作者：何建明,David East
出版社：中译出版社
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
The Battle of Beijing 北京保卫战试读：
Prologue
22 years ago, in May, I was transferred from an army barracks in a remote mountain region to the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing. That day, I felt so moved by a love for my country that I ran all the way to Tiananmen to gaze earnestly upon what was, to me, my Holy City.
I could not have imagined that on that day, 22 years later, at the moment when Beijing’s 13 million inhabitants were locked in a fight to the death against SARS, I would once again stand alone, before Tiananmen Gate. I saw Tiananmen, its gleaming guard posts standing majestically, the five-starred red flag still flying high above the square, and I could not help but look to the sky and cry:
“My homeland, Beijing, I have never loved you more than I do today…”
On that day, I entered the command center of the military’s huge anti-SARS campaign—the vanguard in the battle against SARS. At all times, I was fully aware that the beacons of war were lit, and I keenly felt how precious life is.
In light of this, I would like to tell you of Beijing’s decisive life-and-death battle against SARS under the leadership of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China.—He Jianming
Chapter 1
WANG CHEN was a rank-and-file staff member at the Beijing SARS treatment center. He pushed open the window behind his desk, looking out onto the heavy traffic on Chang’an Avenue.
“The first day I arrived at the headquarters,” he said, downbeat, “I saw the Beijing I knew go completely empty in the space of just a night. I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It was such a desolate sight.”
“Everybody in Beijing felt like that in those days,” I told him. “We all wondered how a place as prosperous, and bustling, and modern as Beijing could become such a ghost town in the blink of an eye.”
Those were dreadful days. The air resounded with a sickened gasping. People hurried through the fog, frenetic and frightened. It lasted for weeks. Was it April? The beginning of May? Mid-May?
Beijing, with no exaggeration, went through what felt like the moments before the sinking of the Titanic. Anyone who experienced this epidemic looks back on those painful days with grieving sighs.th
On May 29, the news broadcast information on the nationwide epidemic that China was facing. For the first time, Beijing had no new recorded cases of SARS. That evening, the people living below me let off a string of firecrackers in celebration. Setting off firecrackers was banned, but the long-suffering citizens of Beijing laughed, cheering on the offenders.
“It wasn’t easy! We went from the first case, to a peak of 343 cases in one day, and now we’re finally back to zero! It’s all thanks to the leadership of the Party and the government!” A pious old woman in her seventies fell to her knees, prostrating herself in the direction of Tiananmen. The people in the square sighed. It wasn’t easy. It felt like it had taken decades.
That day, many people in Beijing celebrated “zero” in their own way. Their beaming expressions announced to each other an irreversible fact: the day of Beijing’s victory against SARS was at hand.st
On May 31, there was only one case of SARS diagnosed in the whole country—it was in Beijing. That month, Beijing saw the “zero” mark twice—as a city, and ultimately, as a nation. What the public did not know was that this “zero” was only made possible several days prior.thMay 26, Anti-SARS Campaign Headquarters
The meeting of Beijing’s “SARS Prevention and Cure Working thGroup” came to this conclusion: on the early dawn of the 25, a Volkswagen Santana carrying five people travelled from Shanxi province along a mountain highway in Yanqing county en route to Beijing. Among the passengers was a male AIDS patient. His illness had relapsed and he was running a high fever, so his fellow passengers were taking him to see a doctor in Beijing. Unexpectedly, upon being examined at Beijing’s You’an hospital, he was diagnosed stwith SARS (on June 1, his original diagnosis of SARS was revised). If it weren’t for this unexpected arrival, Beijing would have been able to declare “zero” again that day.
The next day, in the headquarters’ meeting room, the leadership and experts listened to a new presentation from the staff of the Beijing Center for Disease Control about this incident. After the report was finished, they sighed; they hadn’t seen this coming.
I threw an intentional glance at Liu Qi the bureau chief, Committee Secretary. His face was solemn, but calm. I saw his gaze fixed on the screen, displaying an analysis of the new outbreak. His face remained still for at least two minutes.
I had no way of knowing what was going on in the head of the commander-in-chief of the anti-SARS campaign, but from his heavy gaze I was sure that he was waiting for something.
The meeting of the working group had gone on until nearly 10 pm thon the evening of the 26. I watched Secretary Liu depart the meeting and return to his office. Although I didn’t know what time he eventually finished working, I would never have imagined that after this new issue had arisen for the anti-SARS team that evening, he would have set out at the break of dawn, travelling 110 kilometers away from the city into the mountains to inspect and supervise the team’s work.
On the news the next day, Beijing residents saw Liu at a traffic intersection in Zhangshanying, a village on the border between Beijing and Shanxi. He was consulting, one-by-one, with the staff that had inspected the vehicle that had come through with the infected man. Since the launch of the anti-SARS campaign, Beijingers had seen Secretary Liu on TV plenty of times; no one seemed to pay attention to yet another inspection. But I felt unusually moved—I knew that he had come precisely because he felt he had let the previous day’s “zero” slip through his fingers.thst
In the five days between the 27 and the 31, I paid particular attention to the Beijing News. I watched Liu every day, reporting from rail stations, streets, communities, construction sites, suburbs, and rural villages. Unaware as they were of the details behind these reports, Beijingers did not know that the city had found its way to “zero” twice since March during that week, a noteworthy accomplishment.
Not that long ago, Beijingers had grave concerns about ignorance and reproach toward the epidemic—this had led to the resignation of the city’s mayor, Meng Xuenong, just a few months after taking office. But as the epidemic was nearly beaten, how did Beijingers feel about their government now? The Du Deyin Municipal Committee Deputy Secretary gave me a figure: a satisfaction rating of 90%.
I don’t think this figure was an exaggeration. The citizens who lived through Beijing’s life-or-death struggle had little desire to save face for those in power; indeed, Beijingers are quite particular on such matters. The citizens paid close attention each day to the epidemic occurring in their own city, and stay informed on the situation going on around them; this certainly permitted them to voice even the slightest dissatisfaction.th
One incident illustrated the issue well: on May 6, a resident on Beijing’s Anhua West Road saw that his apartment building’s garbage chute was blocked, and no one had come to fix it. A phone call was thmade to the “Mayor’s Hotline”. On the morning of the 7, when he went down to buy groceries, he saw a group of people standing outside the apartment building. Among them was Acting Mayor Wang Qishan, who said he had come to see about the building’s garbage chute. The resident was thrilled.
“I called the Municipal Party Committee yesterday,” he said. “But I didn’t think I’d actually get a response. Who would’ve thought the mayor would come out to help? And so quickly too!”
“There is no time like the present,” replied Mayor Wang. “Sanitation is a big issue. If I can’t even deal with your garbage problem, then what kind of mayor would I be?”
A 90% satisfaction rating isn’t easy to get. Some say the fight against SARS brought the government and the people closer than ever—this seems like an astute observation.
The Beijing Municipal Party Committee office building is the headquarters of the anti-SARS campaign. Over the previous few days, I have come through its doors day and night for the purpose of conducting interviews. Often, as I entered the building, I got a profound sense of how endlessly busy everyone who worked there was. Even when they ate, they would have their lunchbox in one hand, and a cellphone in the other, taking work calls.
“It’s like a warzone in here,” functionaries would always say in response to my inquiries. There may not have been any gunfire, but they were indeed at war.th
From April 20 onwards, every room and every member of the staff in the headquarters had become part of a combat unit. Everyone was on call 24 hours a day, from the Mayor and the Committee Secretary to the typists and admin staff. According to one staff member at the Press Office, one section chief’s wife who had come to bring her husband a clean set of clothes and ended up waiting hours outside the building entrance—he had not been able to get off the phone for even a second to get his clothes.
Liang Wannian is the deputy chief of the city’s Bureau of Health. He had taken up his post some months before. Now more than 70% of Beijing knew who he was. As the government’s spokesperson on the epidemic, he has become an “anti-SARS TV star”. I met Liang, a former university vice-principal, at the Center for Disease Control for an interview. Sighing, he said something that made me pause.
“Back when I was a scholar, I always criticized the government. ndBut since April 22, after I was appointed as an official and took part in the anti-SARS campaign, I have a whole new outlook on government workers. They’re really great people.”
Dr. Liang’s sighs aren’t for show. He is an example himself. After becoming deputy chief of the Bureau of Health some months ago, he is in charge of information on the city’s epidemic.
“When I go to the bathroom,” he said, “I have to bring my cellphone with me. If I lie down for a moment, I don’t dare take my clothes off. The mayor calls me into the office in the middle of the night. The secretary tracks me down to discuss the epidemic situation with me in the early hours of the morning. This is my daily routine now. I’m used to it. All of the leadership is the same way. How can I neglect my duties, even for a second? Look at the photocopier in my office. At its peak, it saw over a thousand documents a day. The paper practically burnt my hand. It was so hot!”
The young deputy chief went through a baptism of fire the thmoment he entered the office—April 20 was a watershed moment for the anti-SARS campaign. Secretary Liu Qi and the newly appointed Acting Mayor Wang Qishan had conducted an expanded meeting of the Municipal Committee and the city’s cadres the night before. In the early morning of the next day, two “commanders” arrived at the Center for Disease Control. When they found that the Center’s network systems would not be sufficient, they started work on the site, establishing a network within only a few days. That network would later become known as the “Beijing Anti-SARS Lifeline”, a huge 24-hour information network for preventing and managing the SARS epidemic. They hoped that this network could reverse the misinformation and out of control that arose in the early stages of the epidemic.
Disease control’s efficacy was reflected by the daily infection rate. Beijingers’ worries about money, food, and housing were put aside, and they focused instead on Liang Wannian’s daily infection rate reports.
“How did you arrive at these figures?” I asked.
“By my own work,” Liang’s eyes shined. “Every morning at 8:30 am I listened to reports from each CDC division chief, their situational summaries, and written analytical data from the past 24 hours. After I’d received the data, I notified several anti-SARS teams in the city and collected their feedback, adding it to my own information. Periodic trend changes were happening at all times. We published three main figures a day: the rate of new diagnoses, the rate of suspected cases, and the death rate. In fact, there were more than a dozen figures we wanted to collate and summarize. Each of those figures was changing constantly over 24-hour periods. Now, we have a digital network platform where HQ can get all sorts of figures across the city within minutes. The figures those officials in charge of information had to hand in weren’t just the simple ones we released to the public.
“There was a huge quantity of first-hand information we needed to provide to the government to help form policy. For example, going into late May, when the city’s epidemic situation was under control and everyone was awaiting the ‘zero’ mark, there were still a few new diagnoses that disturbed our state of mind. Whenever these new cases came about, our work increased in scope. One day, four or five migrant workers would be diagnosed, and having received the figure, I’d immediately report it to the Mayor and the Secretary. The Mayor and the Secretary would worry, but the public would know nothing of it. They would immediately think about how to deal with a rush of tens of thousands of migrant workers into Beijing. If they didn’t get a hold of the situation quickly, it could reignite a large-scale epidemic. They wanted an effective policy decision. I had to prepare all kinds of data on the migrant worker cases: where they came from, what construction sites they worked on, the disease control situation at those construction sites, the situation at every construction site that employed migrant workers across the city, what measures should be put in place in the event of an outbreak at a construction site, and so on…”
“In short, one simple figure could bring about dozens of problems, and these problems had to be dealt with as quickly and effectively as possible. As a result, the workload multiplied, both in quantity and in difficulty. In these types of circumstances, you can imagine it’d be impossible to slack off. What’s more, the Mayor and the Secretary are now experts on prevention, and it’d be downright impossible for anyone to skimp on the job. They’d come with a hundred questions, and you’d have to be fully prepared to answer every single one. This is why every single link in the chain of command was busy every single moment of the day.”
Liang Wannian was just one soldier in the battle against SARS. How was he to know just how much weighed upon the shoulders of the Mayor and the Secretary?
Beijing’s Acting Mayor Wang Qishan, known as the “Anti-SARS Mayor”, was transferred from Hainan Province to become Mayor. Within a month, those who knew him and those who didn’t all agreed that Beijing had itself a fine Mayor. His personal charm lay in his “ordinariness”: an ordinary face, an ordinary manner of speech, and a passion for the safety and security of the people.
One particular incident stands as an example: one day, Wang, on a tour of inspections, passed by the door of a recently re-opened school, and saw several people in protective clothing standing guard at the door. He immediately got out of his car to inquire. The people standing guard told him they were teachers, and were performing body temperature checks on students entering the school.
“How can you think this is acceptable?” asked Wang. “The children are young. When they see you like this, they’ll be terrified! Protection is necessary, yes, but we must tailor measures according to the situation!”
The school decided that Mayor Wang was right, and rectified the situation.
“I get feverish quite often.” He told me, “as soon as it breaks out, my tonsils get inflamed. When I came to Beijing to take office, it was when SARS was on the rise! How could I not get a fever? But I couldn’t develop a fever! If I ran a fever, I’d be whisked off to quarantine, so how could I lead my comrades in the anti-SARS campaign, on the orders of the Party Central Committee? I found a way: I ate nothing but vegetables, so I wouldn’t develop a fever.”
“Now I’m getting more confident. But my confidence doesn’t depend on figures. It depends on whether the people of Beijing are involved in the fight against SARS. Now when you go around Beijing, everyone is doing their part to fight SARS—on every street, in every building, at every school, and within every family. You can’t fail to feel moved by it. The power of a People’s War! It’s so great, seeing residents doing their utmost to fight the epidemic, all with understanding and confidence in their government. It was thanks to them that we managed to overcome the strain on our medical resources. They bought us time. My confidence lies in the Party’s central leadership. The Party’s anti-SARS guidelines haven’t changed. It shows the firm and brilliant decision-making at the heart of the Party. So, in a way, our victory against SARS was already established from the outset.” The Mayor’s voice echoed in my ears.
As Mao Zedong once said: total victory in war depends on the extent to which you can mobilize the people. Mayor Wang is declaring this, loud and clear. I think Wang and his colleagues are already extremely satisfied with the extent to which the people had been mobilized in the battle against SARS. He revealed to us that one day, as he accompanied Premier Wen Jiabao to the outskirts to inspect the anti-SARS precautions farmers were taking.
“Do you know who I am?” Premier Wen asked one robust-looking old lady. She shook her head, no. Then he asked, “do you know what SARS is?”
“Oh yes, I know what SARS is,” she answered immediately. “It’s a disaster, it’s a plague. If you develop a fever, it might be SARS, and you have to get to the hospital straight away. If you’ve got SARS, you have to stay away from other people.”
“Look!” said Wen Jiabao excitedly to Wang Qishan afterwards. “Look how much of an impact the anti-SARS campaign has had on people! That old lady didn’t know that I’m the Premier, but she knew all about SARS and how to prevent it. That’s no mean feat! If the people are on board like this, I have full confidence in our victory against SARS.”
I saw Mayor Wang that day at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Before the Beijing Regional Hospital Directors’ Joint Conference dinner, Wang’s speech rallied those present to applause and laughter. Knowing that those at the conference were on the frontline against SARS, and seeing their confidence in the Mayor, it was without doubt that this difficult battle would end in victory.
That day, I was with Wang for six or seven hours. On the basis of the short one-on-one conversation I had with him, I had the overwhelming feeling that Beijing’s anti-SARS leadership were willing to give their blood, sweat, and tears for the safety of the people and the city.
No one could imagine the selfless and endless work they did over those days.
Deputy Mayor Lu Hao is only 35. In truth, when I heard that Beijing had appointed the nation’s youngest deputy mayor, my first thought was that he must be the son of some old guard dignitary. That day, when Lu spoke at the anti-SARS supply group headquarters, not only did he thoroughly refute my earlier judgment, but I was also moved by his candidness, wisdom, and talent.
Who could handle the responsibility of a city of over 13 million people? Moreover, in such an unprecedented epidemic, every second counts. One misstep could destroy the city and cause countless deaths.
“Trust in your conscience. You have to have the desire to save lives if you want to spur yourself on.” These were Lu Hao’s opening remarks; they were simple and clear, without an ounce of official jargon.
“What does ‘conscience’ mean? It means not letting others down. Not letting the people of this city down. Not letting yourself down in your work. Nobody has experienced a crisis this sudden, and no one thought that the government would have to bear such a great burden. What can you depend on? Your abilities? Your abilities might be
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