Here is the non-fiction writing WeChat public account [True Story Project] (public account ID: zhenshigushi1), a true story that touches people's hearts every day. Welcome to follow and contribute.
"The virus has left a story for the city of Wuhan that we cannot forget. In the two years when the epidemic has worn away daily life, some Wuhan people have chosen to write the memory of the epidemic on their bodies, the names of their loved ones, doctors and whistles, and these symbols are embedded in their flesh and blood along with the inkblot.
The fear of two men
We can see at a glance that Li xiang is a Wuhan native. On his left arm stands Wuhan's landmark buildings, the Guishan TV Tower and the Second Bridge of the Yangtze River, surrounded by a red-crowned crane. Born in Si, growing up in Si, Li wants to eat hot dry noodles by the Yangtze River for 35 years, study, work, get married, at the end of 2019, his wife gave birth to a pair of twin daughters, nicknamed Snow Cake and Xianbei, the family suddenly became lively, Li wanted to put these two little angels on the inside of the forearm.
Figure | Lee thought of a tattoo
There are as many motifs as there are stories, and they appear in Li Xiang's left arm. To say that there is something special about this tattoo, it is the bottom of the crane, a tiger head wearing an N95 mask, which can also be said to be a cat's head, and a string of numbers is depicted with black and red ink on the mask: 2020.1.23-4.8, the date of Wuhan from lockdown to unsealing. For 76 days and nights, Li Xiang, like most Wuhan people, suddenly pressed the pause button in life, and they seemed to be thrown into a period of apocalypse.
"There wasn't even a bird back then." From Li Xiang's home, it was originally a lively street park, but at that time, people were isolated at home by the epidemic, the city was experiencing death, and the only sound of ambulances whistling on the road was urgent and continuous.
Fear, only fear. The epidemic is menacing, and human beings are in disarray. Li, who is locked up at home, thinks that he holds his mobile phone all day long to brush messages, and he wants to know what is happening. Bad news came one after another, no one knew how long Wuhan would be sealed, and the food stored in the refrigerator at home was only enough to eat for a month. Snow Cake and Xianbei were only two months old, waiting to be fed, and there was not much imported milk powder left for them.
In the same city, people have similar emotions. At that time, Yang Ming's biggest feeling was also fear. On the left back of his shoulder blade, there is an abstract face wearing a mask, and a vague little man with his hands on his back tries to break free, but he can't escape from captivity, like the famous painting "Scream", roaring in horror, but unable to make a sound.
Figure | Yang Ming's tattoo
Yang Ming is an elevator maintenance worker who was responsible for the maintenance of 16 elevators at Hankou Railway Station during the epidemic. Every morning at 8:30, 12:00 noon and 6:30 p.m., Yang Ming drives from his home to the train station to check whether the elevator line is working properly. At the very least, he would sit down one by one.
Founded in 1898, Hankou Railway Station is the largest European-style railway station in China, but from the moment Wuhan was locked down, it became a stop that people could not stop. From the parking lot to the Hankou Station Hall, you have to go through a long underground passage. A middle-aged man in his thirties and forties sat in the passageway, next to a hand-carried duffel bag. Yang Ming saw him for three or four days in a row, and he thought he might be a person who wanted to go home, but did not go back.
The former transportation hub in central China had only a few staff at that time. In the claustrophobic elevator, Yang Ming felt that he was a prisoner, and he could only mechanically repeat the maintenance work. The daily fear reached its peak at the end of work and on the way home, and Yang Ming could not be sure whether he was infected with the new crown today or whether he would infect his family. Two colleagues from the same unit were sent to the hospital in the first few days of the lockdown, and they heard that the beds had to be grabbed by themselves. He didn't dare think much about it.
Three assumptions
Li Xiang and Yang Ming's tattoos were designed by Liu Yuan. Liu Yuan is one of the earliest tattoo artists in Wuhan to do original customization. After wuhan was lifted in April 2020, many people approached her, hoping to use tattoos to commemorate the events, conditions and emotions during the lockdown.
Figure | Tattooist Liu Yuan
Liu Yuan's tattoo room is open to one story after another, and the stories are sad and happy. A surgeon asked her to write "Dragon Fighting" on her left leg to commemorate her experience in fighting the epidemic on the front line; a media person who reported on Wuhan wrote a red whistle under the collarbone as a memorial; some people made the virus into cartoon patterns on his body, and the 76 days and nights that were closed at home made him unforgettable... In the first two months of Wuhan's unsealing, Liu Yuan quickly became an epidemic recorder.
Wang Jia also found Liu Yuan at that time. On her forearm, steely mechanical wings flapped their yellow sharp blades, cutting the virus in half. Wang Jia is a community grid member who worked in the community every day during the lockdown.
Figure | Wang Jia's tattoo
On weekdays, Wang Jia likes to play Overwatch the most, "The world needs more heroes." She loved this line from the angel character in the game. Wang Jia's forearm has a scar, she has always wanted to cover up the pattern of Wen, and after adding Liu Yuan's WeChat for a few years, she finally found an element worthy of Wen on her body. During the anti-epidemic period, she witnessed many medical workers taking risks to stick to their posts, and there are more grassroots workers like her who maintain the basic operation of Wuhan. Wang Jia felt that everyone was a hero.
Wang Jia's community has more than 2,700 households, and if you count according to the family of three, the total population exceeds 8,000 people, of which two-thirds are over 50 years old, all of which are responsible for more than a dozen staff. Wang Jia is responsible for registering the temperature and physical condition of residents every day, contacting hospitals, arranging medical delivery, and transporting basic daily necessities. "It's like an all-round babysitter." When she is busy, her feet do not touch the ground, and she often returns home in the middle of the night, eats a bowl of instant noodles and immediately lies down, and the next day it is a complicated job. From the end of January to the end of January, the city has been busy until more than March, overloaded operation, Wang Jia has not rested for a day.
An old man who lived alone made Wang Jia remember deeply, probably because the epidemic was stimulated, the old man had some mental problems, squeezed the toilet paper into a paper ball, and cut the wire. He had originally taken care of his elderly wife, but now both elderly people had lost the ability to take care of themselves. Wang Jia and her colleagues delivered meals to the elderly every day, and later helped him contact the mental hospital. I didn't expect to do a physical examination when I was admitted to the hospital, the old man was white lung, and he wasn't sure if he was infected with the new crown. "We were all panicked at that time." Wang Jia and several colleagues found a homestay at their own expense and took the initiative to isolate for more than twenty days.
Wuhan, once noisy, quickly became quiet. During that time, there were no cars on the road, and Wang Jia drove to eighty miles without paying attention. Even, sometimes she would think wildly, if she had been admitted to the hospital with the new crown, she would not have been so busy.
At the beginning of the epidemic, Li Xiang also signed up as a volunteer in the community to carry daily necessities. The doctor's neighbor upstairs gave him a protective suit, which he wore every day, and Quan was comforted. He armed the N95 mask of the later text, and fried it for a while for more than seventy dollars a piece.
After being a volunteer for a week, others advised Li not to do it, the risk was too great, and he had to consider his infant daughter. Later, he spent most of his time with the twins, nursing and sleeping with his daughter. When the sun was shining during the day, he pushed the twins to the balcony to bask in the sun. At that time, he still had a lot of leisure time to cook, and he used to only eat hot dry noodles downstairs early, but now he has learned to make it himself.
Just as people come to a fork in the road, there will be a lot of assumptions in the story. Today, Li Xiang, who is almost a year old, has three assumptions, one is that if there is no epidemic, he can push his daughter to the park downstairs, and they should be more exposed to nature. This makes him feel bad and indebted; hypothesis two, if the daughter is born three months late, the wife is still an infected pregnant woman, then the moment the daughter is just born will be isolated, as a parent to wait for Wuhan to unseal before he can see the flesh and bones, he must not be able to bear this pain; hypothesis three, if the daughter is older, the complementary food to eat is complicated, milk powder can still be bought, supplementary food is difficult to say. This assumption made him feel better.
Wuhan became quieter
DaWang is a native of Xinjiang, opening a tattoo shop in Wuhan and doing some freehand styles, most of the texts are the kind that is popular among young people at present. The day before the lockdown, he just returned to Urumqi from Wuhan for the Chinese New Year, and on the first day after the unsealing, he flew back to Wuhan from Xinjiang. He's a lucky one who stepped on the dot.
At the end of April 2020, a young man approached The King and wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate his father who died of COVID-19 during the pandemic. The man was a barista and worked at a chain of coffee shops. Born in 1951, the father believed in Christ, was a silent man who had previously had many incomprehensions about his son's work, but had gotten better in recent years.
Figure | use tattoos to commemorate his father
During the tattoo process, both the king and the man avoided the topic from developing in a heavy direction. They talked about their career plans and which regions had good coffee beans. In a deliberately insignificant atmosphere, a statue of Jesus standing on a coffee tree gradually appears and freezes on the man's right forearm.
Before that, Da Wang Wen had two dates, and it was two young girls who came to write. One is the date of the death of a loved one, during the lockdown. The other is the day of Dr. Li Wenliang's death. The few numbers were written quickly, and the king did not communicate much with them.
For the king himself, the worst days of the epidemic were something he didn't want to touch. He was locked up in his house in his hometown of Urumqi all day, and when he opened his mobile phone and swiped Weibo, he fell into a serious depression. Painting is an outlet for emotions. He had drawn countless doors leading to darkness, and inside the doors were cell phones. At that time, after the Spring Festival was the Year of the Rat, he painted a mouse wearing a mask and coexisting with the virus. After painting, I was even more depressed.
These manuscripts during the epidemic were too depressing and too dark for the current king, and he would be uncomfortable looking at them. He said he wouldn't paint such subjects again. Talking about the changes in Wuhan, the king thought about it, "Now the epidemic has become normalized. In the end, he also felt that "normalization" may only be for him personally, and for those who have lost their loved ones in the epidemic, such a statement is unfair. Some of the changes in Wuhan are in the details, for example, Wuhan taxi drivers, who are known throughout the country for their violent temper, are now driving less rampage.
Due to the nature of the work, Wang Jia, a community grid member, is not very good at exposing the tattoo of the forearm. In the summer heat of Wuhan, she still wears long sleeves to work every day in order to cover her tattoos. She and her colleagues never specifically discussed that period of continuous rotation, there were so many things that happened in the months before and after the lockdown, and every time they looked back, they wanted to cry, and their hearts would hurt, like opening a scar. Gradually, everyone had a tacit understanding of not talking to each other.
Sometimes looking at her tattoo, Wang Jia will think that this is a major event for all mankind, and she is also involved in it, which may be the only highlight moment in her life as an ordinary person.
As early as a few years ago, Wang Jia had the WeChat of the tattooist Liu Yuan, she often looked through Liu Yuan's circle of friends, and there were many doctors, nurses and civil servants in the system, and she plucked up the courage to decide to tattoo. Liu Yuan observed that after the epidemic, more and more people came to tattoos in the system, "Wuhan people are more alive in the present." Liu Yuan said that many people who did not dare to tattoo before now have courage, "people in the system are not very free to work, they want to be more free in life." ”
There is a civil servant who asked Liu Yuanwen for a "one-click restart", and he plans to resign and regain control of his life. Another girl, an extreme sports enthusiast, wrote a mix of diving, surfing and rock climbing on her right arm, and a pattern on the other arm that expressed the meaning of not following the tide.
Picture | girl's tattoo
Life is moving forward
Stories take root and people grow upwards. For example, Wang Jia's temptation to tattoo, Li Xiang also came from such a mentality. The current flower arm was his first tattoo, and it took Liu Yuanwen four times to complete it. Once upon a time, he worked at a bank and needed suits and shoes to meet customers. After resigning in 2017, he opened his own boutique and then set up his own tooling brand.
During the lockdown, Li Xiang's physical store completely stagnated, and only the online store was barely maintaining its operation. In July after the unsealing, Li Xiang designed a Hawaiian shirt called "NoJi Tailai" to commemorate the epidemic, and 50 pieces were sold out in three days. The shirt, with its skull, dagger, mask and virus, represents the pain of the past and the pain it still experiences. The intersection of cranes, unicorns and candles is also a vision within sight. The product copy is written by Li Xiang himself, "When adversity reaches the end, it will be transformed into a good situation, just like Wuhan in 2020." ”
Liu Yuan feels that in the past two years, the people of Wuhan have recovered quickly, are very positive, and can still toss. During the epidemic, a large number of small shops fell, but they opened again immediately after unsealing. The same is true for the tattoo shop, Liu Yuan's WeChat has added a lot of peers, and everyone's shop has opened and closed, closed and opened. Life is moving forward.
Some guests came to tattoo and would naturally chat with Liu Yuan about things during the lockdown. Some people have been admitted to the square cabin hospital themselves, some people's fathers have contracted the new crown, and there are still serious sequelae, and some people say that their parents died on the night of Chinese New Year's Eve. "The tone is relatively calm, that is, pulling homely," Liu Yuan felt, many things are not forgotten and there is no way, human adaptability is still very strong, about the epidemic, everyone seems to have vaguely become accustomed to it.
The moment Lee wanted to really feel that life was back on track was the first time he ate McDonald's after unsealing. Life is still busy and busy, but now, he feels that it is useless to make more money, people must first stay healthy, and then learn to enjoy life, so that the current self and family can live better. Now, as long as he has time, Li wants to push his twin daughters to the park for a walk. After the unblock, the Wuhan Municipal Government implemented a free ticket policy for many local tourist attractions. Li wanted to take his daughter to the Yellow Crane Tower, and also went to Ocean Park and East Lake Park. In nature, the daughter bathed in the sun and giggled from time to time.
Pictured | Li Xiang's twin daughters
On Li Xiang's arms, both daughters have angel wings. He felt that the most painful time, because of the company of two angels, also became the happiest time.
*At the request of the respondents, some are pseudonyms
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Written by | Ge Shifan
Editor| Zhang Xinming