The Wuhan Lockdown - by Guobin Yang (Paperback)

About the Book

This book tells the dramatic story of the Wuhan lockdown in the voices of the city's own people. Using a vast archive of more than 6,000 diaries, the sociologist Guobin Yang vividly depicts how the city coped during the crisis.

Book Synopsis

A metropolis with a population of about 11 million, Wuhan sits at the crossroads of China. It was here that in the last days of 2019, the first reports of a mysterious new form of pneumonia emerged. Before long, an abrupt and unprecedented lockdown was declared--the first of many such responses to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world.

This book tells the dramatic story of the Wuhan lockdown in the voices of the city's own people. Using a vast archive of more than 6,000 diaries, the sociologist Guobin Yang vividly depicts how the city coped during the crisis. He analyzes how the state managed--or mismanaged--the lockdown and explores how Wuhan's residents responded by taking on increasingly active roles. Yang demonstrates that citizen engagement--whether public action or the civic inaction of staying at home--was essential in the effort to fight the pandemic. The book features compelling stories of citizens and civic groups in their struggle against COVID-19: physicians, patients, volunteers, government officials, feminist organizers, social media commentators, and even aunties loudly swearing at party officials. These snapshots from the lockdown capture China at a critical moment, revealing the intricacies of politics, citizenship, morality, community, and digital technology. Presenting the extraordinary experiences of ordinary people, The Wuhan Lockdown is an unparalleled account of the first moments of the crisis that would define the age.

Review Quotes

This brilliant book offers two expertly intertwined accounts. In the first, local diarists narrate the terror, boredom, and creativity of Wuhan residents as they lived through an emerging catastrophe. In the second, Yang shows how the Party, social media, health workers, patients, and citizen activists shaped people's understandings of what was happening to their community.--Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz

Guobin Yang paints a vivid and deeply moving portrait of ordinary people who suddenly find themselves at the epicenter of a frightening new disease. Based on dozens of online 'lockdown diaries' written by Wuhan residents, this book offers a revealing and humanizing perspective on one of the most controversial and consequential events of our time.--Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University

The Wuhan Lockdown documents ordinary people's lives, sentiments, and activities during the pandemic in such an engaging and immersive fashion that when reading the manuscript, I felt like I was watching a documentary. This book allowed me to relive what people in Wuhan have gone through the pandemic. It is truly incredible how timely it is.--Rongbin Han, author of Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience

About the Author

Guobin Yang is the Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also directs the Center on Digital Culture and Society and serves as deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. His previous Columbia University Press books are The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China (2016) and The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (2009).