Hero cycles 300 km to help fight outbreak

WUHAN－As the former novel coronavirus outbreak epicenter of Wuhan in central China's Hubei province lifted outbound travel curbs Wednesday, Gan Ruyi realized she would soon be able to retrieve her bike. It was on her bike that she left her home 300 kilometers away two months ago to get to the locked-down provincial capital.

Gan, 24, is a laboratory technician of a community hospital in the Jiangxia district of Wuhan.

Without a private car, she was stranded at home in a township of Gongan county following the Chinese New Year holiday, when the epidemic outbreak forced public transport to suspend services across the province.

Despite the fact that she likes riding a bike for an outing or shopping, she surprised her parents when she decided to ride a bike for the 300-km journey, a distance roughly between Paris and Luxemburg.

"The farther I cycled, the nearer my hospital would be," she recalls telling her parents.

"While facing the epidemic, medics like me should fight like warriors on the front lines," she says.

Gan persuaded her hospital to allow her to return to her post, turned to the local government for a travel permit and stocked up with cookies and instant noodles before departure on the morning of Jan 31.

The journey took her four days and three nights.

"Unlike previous bike trips during which I enjoyed the hustle and bustle, I seldom saw people or vehicles on the roads. It was an unusual and unforgettable experience," she recalls.

After riding for five hours on the first day, she arrived at the county seat of Gongan and slept over in the house of a family relative.

On the next day, she arrived at the Jingzhou Yangtze River Bridge－the border between her hometown county and the city proper of Jingzhou. She had to leave her bike at a local store and walk over as the bridge was fenced off to block traffic.

When darkness fell, she found a small inn in downtown Jingzhou, where she had a box of instant noodles and spent the night.

The next morning, a dozen cabs turned her down on hearing she was going to Wuhan, which was already locked down. She then continued her journey on a shared bike.

Using her cellphone to navigate, she cycled on a national road before it started to rain and get dark.

"I was scared and rode faster and faster, without daring to look back," she says.

At 8 pm, she was told by a roadside policeman that she had arrived at the city of Qianjiang.

Worrying about the young woman's safety, the policeman arranged for her to check in at a hostel and helped her find a Wuhan-bound medical vehicle for a ride the next day.

After getting off in downtown Wuhan, she picked up a shared bike again for the final stretch of the journey. She had to keep asking people directions as her cellphone was out of battery.

At 6 pm on Feb 3, she finally reached her hospital at the Fanhu residential community.

Chen Zongyong, head of the community hospital, says Gan was persistent in character, so he was not surprised at Gan's return by bicycle.

Gan says the busier-than-ever workload in the following week had proved she made the right choice, adding that she was too busy to worry about the infection risk back then.

Apart from her lab work, Gan was later assigned to the community for measuring body temperatures amid the epidemic.

As the closed-off management is now over, the number of patients has gradually increased. "People affected by other diseases are able to see a doctor here," she says, adding that things are returning to normal.

On Tuesday, no new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in the city for a fourth consecutive day.

Gan's heroic ride was later covered by various news outlets, which gained her fame. Multiple museums have contacted her, offering to collect and display her bicycle.

Now that public transport has resumed between Wuhan and Gan's hometown, she plans to visit her parents, bring her bicycle back and choose a museum for donation.

"What I did was actually nothing special. If I were given another chance, I would make the same choice of cycling back to work," she says.