rap mogul who became a lockdown activist. Poet Sally Wen Mao Mao uses her art to express her anger about how Chinese people are being portrayed in the pandemic. Writer and comic artist Laura Gao, living in the U.S., has a video chat with her grandmother Zhou Nai, who’s happy to have a supply of moonpies.
Image provided by Deng Ge; Yuri Hasegawa; and screen grab by Laura Gao.
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Image provided by Deng Ge; Yuri Hasegawa; and screen grab by Laura Gao.
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Deng Ge, head of the rap label Bad Commune.
Image provided by Deng Ge
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Image provided by Deng Ge
Goats and Soda
Portraits Of Resilience: How 19 Women Around The Globe Face The Pandemic
Deng, 42, a single mom to a 6-year-old daughter, has been a part of Wuhan’s music scene for decades. In college, she formed a band when punk rock reigned supreme in the city. Then she discovered rap music. Three years ago, she quit her job as an art school professor to found the all-female rap group Bad Girls. «None of us leans on men,» Deng said. «We support each other.»
Since COVID-19 cases in Wuhan have slowed down and the city reopened in April, Deng has been able to focus on her music again. But things weren’t always like this — especially at the beginning of the pandemic.
Deng first realized the coronavirus outbreak was worse than expected around the beginning of the Lunar New Year in January. She saw a post on WeChat, the Chinese social media platform, of someone selling 10,000 masks — specifically for use in Wuhan.
«I felt something was really going wrong with Wuhan at that moment,» Deng recalled. Shortly thereafter, the city announced its lockdown.
None of us leans on men. We support each other.
Her instinctive reaction was to become a community volunteer, she said. At that time, the outbreak was spreading rapidly. All hospitals were extremely short of medical supplies. Medical workers were desperately calling for help on social media.
Deng said that broke her heart.
She bought the 10,000 masks for 18,000 yuan ($2,650) with her own money and donated them to a medical center. Soon, she organized her own volunteer group with three women to coordinate donations and deliver more supplies to hospitals. Deng called her team the «Angel Squad.»
Deng and the Angel Squad «didn’t take even one day off» during the nearly 80 days of lockdown. And because she didn’t want to worry them, she didn’t give her family too many details about what she was doing. She was in and out of medical equipment factories and local hospitals, potentially exposing herself to the coronavirus. Despite the strict lockdown, the government did not interfere. Deng said that’s because they recognized how flexible and responsive the volunteers were.
These days, however, life almost feels back to normal, she said.
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Members of the Bad Girls rap group, which was started by Deng Ge, pose with audience members at a pre-pandemic hip-hop party. Now that the coronavirus is under control in Wuhan, audiences are once again gathering for concerts.
Image provided by Deng Ge
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Image provided by Deng Ge
Screen grab of a video chat between Laura Gao, right, and her grandmother Zhou Nai.
Laura Gao for NPR
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Laura Gao for NPR
Back To (Almost) Normal Life — And Even Teasing Her Granddaughter
A blurry golden mass engulfed the screen during a video call as my Nainai’s voice chirped up from behind: «It’s a meat mooncake! I don’t think you have them in the U.S. I’ll freeze some for the next time you visit.»
My grandma, Zhou Nai, is more optimistic about our eventual reunion than I am — but for good reason. In Wuhan, everything has mostly returned to pre-pandemic life. For the Mid-Autumn Festival, she’s going to watch a dazzling light show over the Yangtze River with my uncles’ families and millions of other mask-clad Wuhanese locals. The countless mooncakes decorating her kitchen counter, a dessert eaten during this festival, were bought fresh from the neighborhood mart or gifted from various relatives. From this conversation, you’d never have guessed this city was in total lockdown just months ago.
Nai holds a mooncake — a Chinese treat — up to the camera for her granddaughter.
Laura Gao for NPR
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Laura Gao for NPR
Nainai proudly rotated the mooncake around the camera before setting it down and showing her face again. Not that it’s much easier to see her. She doesn’t understand how cameras work, so each of our calls captures only a third of her face.
Technical barriers like these are the main challenges nowadays for my 80-year-old grandparents. Right before the height of quarantine in Wuhan, when they were isolated from the outside world for months, my 12-year-old cousin, Bean, just managed to teach them how to join WeChat video calls for weekly family check-ins. But they felt left behind as activities they had always done in person, like grocery runs and health checks, migrated online.
«Thankfully, a community helper came each week to ask if we needed anything. Your uncle also dropped off food to us,» she explained.
When the quarantine lifted, they cautiously began venturing outside again — initially just to the apartment courtyard to stretch their legs, then on to bus rides to the grocery store and the clinic. At each stage they’d have their temperature checked before stepping inside.
«Have you gone to East Lake?» I asked, recalling Wuhan’s largest park and one of their favorites.
She sighed. «No, they [now] require reservations through WeChat to limit crowds. We haven’t bothered to figure out how to do that.»
Her son and grandson, Bean, visit often after work and school. Both of Bean’s parents work at a hospital, so they’re extremely careful each time they visit. They change their clothes before entering and spray so much disinfectant that Nainai has to crack open a window. My grandparents used to accompany Bean to school every morning and send him home-cooked meals. Now, they choose their battles wisely every time they go outside.
«Bean’s clothes permanently smell of chlorine now,» Nainai joked. «We’ve adopted many new hygiene habits, like washing our hands when we come home, steaming our bowls before eating and leaving chopsticks in the rice cooker to kill germs.»
Sounds of chopping and oil sizzling punctuate the background of our calls. My grandpa brings heaping dishes fresh from the wok — pan-fried noodles, fish and bok choy glazed in soy sauce, and a side of fermented tofu as a palate cleanser — as I watch enviously from the other side of the screen. He likes to chase down his meal with a shot of baijiu, a potent white rice liquor, while Nainai scolds him playfully. At night, they play a few rounds of the popular Chinese card game Dou Dizhu («Fight the Landlord») before going to bed by 10 p.m.
When you’re my age, people die left and right! You find out when you realize they haven’t called in a while, and then you move on.
Nainai doesn’t like to talk much about her fears. I asked if she knew of any friends who got COVID-19, but she quickly brushed me off.
«When you’re my age, people die left and right! You find out when you realize they haven’t called in a while, and then you move on with your day.»
She waved her hand and looked away before smiling back at me. «I just hope I’ll live to see my grandkids get married. Anyways, are you seeing anyone?»
«During a pandemic, Nainai?» I scoffed.
We shared a sweet moment of laughter from opposite sides of the world. Despite this unfortunate year, I’m glad she still doesn’t hesitate to tease her granddaughter. Her bright spirit pushes the family forward.
Photos and text by Laura Gao
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Writer Sally Wen Mao poses for a portrait on the roof of her apartment building in Las Vegas.
Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
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Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
Mao is working on a book centered on the nine-tailed fox, a female spirit in Chinese folklore.
Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
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Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
Writing, she said, has been a way for her to make sense of COVID-19 and «transmute all those feelings into something that other people can connect to.»
In March, she wrote the poem «Wet Market,» published in Literary Hub. In the early days of the pandemic, these markets were blamed as the source of COVID-19. «It got me thinking about the ways we frame certain places when they are racialized. People wouldn’t be blaming farmers markets in Berkeley,» she said.
She recalls visiting a wet market in Wuhan at age 12 on her first trip back to China since she and her family left. «A lot of them were selling fruits and vegetables,» said Mao. In her poem she wrote:
Screenshot by NPR
«Wet markets are diverse — they’re like any other market,» she says. «Some markets sell certain types of meat, but not all of them.»
She’s also found great comfort in reading — mostly women authors: Bluebeard’s First Wife by Ha Seong-nan, Luster by Raven Leilani and a lot of Toni Morrison. «Other people’s art is a source of strength,» said Mao.
While Mao said she’s been lucky during the pandemic — she has a place to live, a book to write — she’s been struck by «how difficult it is to find intimacy.»
«I might see myself as accomplished in some ways, but if I’m not in a romantic relationship, then that’s seen as a failure [by society],» she said.
In many cultures, women are more defined by their roles as wives, mothers and caregivers than themselves, she explained. It’s a theme she’s been pushing back against in the book she’s now writing, a collection of fictional stories about the nine-tailed fox, a ubiquitous female spirit in Chinese folklore.
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Mao, who was born in Wuhan, China, has been angry about how Chinese people are being portrayed in the pandemic. She’s been coping by writing poems, including one titled «Wet Market.»
Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
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Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
Mao, who was born in Wuhan, China, has been angry about how Chinese people are being portrayed in the pandemic. She’s been coping by writing poems, including one titled «Wet Market.»
Yuri Hasegawa for NPR
«Young female ghosts are the most tragic figures in Chinese culture,» she said. «They don’t have children to pray for them or give them offerings. So they are cut off from the world.»
«But the only thing that’s tragic about them is that they’re unmarried,» she added.
Mao admits that she’s been struggling with loneliness and isolation. But lately she’s been more perturbed by current events. They’ve filled her with a sense of hopelessness — an absence of «a sense of future.»
So she’s been turning over this line of poetry in her head, from «won’t you celebrate with me» by Lucille Clifton:
come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Photos by Yuri Hasegawa. Text by Malaka Gharib
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- moonpies
- Wuhan
- pandemic
- coronavirus
- rap
- women
- Poetry
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