Hello, everyone. I am Nemo. Today my speech is ordinary life.
I overheard my mom talking with my grandparents on something seriously, 「Wuhan was locked down because a virus was found there, the virus can spread among people.」 「what is called lock down, mom?」 I asked. 「That means people are not allowed to go in or out of the city, public transportation in the city had been suspended.」 Mom said. I nodded and kept reading my book, I had no idea what that actually meant at that time.
In the following days, I heard these words again and again 「Wuhan, virus, lock down, death, infected…」, It’s different from the new year holidays I had before, something was wrong. I missed the new year holidays I had before.
Then I gradually learned the whole story, the more I know, the more scared I was. It became the main topic in our home, my parents shared the news they learned every day, the infected cases are rampaging all over the country, especially in Wuhan. We started to worry about ourselves, we took plane and train when we went back to our hometown, and we even visited the most popular attractions in Fuzhou before we took the train. What if there were confirmed cases among any of those? We were extremely frightened at deeper thought of it.
I wish I could reverse time and live an ordinary life like we used to, and get away from anxiety and fear.
Most news on the following days were terrible, among them there was a very inspiring one. The best hospitals all over China started to send medical teams to Wuhan. I shed tears when I saw the medical team say good-bye to their loved ones and board the plane, they could have had good time with their family, but they chose to take the risk of being infected to help strangers far away. In Hangzhou, doctor 楊向紅(Yang Xianghong) snatched the last quota to Wuhan. She said to her colleagues, your kids are small but my kid is already a grown-up.
A lot of similar stories happened during that time, gradually I felt the more we learned, the stronger we became. At that time, Hubei province is the only place in great need of medical support, especially Wuhan. The medical services in other provinces went there to help the infected patients. We stopped being scared, we did not just care about ourselves, we were inspired by the dedication spirit of these 「heroes in harm’s way」.
A lot more inspiring news started to shock our heart, several thousand engineers and construction workers built two hospitals with 2,500 beds in less than 15 days in Wuhan. Overseas Chinese around the globe rushed to make donations in cash and medical equipment to help battle the outbreak. Tens of thousands of volunteers are working non-stop to help deliver supplies and assistance to the quarantines……
To us, stay at home is what we could do to fight the battle. I made a card to express our thankful to the dedicated heroes. Then I understood, what they are trying to do is to get our life back to normal track, to our ordinary every day, my dreaming ordinary life. Thank you, the heroes of our nation!