How literature, art helped lockdown residents

Radios, reading

Lu Gang, a senior reporter with the Hubei Broadcasting System, launched an event called "Reading at Home" in conjunction with The Voice of Hubei radio program.

Aimed at easing anxiety and lifting people's spirits at the height of the outbreak, the program invited well-known cultural figures to share their thoughts and recommend books to read while isolated at home.

On Jan 23, the day Wuhan was locked down, Lu, a devoted reader, posted on WeChat a rhyme about his reading plan during the Spring Festival holiday.

It was his contribution to staying safe and also hopefully not adding to the burden being shouldered by medical professionals in the city.

It was also intended to raise his spirits. "I am a native of Wuhan, which used to be a vital and busy city. I had never seen it so gloomy. It touched me a lot, so I wrote that 'poem' on WeChat to suggest good reading material," he said.

When she saw the post, Liu Wei, one of the anchors of The Voice of Hubei, contacted Lu as quickly as possible and invited him to launch the special reading activity in conjunction with the program.

As a guest on the first episode, which was posted online on Jan 27, Lu spoke about the benefits of meaningful reading during the two-hour program.

On Feb 24, Wuhan's makeshift hospitals, where patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms were treated, introduced the programs and broadcast them to entertain patients.

The more than 70 episodes posted online have attracted hundreds of thousands of listeners nationwide, according to statistics collated by the program makers.

"Reading is good medicine for our hearts," Liu said, adding that the activity helped ease Wuhan residents' anxiety and allowed them to feel the good wishes being expressed by people in other parts of the country, who made a point of reading the same books.

Lu said: "We valued economic development and GDP too much. The epidemic proved the significance of the spiritual life during our long period of solitude."

In addition to the radio program, Lu wrote an article about the ancient and modern military history of Wuhan.

The city was described as a "heroic city" by Zhong Nanshan, an epidemiologist and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, during the fight against the coronavirus outbreak.

Lu said, "I had been doing research on the history of Wuhan, and I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why it is a heroic city from a historical perspective."

The article, complete with rare historical photos, attracted more than 100,000 views online and was adapted for online courses provided by two schools in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

To record "current heroes" in the battle against COVID-19, Lu used local media websites to post a column that featured young volunteers who were shouldering great responsibilities during the outbreak.

"I used to have a slightly dismissive opinion of people born in the 1990s and early 2000s, but many of their good deeds were beyond my imagination. They made greater efforts than me," he said.

As a political adviser, Lu wrote a proposal to make full use of the internet to help with city management in the post-epidemic era.

"We further realized the importance of the internet during the lockdown, such as online group shopping through mini programs," Lu said.

He added that he has suggested applying cloud computing to aid the ongoing resumption of work.