Wuhan Lockdown

Wuhan, a city of roughly 11 million people, lies at the center of China's transport and trade routes. In the final days of 2019, it was the place where word first spread of a strange new kind of pneumonia. Soon afterward the authorities shut the city down in a sudden and unprecedented lockdown, one that foreshadowed the measures many other countries would later adopt as COVID-19 spread across the globe.

Guobin Yang, a sociologist, tells the story of those weeks through the people who lived them. He draws on an archive of more than 6,000 diaries kept by residents, and uses them to show how Wuhan got through the crisis day by day. Instead of an official account or a distant overview, the book gives the view from inside the city.

At its heart are the stories of ordinary citizens and civic groups as they fought the disease and tried to help one another. Taken together, these glimpses of life under lockdown show China at a pivotal moment, and bring out how politics, citizenship, morality, community and digital technology all shaped the way the epidemic was lived and understood.