On Monday night, the sound of voices rung out across the Chinese city at the centre of the outbreak of coronavirus. The word “Jiāyóu” echoed between Wuhan’s high-rise apartment blocks, as people took to their balconies to shout what translates literally as “add oil”, meaning “keep up the fight”, to their neighbours.
It is day six of life under lockdown for people in the city, and many in Wuhan and the wider Hubei province are finding new ways to keep up morale.
Across #Wuhan, a show of determination with voices chanting ‘Jiāyóu!’. It’s what people say to lift somebody up during a struggle; to literally ‘add oil’ or ‘keep going’...though doctors here took to social media urging them to stop given the risk of spreading the virus. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/DkIhsJ3HqW
— Janis Mackey Frayer (@janisfrayer) January 28, 2020
Social media – full of speculation and grim hospital footage – has also become a place to share innovative ways of coping with days cooped up inside. These include impromptu lion dances – using plastic stools for the head and blankets for the costume – indoor quoits and fishing in fishtanks.
Video going around on Wechat of creative ways to pass the time during the outbreak: pic.twitter.com/xMRPdcgCc3
— Michael Standaert (@mstandaert) January 27, 2020
There has also been speculation that November could see a spike in births.
For many of the millions stuck at home, a big issue is simply how to keep warm. Very few homes in Hubei – or in southern China – have central heating.
So, families huddle around gas and electric heaters, often placed below a table with a blanket draped over, to warm their hands and feet while eating, chatting or playing cards on top, or escape to beds piled in covers or with an electric blanket. Daytime highs around reach 10C and temperatures dip below zero at night.
Wang Jianping, 42, who was spending the new year holiday in a Hubei village just a kilometre from the border with the Hunan province city of Yueyang, told the Guardian that he and his family were sleeping and staying in bed most of the time. Wang said the border has been blocked and cars and motorcycles can’t get through so there’s not very far they can go.
“If we go out at all we mainly chat with close neighbours and remember funny times from our childhood days,” he said. “Before it got serious many people were sitting together playing mahjong but now nobody wants to do it.”
Despite advice to stay indoors, some have ventured out, even participating in exercise classes on the city’s deserted streets.
One issue that has popped up for many parents with children is how to effectively explain why they need to stay inside, wear masks, and wash hands so frequently. Where there is a need and a gap, creative measures often arise to fill them.
One writer has already whipped up a children’s book called “Why can’t I go out?”.
The story, which advises how to explain to children the need to stay inside and the risks of the virus without scaring them, has been viewed 870,000 times since 26 January when it was released on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo.
Additional reporting by Zhong Yunfan
