Commentary by Swallow Xu*
Just not long ago in January I was translating texts introducing luxury brands’ products celebrating the Year of Golden Rat, joyfully. And now, after ushering in the naughty rodent and spending more than a month in home isolation with very little work, basically every morning, once up, I’d fetch my smart phone and check real time Coronavirus Live Updates. Isn’t it absurd?
Before this epidemic outbreak, facemasks were something far from our reach. Even when SARS broke out in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, we never used or spotted them in daily life. Today, this little guy is so famous and sought after! One mainland Chinese anti-virus slogan says, “In the past, we fight wars with dapao (cannon); now we fight with kouzhao (facemasks)”.
It’s on January 20 that I first wore a mask, taking my 18-year-old niece’s advice when we crossed the Gongbei border checkpoint -- we were the few with a facemask in the crowd. By now with the virus spreading far and wide, virtually everyone in Greater China and many people in South Korea (last night: 4,335 confirmed cases), Japan (274, excluding Diamond Princess cases), Iran (1,501), and some as far as in Italy (1,704), France (130) and even in the US (88) are wearing a facemask. In every Chinese city including Macau, if you venture out without a facemask, it’s apparently a sin and all people stare at you.
When I breathe uneasily behind the mask out in the streets, seeing all kinds of masked characters walking past me I’d wonder what would be the expressions behind this godly thing, just as how I wanted to see through those mysterious niqabs while I travelled through Pakistan years ago… All of a sudden and globally, we can’t live without a mask. Isn’t it absurd?
According to Chinese astrology, the Year of the Rat usually brings about natural disasters/diseases. Most recent ones in Chinese history include the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake and 1996 Lijiang (Yunnan) Earthquake. It seems we have been witnessing this since the Rat Year started. My favourite Hong Kong fengshui master, Lee Kui Ming, advised readers in his Forecast for the Year of the Rat, “…The world is turbulent…2020 is a critical time of combating between the North and South. No one can escape and all of us should face it in a most positive way…This is the worst time, and it also brings the best opportunities…If only we could live healthily, all is still very good…”
Yes, we are having the usually overcrowded Leal Senado empty, stores closed and eateries with few customers. Many of us may be jobless, all children are school-less and the social/economic mood looks pessimistic. Still let’s be grateful that we are alive and healthy; let’s get ready to ‘catch the rat’ – as a producer friend said when confirming the going ahead of his film project no matter how. Let’s be as positive as the woman fruit vendor at the market, who smiled at me, “We are not afraid of working out here. It’s OK.”
Take it easy.
* Swallow Xu is a Macau-based travel writer (swallow.prompt@yahoo.com)
