A woman opened her window in Wuhan at 9:30 p.m. on Friday, 24 hours after the death of the doctor who'd been arrested for spreading "rumors" about a virus that would soon infect tens of thousands, kill hundreds thus far, and result in the lockdown of tens of millions of people in her city and across China.
A neighbor was playing "Remembrance," a well-known song commemorating the tens of thousands who died in a 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
Lights flickered from apartment windows in all directions, an isolated person or family behind each one. Then another sound floated through the darkness: whistles, loud and clear, piercing the darkness.
The woman posted a video of the moment online with a message to the deceased doctor, Li Wenliang: "Doctor Li, did you hear? It was your warning, letting us know to ask those around us to wear a mask. Thank you for your protection, my loved ones are still safe and well. We will always remember ... "
She added a hashtag: "Farewell to the whistleblower."
Then censors deleted her video.
The death of the doctor has roused an outpouring of fury, angst and demands for government accountability and transparency in Wuhan and across China, especially as the coronavirus epidemic intensifies and spreads. Almost 35,000 have been reported infected and more than 700 have died in mainland China so far, including a 60-year-old U.S. citizen who succumbed Wednesday in Wuhan.
As the toll mounts, Beijing has doubled down on efforts to control the narrative, sending 300 propaganda writers from state media to Wuhan to produce upbeat stories about China's virus response while deleting questions, criticisms and cries for help posted online and detaining independent activists seeking to investigate the crisis' scale.
Officials continue to repeat the message: "Trust the Communist Party's leadership."
But many Chinese people are no longer listening.
In the hours after Li's death on Friday morning, millions of comments and posts flooded social media, many of them accusing the government of concealing information about the virus, resulting in the death of Li and hundreds of others. "I want freedom of speech" trended for hours before censors scrubbed the topic clean.
Some social media users pointed out that Li was a "regular person" who had not sought to be a hero, and was detained simply for warning colleagues and friends within a private chat group about a new virus. Many reflected on how efforts by authorities to prioritize political "stability" over reality had contributed to the current disaster.
"We've become deformed without realizing, disciplined to the point where we don't react like regular people," wrote a blogger surnamed Chen. "When you get a message about something that could risk millions of people's lives, your first thought is not, 'How can I warn everyone?' but 'Will I be in danger for speaking?' ... While the well-intentioned are too afraid to speak, the poisonous ones have already raised a torch."
"In the past, I didn't understand why we had to study so many Lu Xun essays, or what kind of society is one where man eats man," wrote another user surnamed Liu, referencing the Chinese revolutionary writer famous for penning allegories depicting China as a numbed, slavish society where humanity is devoured by concentrated power and an apathetic public.
"Half a year ago, I also didn't understand, why did the 'useless youth' in Hong Kong say that we are living in a made-up beautiful dream, unable to hear the sounds from outside?" she wrote. "Now I understand it all."
"The ones who've suffered are not we who sit here typing words, but those who have lost their lives," wrote yet another user. "You can't pay them back. You government officials and hospital leaders, red-faced over public opinion _ you're the ones who are the disease."
In Wuhan, dozens of citizens ventured out Friday and Saturday to the hospital where Li had died, leaving bouquets of flowers in his honor.
One included a handwritten message: "The ophthalmologist couldn't cure the world's blindness. If there is another life, give up medicine and take up literature to open the people's minds," referencing Lu Xun's decision to leave medicine and become a writer in hopes of rousing Chinese people to rise up against the Qing Dynasty.
It was signed, "From a free citizen."
Two local newspapers ran front-page stories demanding accountability for Li's demise. "Let the sunlight of openness and transparency pierce through the haze of the virus," read a headline in Shanghai's Xinmin Evening News.
"Please clear the name of the 'rumormonger,'" read the front page of Beijing's Economic Observer.
Beijing announced Friday that the Communist Party was sending an inspection team from the National Supervisory Commission, the party's anti-corruption body, to "thoroughly investigate issues related to Dr. Li" in Wuhan. Chinese media reported that Wuhan's local government would consider Li's death a work-related injury and provide roughly $117,000 to his family.
Wuhan's city government issued a statement expressing "sadness and respect" for the doctor's death without apology for any mistreatment.
But such measures have not quelled public anger. On Friday, a group of scholars from prominent universities issued an open letter to the National People's Congress, demanding immediate implementation of China's constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech.
"Where there is no free speech, there is no safety," they wrote, calling the outbreak a "humanitarian disaster" that was leaving China in "unprecedented global isolation" while authorities continued to focus more on silencing critics than on controlling the virus' spread.
Gao Fei, a migrant worker in Hubei province who was detained for seven days because he wrote a tweet criticizing President Xi Jinping's refusal to admit China's need for outside help, said in a phone interview that he had met two others in prison detained for posting information about overwhelmed hospitals and lack of medical supplies in Hubei.
He feared that the outbreak was getting worse in Hubei, and that authorities could now arbitrarily use quarantine orders to detain those who speak up about it, with no accountability for whether those quarantined were actually sick.
"We are all hiding at home. We eat, drink and wait to die. It's terrifying," Gao said. "We hope for international pressure and for Chinese people to fight for freedom of speech and push this government to do something, because everyone's life matters _ including the people in the government. Every life is the same."
Freedom of speech has become paramount in China because it's a matter of life or death, said Tsinghua University sociologist Guo Yuhua. It's a sea change in how society perceives political authority, particularly among those who had believed obedience and passivity would keep them safe.
"This has touched the bottom line of Chinese people's existence," Guo said. "A lot of people think, as long as I can eat and stay warm, who cares about freedom or democracy? But now you know ... this withholding of freedom of speech, this unrestricted abuse of power, is evil."
"It's not just the virus, but a political type of virus," she said.
At the same time, China's "stability maintenance" apparatus _ police, jails, censorship, propaganda _ is so strong, and civil society so weak, she said, that institutional change is unlikely any time soon.
"To cover up earlier wrongs, they do new wrongs. To cover the old lies, they tell new lies. And they are so powerful," she said. "I feel a lot of sorrow and anger."
Li, the doctor, is one of many who have died while seeking to combat the disease on the front lines. On Feb. 3, He Hui, 54, died in Wuhan, infected with coronavirus after volunteering as a driver to ferry people to and from hospitals amid a transport lockdown.
"There's this pain in my heart. I can't put it into words. It's not sadness, it's pain," said Qi, a friend and former colleague of He's who did not give his full name.
Qi said in a phone interview from Wuhan that He had been a successful businessman with a large family and newborn grandchild. And in the end, He was the victim of an inept sytem, Qi said.
"Why did they need volunteers to drive and pick up doctors? When authorities decided to restrict transportation, didn't they think that medical staff would need to go to work?" he said. "Why couldn't he get into the hospital earlier? Was it not because the government is hiding the numbers of those infected, and so cannot solve the problem of not enough beds and not enough staff?"
"It's not about how great any individual is. We are all regular people," he said. "The problem is in our society, this failed structure and chaotic management that have created a man-made disaster ... . It's killing people. It's letting the people suffer."
