Archive for April, 2003

• Sunday I took a long

  Date: 2003.04.28 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  Sunday I took a long run downtown as part of my marathon training, although I really wonder if they’re going to be able to have that race. I noticed that all the drugstores we went by had some kind of barrier in front to keep customers out, with staff taking their orders from outside the store. Probably a great way to keep SARS from spreading, given that sick people certainly will head to the drugstore. When we went biking in the afternoon, I noticed that this was no longer the case. A Chinese friend I asked about this guessed that the city may have ordered them to open. Many, many restaurants and businesses are closed, which gives the city a very bleak appearance. Beijing Normal now has security guards positioned so that they can stop people when they leave campus, which is a disturbing thought, although I’m not sure who they’re stopping. I’ve only been asked to show my ID once, but they are stopping all the students and anyone else trying to get into campus.  

  
  

  Monday, after my wife’s classes were done, we biked downtown so that she could get some clothes and gifts. Again, many stores are closed. It’s difficult to find photographs that really show the change, because even when it’s “empty” many parts of Beijing are no less crowded than a typical American town. Here’s a picture of a bus on a main road around noon on Monday, which would otherwise be packed.

  
  

  NOTE: If the pictures don’t show up, it’s because of problems communicating with the Radio server—please check back later…

  
  

  

  
  

  Here’s a picture of one very busy place, the old Beijing train station

  
  

  

  
  

  And here’s a picture of the “Silk Market”, looking south from the alley by the embassies (the banner just says that smoking is strictly forbidden):

  
  

  

  
  

  The Silk Market in particular had a glum, lackadaisical mood about it, although once I got involved with bargaining for the things my wife wanted, it was kind of nice to get back into the rhythm of arguing in a foreign language. Everyone’s face was preserved, we got reasonable but not unreasonable bargains, and my wife didn’t have to leave me because I’m so hard-hearted, as one of the shopkeepers suggested before we reached an agreement and became friends again.

  
  

  Downtown along the main road toward the Silk Market (Jianguomen) there were police standing every few hundred yards blocking off one of the lanes, presumably for leaders or foreign visitors’ travel. That used to happen fairly often near Beijing Normal before they built the freeway to the airport, but I didn’t realize it was still going on. It certainly uses a lot of manpower. We also had three ambulances pass us with sirens on during the course of our trip. I was struck by the number of people each carried, all bundled up in their protective outfits. It looked to be about 6 or 7 people per ambulance, which seems a lot to be exposing to potential danger.

  
  

  When I got home I found out that the Great Wall Marathon is indeed not going to be held in May. I’m not at all surprised, since I doubt that people in that area would welcome a big influx of runners from or coming through Beijing. Particularly after I read an article in the Washington Post about how people in the suburbs are putting barricades on roads to keep Beijingers away. It’s too bad—I’d gotten to be in pretty good shape, and with the disease scare I might have been able to win my age group, if no one else showed up. They’re planning to hold it on November 1, by which point the disease and attendant panic may be just a sad memory.

• Saturday night we biked downtown

  Date: 2003.04.28 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  Saturday night we biked downtown and watched what may be our last movie in China, “The other side of the bridge”, a very fine movie about an Austrian woman who moved to China in the 1930s to get married and spent the rest of her life in Anhui Province. It was shown by “Cherry Lane Movies”, a non-profit group that takes good Chinese movies, quickly writes English subtitles, and presents them on the weekend. It is put on in a big building that is used during the week as a movie set and to explain Peking opera to tourists, so it’s a nice, well-ventilated place. Nonetheless, the government here plans to close all theaters for the duration, so that may be a SARS casualty.

  
  

  On the way we stopped at the big Lufthansa shopping center so my wife could look for gifts. Everything in the large deserted stores were extremely expensive, but in the supermarket in the basement I was able to buy a bunch of dried beans to add to our own emergency stocks.

  
  

  One sign of ordinary life persisting came when I went to retrieve my bicycle outside. I noticed that my big red cable lock wasn’t on the bike, and noticed that there was one just like it in the basket of the bike beside mine. I thought I must have failed to close it, and someone had retrieved it and tossed into a bike’s basket. But I couldn’t open it with my key, and finally realized that it had been jimmied open and ruined. The second lock on my bike (a Taiwanese U-lock) had also been tampered with, although the tool used to open it had broken, leaving the head in the lock. Luckily I had my computer geek Swiss army knife with me, complete with pliers, and was able to get the tool out and unlock my bicycle.

  
  

  Surprisingly, the lock that I had the most confidence in is the one that was removed, and the one that I had little confidence in (I had accidentally discovered a very easy way of disassembling it) was the one that saved the day. I have what I think is a better lock now, but I’m starting to understand why people here use multiple locks. Many bikes, including mine, have an internal lock that consists of a screw in the front column that serves to lock the front wheel at an angle, like the steering locks on cars, so that you could only bike around in a circle if it’s engaged. The bicycle thief had opened the cover of that lock to make sure it wasn’t engaged; I guess I need to start doing that in the future.

  
  

  My wife had said that one of her teachers had said that many people were buying bicycles now out of fear of cabs and public transportation, so I guess there’s a strong market for “used” bikes as well.

  
  

  The city is now plastered with the SARS poster below, which is interesting because it combines information that would be standard public health information in the US with information that we would view as technical advice for physicians. I’m going to post and translate one section a day until I finish. There are medical terms I’m not familiar with, so I won’t vouch for the translations, but I would welcome corrections and I’ll update it as I receive them.

  
  

  http://radio.weblogs.com/0100066/images/SARSposter.jpg

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

  Here’s a detailed picture of the top left panel:

  
  

  http://radio.weblogs.com/0100066/images/SARSadvice1.jpg

  
  

  

  
  

  The first point is: “Early discovery” [Note: I can’t vouch for my translation, but if anyone sends me corrections, I’ll update it and acknowledge them]—it describes the symptoms of SARS —1. Close contact within two weeks with someone with SARS. 2.A fever over 38 degrees Celsius, a cough,  fast breathing, gasping for breath or difficulty breathing, a sound like “luo” when you breathe (?), or change in state of your lungs. 3. In the early stage, the white blood count is normal or reduced. 4. Chest X-rays show a flake-shaped area, which gradually shows  a shadow or shows a net-like appearance. 5. Antibacterial treatment shows no clear improvement.

  
  

   

•   “In fighting ‘Atypical’

  Date: 2003.04.26 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  
  

   

  
  

  “In fighting ‘Atypical’ (i.e., Atypical pneumonia, or SARS) , don’t waste any time, Unity is Strength; prevent an epidemic situation”

  
  

  One of the banners that have gone up on campus this morning.

  
  

   

• Not much new here, so

  Date: 2003.04.26 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  Not much new here, so I’ll catch up on a couple of online pieces of news.

  
  
  
  
  • From http://www.crienglish.com/144/2003-4-25/42@11195.htm a report that SARS cases will now be entered into a medical database. So what I saw on TV with paper tabulation may have been right. Strange. Educational technology on this campus compares favorably to the University of Illinois, where I work in the U.S.—there are quite a few classrooms with computer projectors where I can show Powerpoint presentations from my laptop. And yet they’re just starting to organizing this disease information into a database.
  
  
  • From http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32244 (I don’t know anything about this source). I’ve never been to Guangdong, but I remember years ago when Americans were first starting to travel to China hearing a report about agriculture in Southern China, extolling the cycle described here, from pgs to fowl to plants. It avoids the huge waste disposal problems that feedlots in the U.S. and the Netherlands have, but it may also account for the tendency of new diseases to emerge there. People in Beijing attribute the origin of SARS in Guangdong to the famous tendency of people there to eat anything, Vaguely connected to this, I’ve really enjoyed vegetarian cooking in China this time, with a wealth of different kinds of tofu and vegetables that I don’t find in the midwestern U.S. Maybe that’s the ultimate answer to these kinds of cross-species diseases.
  
  
  • The article above throws in a gratuitous (to my mind) swipe at communism as the source of these practices, and I’ve seen it labelled elsewhere as a consequence of the collectivization of agriculture. I’m extremely skeptical of that, because I know many of these practices far predate communism, and they all may. I can see a couple of ways that the political system in China can be affecting the spread of SARS, some positive and other negative.
  
  
  
  
  • By isolating China from much of the world for the period from about 1966-1980 (and to a lesser extent for about 10 years on each side of that), these events may have been postponed until the present time, when we have a chance to figure out what’s going on and perhaps rapidly develop a vaccine if not a cure.
  
  
  • By stifling economic growth during the same period, and then quickly opening the door to development, there’s an explosive situation in which poor, uneducated people from the countryside are in constant motion in search of jobs, spreading diseases as they go.
  
  
  • By having a near-monopoly on some kinds of information, China was able to suppress the news about SARS from its origins in November until now. It’s a virus, and there are no treatments for viruses, so it’s hard to know how much difference this would have made. But clearly there are health careworkers in China and the rest of the world who would have known to protect themselves if the news was spread earlier. The tendency to keep information under control is universal (I saw something on the net when I was looking around about EMS workers in Hawaii being told not to say anything on their radios about suspected SARS cases), particularly in cases where there’s little to be done. But systems like the one in the U.S. were set up to encourage rivalries, and that can help ensure that news gets out.
  
  
  • By having a near-monopoly on political power, the government can move quickly to take drastic actions (more like Singapore than Hong Kong). Whether those actions are too late, and whether they will really help, remains to be seen. At the same time, the control of the central government over local areas is problematic in China, and their ability to ensure that local governments really do what they say is always problematic. There’s an old saying, “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away” that continues to apply.

• I’ve been in Beijing during

  Date: 2003.04.25 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  Ive been in Beijing during three special times over the last 15 years: the tail end of the martial law period in 1989, the period when the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, the war in Iraq, and the current SARS crisis. (Hmmh reminds me of an old joke in which a dying husband recounts the way his wife stayed with him during all of his setbacks, ending with the punch line Ive decided youre bad luck.). Each had a very different feeling about it, from the perspective of one American visiting China.   

  
  

          The martial law period in December of 1989 was very dismal in many ways there had been a sudden, huge drop in Chinas relations with the West after almost a decade of opening up, people in Beijing were angry and depressed, the government was trying to impose the old political education on students and faculty, and it was difficult to get information from the outside world.

  
  

          The embassy bombing was perhaps the most difficult time to be a foreigner in Beijing. There were many banners around denouncing the United States, no one believed that it had been an accident (either this was done as part of the United States general efforts to put China down, or, in one theory, it had been done to provoke people in China to demonstrate against the U.S. in the hopes that such demonstrations would be put down, causing people here to turn against their own government). There was saturation TV coverage of the grief of the relatives of those died, the return of their coffins, etc. There was also a big gap between news in the outside world and what people knew here. I remember a frustrating period of about 5 days when Chinese people I met would ask why Clinton hadnt called Jiang Zemin to apologize, even though he already had done so.

  
  

          Presentation of the war in Iraq was also very different, as you might expect, from what you might see on Fox News in the U.S. TV promos showed juxtaposition of Iraq mothers marching to protest the war with marching US soldiers. The TV special reports on the war included a great deal of very admiring military reports about equipment and tactics that often overshadowed the disapproval of what the U.S. was doing. I was surprised to hear in online polls that the percent of people disapproving the war (usually 60-75% was as low as it was; Im not sure it have been much different in many parts of the US). A big change is the way that the Internet has really taken over cities like Beijing; its a very information-rich environment in a way it wasnt even 5 years ago.

  
  

          SARS brings many of the issues of information and control to a head. There are many Chinese language sources of information and misinformation; the cellphone-based SMS (short message system) text messages lends itself to spreading rumors; most students know ways to get to internet sites blocked by the government. At the same time, old ways die hard, and the government still seems to think it can manage information more than it really can. Stores have been really crowded, with people stocking up on all kinds of nonperishable staples. The government announced that food supplies are ample, but given recent experience this may only lead to more panic buying.  Otherwise, it remains a very beautiful Spring. I noticed many more people out exercising when I ran this morning (the ubiquitous posters on SARS prevention emphasize exercising as a way of staying in good health), and the relative lack of traffic means its easy and pleasant to get around what had been a very crowded city.

  
  

  The fact remains that this is a virus, and there isnt likely to be a cure for it. So, like other viruses, its likely to spread around the world and were going to have to learn to live with it. I hope it leads to some needed improvements in sanitation here, but I also suspect that China will develop some methods of dealing with SARS economically that will be more relevant to how most of the world responds than is whatever the U.S. and Canada do. People here seem to think that it will somehow pass in a matter of weeks or months and that they can then get on with their lives. Im skeptical of the former, but I think the latter is certainly the case.

  
  

  Ive seen claims in various places that this is likely to be Chinas Chernobyl, leading to a major change in how the government and society work here. Perhaps it will, but Im skeptical. One ringing moment in the big nationally-televised press conference last weekend (see below) was when the briefer pointed out that China had accumulated a strong cash position and had the money to invest in solving this problem. That wasnt true 20 years ago, and it makes a very big difference.

• One of the books we

  Date: 2003.04.24 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  One of the books we read this time was “Night” by Elie Wiesel. There is a striking section of that short book where an escapee from a concentration camp came back to their town to tell people what they were in store for. Although there would have been time to escape, no one believed him. Elie’s parents wanted to send their children away and stay themselves, but their children refused to go. In the end, everyone perished except for the young Elie Wiesel.

  
  

  Watching the progression of this epidemic inexorably reminds my wife and I of that story. Are we stupid to stay? Flying on an airplane over the Pacific seems to be about the most dangerous thing we could do now, but I wonder if it will be any safer when we’re supposed to return in late June. At the same time, this is a virus, and I wonder if there’s any chance that it won’t spread all around the world. The latest news (not locally, although perhaps they’ll announce it tonight) is that they’ve closed and quarantined a hospital in Beijing. Reports are mixed on whether or not the students on campus really have SARS, but people are certainly going crazy. Stores are crowded with people loading up. I had to go visit the Gonganju (Public Security Bureau) yesterday near Yonghegong (The Lama Temple) to pick up our passports, which had been extended beyond 3 months. In contrast to last week, when I dropped them off, the place was crowded with young non-Chinese Asian students, presumably getting approval to leave.

  
  

  Biking around, the city is actually very pleasant. The streets aren’t very busy, and the buses that pass, even during the rush hour, are only half full at most.

  
  

  I didn’t get to watch the news tonight, but on Monday I watched a report showing the center in Beijing that’s tabulating SARS cases. I expected to see them putting together a database, but the camera showed a room full of workers, all in white lab jackets, and zoomed into a show a piece of paper full of the 5-stroke character zheng (upright) that is used in tabulation. It would certainly make it easy to miscount if that is really what they are doing.

  
  

  Efforts are being made to improve sanitation. I was pleased to see a pump bottle of soap in the men’s room in the building where I work, and constant spraying of some kind of disinfectant everywhere. I was jealous to read that Shanghai is raising the fine for spitting to 200 yuan from 50 (divide by 8 to get dollars)—even the idea that there’s any sanction against expectorating from mouth or nose would be a big change here.

  
  

  The big question in my mind is whether Shanghai will have a sudden increase in SARS cases from the 2 that they currently acknowledge, and what that number will turn out to be. If so, it will be a big blow to the credibility of the government. If not, it will raise real questions about sanitation in Beijing and Guangzhou.  Its a lose/lose scenario.

• The name of this site

  Date: 2003.04.22 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

  The name of this site is take from a picture I took in a Beijing Supermarket, posted at:

  
  

  http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~kmiller/Pictures/Instant_poodle.jpg

  
  

   

  
  

  Here are a few days’ worth of reports from the land of SARS:

  
  

   

  
  

  Thursday, April 17

  
  

   

  
  

  Lots of things are going on on the SARS front here. The government continues its policy of reporting very precise but inaccurate information, and so rumors are running amok in a way that I’ve only experienced here during a visit during the martial law period in late 1989. The difference is that people have access to all sorts of information, but most, including me, don’t have access to any really trustworthy source to confirm rumors.

  
  

   

  
  

  One of my wife’s teachers came into class and announced brightly “I hear all the Korean students are leaving!” (most of her classmates are Korean). I don’t think there was any malice involved, just rumor spreading.

  
  

   

  
  

  More authoritatively, the students tonight said that there were two people infected with SARS who’d lived in the dormitory next to them. They thought they were in the campus hospital, but didn’t really know. Students are the ones wearing masks, in general, although when I went to a meeting tonight there were 3 boys about 8 years old talking excitedly together outside with voices muffled by the masks they were wearing. Still, it’s not that common. I rode the subway yesterday to go renew my visa, and counted 3 masks in the car I was in, out of about 50 people.

  
  

   

  
  

  I understand the WHO has criticized the government here for not reporting on SARS cases in military hospitals, including ones they visited, and the government insists that they are reporting on those cases. It reminds me of a story a colleague told from the first time he came here in the 1970s. He was given a phone number at the embassy to call about his visa, but then the person who answered said, “I’m sorry, we don’t have that number at the Embassy.” (Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?)

  
  

   

  
  

  That causes quite a few problems. For example, when I hear on the radio that “no foreign students or faculty in Beijing have come down with SARS,” my immediate cynical reaction is to wonder what’s going on that prompted that claim. (The International Herald Tribune is reporting that an international economics program at Peking University that closed because someone has SARS, but it may be a coincidence). It’s really a shame, because for all I know the government really is doing all it can to control SARS. They’re spraying disinfectant everywhere, and based on the local news I was worried taking the subway yesterday that it would be overly sanitized for my protection; I couldn’t detect any difference either way, although the subway has always been reasonably clean.

  
  

   

  
  

  I read something about the big cluster of cases in a Hong Kong apartment block that said it was due to feces from the construction project next door, where one of the workers had SARS. That’s worrisome because I’m frequently reminded of the limited sanitation facilities in the construction project across the street from us. Every week a bus takes a bunch of workers back home and brings in a new set of workers, so I worry that if they start getting sick, it could spread pretty quickly (not to mention the thought of someone operating the big cranes above us with a fever. Yikes!).

  
  

   

  
  

  Students also live in very crowded conditions, 6 to a room in some cases, I think, so it’s not surprising that they’re worried about getting sick.

  
  

   

  
  

  One of the students in the group I met with tonight was from Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, where there’s a cluster of cases. She knows the family—one of them visited Guangzhou and got sick, and then everyone at home except for the grandmother and a young child got sick on her return.

  
  

   

  
  

  Schools where we want to videotape or collect data are often asking us to wait until after the May vacation (the first 7 days in May) because they’re worried about SARS. I can’t see how the situation is going to be better then, although I certainly hope it is. 

  
  

   

  
  

  It’s been a great Spring, dread diseases aside, with frequent enough rain that it’s relatively green here.

  
  

   

  
  

  Hopefully I’ll have something more research-related to report next time.

  
  

   

  
  

  Saturday, April 19

  
  

   

  
  

  Today I ran a practice marathon over to and around the Summer Palace. It was a beautiful day, with the temperature around 60 degrees after an overnight rain. Thats farther than I was supposed to run and my wife and coach, is not entirely pleased with that, but I did it for three reasons. First, the Great Wall Marathon is very daunting, and I wanted to be able to imagine how tired Id be when I have to climb the wall again at around 20 miles. Second, I wonder if it will really be held, given SARS, and this way at least Ill have run a marathon this Spring, of sorts. Finally, there is something that happens physiologically around 20 miles. Supposedly at around that point youve used up your stores of (whatever it is in the ATP cycle; I should have paid more attention in school) and begin burning fat. I notice that my breathing changes around that point and I need more water, which is consistent with whats supposed to happen. It was hot enough that I went through 3 bottles of water and one bottle of Sprite (bad idea) in addition to the smaller flasks of sports drink I bring with me. When I came back to campus there was a barrier at the gate and guards with facemasks who wouldnt let the cab in, so I had an unexpected walk about mile back home.

  
  

   

  
  

  Rumors and dread stories about SARS abound. I was told that smokers arent getting SARS (about the opposite of what Id expect). I read on the web that this rumor was started because smoked meat doesnt rot. I gave up alcohol for Lent, but maybe I should start resorting to it tomorrow, because pickled vegetables dont rot.

  
  

   

  
  

  Some of the news reports from overseas are pretty disgusting, including reports of driving patients around in ambulances to hide them from the WHO inspection team. Beijing has an incredible number of hospitals, so it wouldnt be so hard to do, except that people will get sick because of it. The fact that health workers are getting sick and dying, particularly if any of the nurses who had to hide patients in ambulances should die, is going to be a big problem, I think. It very much does seem to be in the nature of the government to hide things. For example, theres a big scandal in Liaoning province, where some 3,000 students got sick after drinking soy milk they had to buy through their school. The article (making sure to specify that it was a Sino-US joint venture that made the soymilk) says that a) the milk cost students twice as much as it would on the open market, b) it was not cooked enough and so students had an allergic reaction, c) the local government insists that the student who died did so from unrelated causes, d) when parents starting taking their children to Beijing for treatment after the local hospital couldnt figure what was wrong, the local authorities posted guards at the train station and asked teachers to visit parents of children who were not in school to see if they had left for the capitol or had talked to reporters, e) when reporters called the town to ask about it, they were that the town didnt want this reported. This pattern is fairly common, with crusading reporters from Beijing reporting things that are covered up in other regions, where the local authorities have cowed the local press. The problem comes when something happens in Beijing, where there’s no outside force to spill the beans.

  
  

   

  
  

  I wonder what, if anything, will happen to the retired doctor here who held a press conference about hiding SARS patients in military hospitals. I understand that they person who told the world about the blood-transfusion AIDS problem was sent to prison. My guess is that this will not happen this time, but we shall see.

  
  

   

  
  

  In the lack of clear channels of information, rumors abound.

  
  

   

  
  

  Monday, April 21.

  
  

  Another beautiful day. I went for about a 5 mile run and noticed that they were turning many people away from entering campus. I hoped they wouldd just let me in when I came back in the East gate, and so they did. My wife worries about our lack of university ID, although she has her tuition receipt and a dining center card, and I am hopeful I can bluff my way in if I need to.

  
  

   

  
  

  I keep trying to think of a hopeful resolution to this. Heres the only one I can think of. After the blood test becomes reliable, it may turn out that everyone has already been exposed to SARS and those susceptible to it have already come down with it.  Its possible, although it does seem unlikely.

  
  

   

  
  

  Otherwise, were in for a long haul. I was hoping we could run adults in the eye-tracking study at least, but thats a good setting for spreading a virus. I dont think the IRB would be happy if someone got a fatal disease from being in one of our studies. I heard secondhand that the leaders of the university were told to expect it to take 3-5 months to get this under control. That seems about right, although it may be the kind of things that never really gets under control. Its still a big question as to how many people have been exposed to it, because without knowing the denominator its impossible to know either how contagious or how virulent it is.

  
  

   

  
  

  As for us, it looks like my wife’s classes are still going on. Im going to have to turn to writing and perhaps meeting with small groups of students. As long as her classes keep going on we might as well stay here, although I dont think were going to let our daughter come to visit.

  
  

   

  
  

  They didnt seem to get any new vegetables at the small store where I usually get fresh vegetables for the evening, or else people were really stocking up. Alice had gone to the larger campus grocery store and said people seemed to be panic-buying noodles, so perhaps thats the answer.

  
  

   

  
  

  More and more people are wearing masks, and I wonder if there will be a tipping point at which its rude not to wear one. At a small grocery store where I stopped, a man and woman were in front of me. The cashier was wearing a mask, as was the woman. The man wasnt, but he had folded up the collar of his coat and was talking into it like a thug in an old film noir. He misheard what the cashier said muffled through her mask and it was kind of humorous watching them sort it out.

  
  

   

  
  

  As I biked by the campus hospital I noticed the ambulance was parked there, somewhat at an angle. It was gone when I returned. The worst part of something like this in an information-poor environment is that people get paranoid, in the specific sense of finding meaning in everything that happens, such as not being able to send an SMS message (they must be blocking it), or the way an ambulance is parked (they must have rushed someone here with SARS). Not helpful, but human nature.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Tuesday, April 22.

  
  

  A gray, hazy, more typical Beijing day. They opened up some of the massively rebuilt park north of campus (where an old moat was, officially 花园路/Hua yuan lu or Flower garden road). Its really, really nice. I took some pictures of the park in its torn up state back in January; they still have a ways to go, but if they can keep it up it will be a really wonderful place. Nice day for a run. I think there were more people outside. The SARS report I heard last night had an expert extolling long distance running, and even telling people what target heart rate they should try to achieve based on their age (although the numbers were very low, I thought). He also definitely felt people should run in the afternoon or evening instead of in the morning, but I couldnt understand his reasons for that. A student once told me that you shouldnt run in the morning because there wasnt as much oxygen (because the trees hadnt been producing oxygen during the night), so I was trying to figure out if this was his idea, too, but I dont think so. It probably is better for your body to run at night, but its not realistic for most people given needs to make dinner, take care of children, etc. On the other hand, people in China bathe at night, so that might be another advantage.

  
  

   

  
  

  The radio continues with its happy talk news, although they did report that 8 more people in Beijing died yesterday of SARS. They talked about how more and more people in Guangzhou are doing Tai Qi in the parks to build up their health. I imagine this is because theyre petrified of going to movie theaters and places like that and, lacking health care, are desperate to do anything they can to avoid getting this disease. I still remember the first I heard of this illness, back in late January when we first came, in the form of an article talking about the silly people in Guangzhou rushing to get some kinds of medicine because they were afraid of rumors of some kind of infectious pneumonia that authorities said had only affected a small number of people. It didnt take too much reading between the lines to realize that something was going on. In the same way, everyone here assumed that there were more cases of SARS than the government admitted, although people were shocked that there were 20 times the number cases (including the suspected ones). Someone I talked to had an older teacher in one of their classes go on a big rant about how much they hated the government for doing that. I dont know what I would do now if I were the government, or even a decision-maker at this school, but the lack of trust is going to make whatever they do harder to pull off.

  
  

   

  
  

  I expected my wife to be back from her class by now, because yesterday they were going to have a meeting to decide whether to continue. I assumed theyd stop, because thats the safe decision to be made, to avoid the responsibility of having someone get infected in your class and die. The English class she teaches at church has been cancelled. I took the call, and the woman who supervises it (an older, sort of fluttery Canadian woman) said that the city had announced that any school that continues classes will have to pay a fine. I dont know that shes a good informant, though. It will be amazing if they cancel all classes, although theyve already postponed the exams for entrance into the university.

  
  

   

  
  

  If Alices classes continue, well probably stay here. I can write here almost as well as at home, and there may be other things I can do. If her classes stop, then Ill really think about coming home. We may try to do some traveling first, but Im not sure that will be feasible.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Interesting times! I know it is not really an old Chinese curse, but it does seem to fit the times and situation so well

  
  

   

  
  

  Sunday, April 20

  
  

  Today was Easter. We went to a nice, long English-language Mass at the South Cathedral. I had a sense there were fewer people on the street, particularly at Xidan and Wangfujing, the big shopping areas. When I biked by Xidan there was a table of young women selling jars of some kind of beauty product it looked like facial cream. They were all wearing facemasks, so I wasnt surprised that they had no customers.

  
  

   

  
  

  After church we biked over to Wangfujing to look for some guide books in case we get to travel around China in June as we planned. I was particularly interested in getting the Lonely Planet guidebooks for all of China and for Tibet. The foreign languages bookstore there had some of that series on the first floor, but neither of the ones I wanted. I asked if they had them, and the clerk said they dont carry them. As I was paying for something, I was reading the store guide on the wall, and noted it said they have imported books on the third floor, too. So we went up there and hit a real jackpot of great books, albeit at fairly high prices. They had a display of most of the Lonely Planet books, except for the ones I wanted. When I asked them there, though, they said they did have them and pulled them out of a cabinet under the display. My wife was also able to find two more novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, a Victorian novelist shes become very interested in.

  
  

   

  
  

  Then we biked back. Alice has someone who comes to converse in Chinese and English with her, but she called to cancel. I biked north to a big supermarket to get the makings of as close to an American Easter dinner as I could make. I made mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus, and something like an Irish stew with lamb and carrots and onions. In order to test my theory about pickled vegetables and SARS (see below), I also bought a little bottle of erguotou (二锅头), popular distilled alcohol made from sorghum. Its really cheap about 30 cents US for a pint bottle. Looking it up in Wenlin, its also slang for a divorced or widowed man. If I dont get SARS, well know why.

  
  

   

  
  

  I heard a truly amazing bilingual news conference on the China Radio International local English-language FM station, which I guess was broadcast nationwide. I tried to find it on, TV, but couldnt find it on any of the stations we get. Someone from the State Council a) announced that there are many more SARS cases  in Beijing than previously acknowledged (more than 300, with another 400 suspected cases), and b) responded to very rude questions from the international press. Every question in Chinese was translated in English and vice versa. It reminded me again how much I hate the BBC style of interviewing, which is to ask someone a long question beginning But surely you must agree In this case, the BBC person suggested that the reason the health minister wasnt giving the press conference was because he was the designated scapegoat, which turned out to be right (although Beijings major lost his job, too). It was a bit chilling when someone asked him if he would encourage people to visit China now, and he dodged the question (saying something like, I can see that you are all in China now, and our concern is protecting the health of everyone here.). There was also a good question from the CRI reporter about what would happen if this gets out into the countryside, something that has really worried me as I watch the bus each week taking workers from across the street to and from the countryside. They live in really squalid conditions here that seem ripe for spreading SARS, and I dont know what would happen if it gets beyond the reach of the health care system. The official replied that that was their biggest worry, and that was why they were canceling the May 1 holiday. He suggested that there are many beautiful places around Beijing, such as the Fragrant Hills and the Summer Palace, where people can go on the one-day holiday theyll have this year.

  
  

   

  
  

  Later in the evening, I heard from two colleagues that courses are cancelled in the Psychology department. They both seem very worried that we will get sick, and they keep sending over all sorts of Chinese medicine. I went into the YingDong building to pick up a notebook I had left there and found almost all the grad students there. Theyd been cleaning the lab with bleach and told me the latest rumors about SARS, including that a female student in their dorm had gotten SARS. Biking home I saw the campus ambulance (a big van) driving off campus with its lights flashing, not speeding, but ominous nonetheless.