Built in a matter of days as Covid-19 cases surged in Wuhan in early 2020, Huoshenshan Hospital was once celebrated as a symbol of the Chinese city’s fight against the virus that first emerged there.
The hospital now stands empty, hidden behind recently built walls – like most traces of the pandemic have faded as locals move on and officials discourage discussion of it. Read this also health talk 5 years of Covid-19: learnings, challenges, successes and secrets
On January 23, 2020, with the spread of the then-unknown virus, Wuhan sealed itself off for 76 days, ushering in China’s zero-COVID era of strict travel and health controls and global disruption yet to come. Foreshadowed.
Today, the city’s bustling shopping districts and gridlocked traffic are a far cry from the empty streets and crammed emergency rooms that marked the world’s first Covid lockdown.
“People are moving on, these memories are getting fuzzier and fuzzier,” the 20-year-old university student and Wuhan local told AFP.
He was in high school when the lockdown was imposed, and he spent most of his sophomore year taking online classes from home.
“We still feel like those few years were particularly difficult … but a new life has begun,” he said.
government silence
At the former site of the Huan Seafood Wholesale Market, where scientists believe the virus may have crossed from animals to humans, a light blue wall has been built to shield the market’s closed-down stalls from view.
When AFP visited, workers were putting up Chinese New Year decorations on the windows of the market’s second floor, where a warren of opticians’ shops still operate. Read this also 5 things we know and still don’t know about Covid, 5 years after it appeared
There is nothing to mark the significance of the location – indeed, there are no major memorials to the lives lost to the virus anywhere in the city.
Despite international criticism of the local government’s censorship of early cases in December 2019, the official commemoration of Wuhan’s lockdown ordeal focused on the heroism of doctors and the efficiency with which the city responded to the outbreak.
The market’s old produce stalls have been moved to a new development outside the city centre, where it was clear the city was still on edge about its reputation as the cradle of the pandemic.
More than a dozen vendors named New Huan Seafood Market declined to talk about the market’s past.
“Business here is not what it was before,” a stall owner told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Another worker said market managers had sent security camera footage of AFP journalists to a mass WeChat group of stall owners and warned them against talking to reporters.
At least one black car followed AFP journalists throughout the city, including through the new markets.
‘City of Heroes’
One of the few remaining public memorials to the lockdown is next to the abandoned Huoshenshan Hospital—a derelict petrol station that doubles as an “anti-Covid-19 pandemic educational base.”
One wall of the station was dedicated to a timeline of the lockdown, complete with somber photos of President Xi Jinping visiting Wuhan in March 2020.
A small building behind the facility’s convenience store housed another exhibit, but it was only open “when leaders come to visit,” an employee told AFP.
But ahead of the fifth anniversary of the lockdown, those memories seemed far away, with the city now a hive of activity. Read this also Unresolved debate about Covid origins
Locals flock to the Shanhaiguan Road Breakfast Market, munching on bowls of noodles and deep-fried pastries.
In the upmarket Chuhe Hanzi shopping street, people walked dogs and swam in designer outfits, while others queued up to pick up orders of bubble tea.
Chen Ziyi, a 40-year-old Wuhan local, said he believes the city’s increased prominence has actually had a positive impact, with more tourists visiting.
“Now everyone pays more attention to Wuhan,” she said. “They say Wuhan is the city of heroes.”
