Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. This week's
Speaker 1: cover story. It's all about life in Wuhan post virus. Carol,
Speaker 1: It's an amazing read. It is an amazing read, Jason.
Speaker 1: It's been described as a letter from the future to
Speaker 1: describe life, as you said, after the coronavirus, and for
Speaker 1: that we do look to Wuhan. It's the city in
Speaker 1: China where it all began. It's now also taking its
Speaker 1: first steps towards normalcy. And what's interesting, Jason, they are
Speaker 1: hesitant steps right as a city reopens. Some might say
Speaker 1: those steps are taking on a dystopian field with temperature checks, masks,
Speaker 1: social distancing, and eating divided and alone in company cafeterias.
Speaker 1: It's a story it's by Sharon Chen and Matthew Campbell
Speaker 1: that raises a lot of questions, some scary questions for
Speaker 1: those of us outside of Wuhan, thinking about what our
Speaker 1: lives maybe like as things returned to some semblance of normal.
Speaker 1: Check it out. Wuhan reopens, the city where it all
Speaker 1: began takes its first hesitant steps toward normalcy. By Sharon
Speaker 1: Chen and Matthew Campbell with Claire Shay and Sarah Chen.
Speaker 1: Every work day at Lenovo's tablet and phone factory on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of Wuhan, Arriving employees report to a supervisor
Speaker 1: for the first of at least four temperature checks. The
Speaker 1: results are fed into a data collection system designed by staff.
Speaker 1: Anyone above thirty seven point three degrees celsius is automatically flagged,
Speaker 1: triggering an investigation by an in house anti virus task force.
Speaker 1: Daily routines at the facility, which reopened on March after
Speaker 1: stopping for over two months because of the coronavirus pandemic
Speaker 1: that began in this central Chinese city, have been entirely
Speaker 1: re engineered to minimize the risk of infection. Before returning
Speaker 1: to the site, staff members had to be tested both
Speaker 1: for the virus and for antibodies that indicate past illness,
Speaker 1: and they had to wait for their results in isolation
Speaker 1: at a dedicated dormitory. Once cleared, they returned to work
Speaker 1: to find the capacity of meeting rooms built for six
Speaker 1: reduces to three, and the formerly communal cafeteria tables partitioned
Speaker 1: off by vertical barriers covered in reminders to avoid conversation.
Speaker 1: Signs everywhere indicate when areas were last disinfected, and robots
Speaker 1: are deployed wherever possible to transport supplies so as to
Speaker 1: reduce the number of people moving from place to place. Elevators, too,
Speaker 1: are an artifact of the before times. Everyone now has
Speaker 1: to take the stairs, keeping their distance from others all
Speaker 1: the way. Presiding over all these measures, one Sunday in
Speaker 1: mid April was Chi Yeah, head of Wuhan operations for
Speaker 1: Beijing based Lenovo Group. Chi, who's forty eight with closely
Speaker 1: cropped hair and a sturdy frame, had been visiting his
Speaker 1: hometown of Tianjin in China's north when the government sealed
Speaker 1: off Wuhan from the rest of the country on January.
Speaker 1: It had taken him until February ninth to get home,
Speaker 1: and he was only able to make it by buying
Speaker 1: a train ticket to chang Shah further down the line
Speaker 1: and begging the crew to let him get off in Wuhan.
Speaker 1: His up was now to bring the factory slowly back
Speaker 1: to life, while emphasizing vigilance compared with keeping the virus
Speaker 1: out of the plant, He said, how much production we
Speaker 1: can deliver comes second. G is one of millions of
Speaker 1: people in Wuhan trying to figure out what economic and
Speaker 1: social life looks like after the worst pandemic in a century.
Speaker 1: In some respects, they're in a decent position. The outbreak
Speaker 1: in Hubei Province peaked in mid February, and according to
Speaker 1: official statistics, there are now almost no new infections occurring,
Speaker 1: though other governments have cast out on China's figures, but
Speaker 1: scientists warned that the novel coronavirus is stealthy and robust,
Speaker 1: and a resurgence is still possible until there's a reliable vaccine.
Speaker 1: How to balance that risk against the need to reignite
Speaker 1: an industrial hub of more than ten million people is
Speaker 1: a formidable dilemma one governments around the world will soon
Speaker 1: be facing. So far, Wuhan's answer has been to create
Speaker 1: a version of normal that would appear utterly alien to
Speaker 1: people in London, Milan, or New York, at least for
Speaker 1: the moment. While daily routines have largely resumed, there remains
Speaker 1: significant restrictions on a huge range of activities, from funerals
Speaker 1: to hosting visitors at home, Bolstered by China's powerful surveillance state.
Speaker 1: Even the simplest interactions are mediated by a vast infrastructure
Speaker 1: of public and private monitoring intended to ensure that no
Speaker 1: infection goes undetected for more than a few hours. But
Speaker 1: inasmuch as citizens can return to living as they did
Speaker 1: before January, it's not clear after what they've endured that
Speaker 1: they really want to Shopping malls and department stores are
Speaker 1: open again, but largely empty. The same is true of restaurants.
Speaker 1: People are ordering in instead. The subway is quiet, but
Speaker 1: autos are selling. If being stuck in traffic is annoying,
Speaker 1: at least it's socially distanced. Chief figures he's probably on
Speaker 1: the right side of this economic rebalancing. Tablets are in
Speaker 1: high demand as schools around the world switched to remote learning,
Speaker 1: and companies contemplating a work from home future aren't likely
Speaker 1: to skimp on technology budgets. Since restarting operations, he's hired
Speaker 1: more than one thousand workers, bringing the on site total
Speaker 1: above ten thousand, and production lines are running at full capacity.
Speaker 1: He said he was painfully aware, however, of how quickly
Speaker 1: work would stop if even one employee contracted the virus.
Speaker 1: In my meetings with my staff, I always tell them
Speaker 1: no loosening up, no loosening up. We can't allow any accidents.
Speaker 1: More than eight percent of China's almost eighty four thousand
Speaker 1: confirmed cases of COVID nineteen and more than of the
Speaker 1: roughly confirmed deaths have been in Hubei, of which Wuhan
Speaker 1: is the capital and largest city. Controlling the outbreak there
Speaker 1: after a series of mistakes by President Shi Jimping's government,
Speaker 1: which initially downplayed the risk of human to human transmission
Speaker 1: and failed to prevent widespread infection of medical personnel, required
Speaker 1: a herculean effort. More than forty thousand doctors and other
Speaker 1: medical staff were dispatched from other regions to reinforce existing
Speaker 1: facilities and operate field hospitals built in the space of
Speaker 1: ten days, and car and electronics companies were pressed into
Speaker 1: making protective gear. People suspected of having the disease were
Speaker 1: required to move into dormitories and hotels repurposed as isolation facilities,
Speaker 1: and allowed to go home only after they'd been declared
Speaker 1: infection free. Who Bay was the last region of China
Speaker 1: to resume daily life, with curbs on movement lifted progressively
Speaker 1: from late March until April eight, more than three months
Speaker 1: after the epidemic began. The government presented the Moment as
Speaker 1: a decisive victory, part of a comprehensive effort to rewrite
Speaker 1: the narrative of the virus as a Communist party triumph
Speaker 1: in contrast to its catastrophic spread in Western democracies. Late
Speaker 1: on the night of April seven, crowds began arriving at
Speaker 1: wu Chang station, one of three large railway hubs in Wuhan.
Speaker 1: The first outbound train in weeks to guang Jo was
Speaker 1: scheduled to leave at twelve fifty a m, followed by
Speaker 1: a dense schedule of departures to many of China's major cities.
Speaker 1: Wuhan's position at the junction of several major rail and
Speaker 1: road routes, along with its industrial heft, has invited frequent
Speaker 1: comparisons to Chicago. Police in black uniforms and medical masks
Speaker 1: seemed to be everywhere. Scan your code, they shouted at
Speaker 1: travelers approaching the departure gates. The public private health code
Speaker 1: system that China developed to manage COVID nineteen, hosted on
Speaker 1: the Alley pay and we chat apps but deeply linked
Speaker 1: with the government, assigns one of three viral risk statuses, red, yellow,
Speaker 1: or green to every citizen. It's a powerful tool with
Speaker 1: clear potential for abuse. A green QR code, which denotes
Speaker 1: a low risk of having the virus, is the general default,
Speaker 1: while coming into contact with an infected person can trigger
Speaker 1: a yellow code, and a mandatory quarantine red is for
Speaker 1: a likely or confirmed case. Travel between cities requires a
Speaker 1: green code, and while Tung Shao twenty two had hers
Speaker 1: and felt fine, she was nervous about making her train.
Speaker 1: There's still a chance I'll be stopped if my temperature
Speaker 1: is too high, she said as she neared the departure
Speaker 1: z own. Before going to the station, Sung had checked
Speaker 1: repeatedly for a fever, worried that being even a little
Speaker 1: bit warm would prevent her from getting to guang Jo,
Speaker 1: where she works as a teacher. I haven't seen my
Speaker 1: cat in almost three months, she said. She didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry. Her temperature scan was normal, and she was
Speaker 1: soon able to board her train south. Another passenger leaving
Speaker 1: on the first day, Chin Chin on twenty six, had
Speaker 1: been stranded since the lockdown began. He'd been on vacation
Speaker 1: in Wuhan when Hubei was cut off, and no amount
Speaker 1: of pleading with officials could get him on a train out.
Speaker 1: By mid February. He was living off online loans. I
Speaker 1: was eating instant noodles for every meal, he said. He
Speaker 1: ended up getting a bed in an austere dormitory constructed
Speaker 1: by the local government for people who couldn't leave. He
Speaker 1: also found work doing odd jobs at leshan Shan Hospital,
Speaker 1: one of the temporary infirmaries built to handle coronavirus patients.
Speaker 1: He'd lost his regular job at a company in Jangsu
Speaker 1: Province that makes robots because he couldn't get back, and
Speaker 1: was now headed to Guangdong to look for another one
Speaker 1: and see his family. He hadn't told his parents where
Speaker 1: he'd been all this time. As far as they knew
Speaker 1: he was away working, I will not tell them I
Speaker 1: was in Wuhan, Chin said. When dawn broke, Wuhan came
Speaker 1: cautiously back to life. Hairdressers were some of the first
Speaker 1: businesses to fill up. The roads were noticeably busier, and
Speaker 1: workers flowed back into office towers in the city center.
Speaker 1: But these new freedoms felt distinctly provisional. At the entrance
Speaker 1: to every mall or public building, guards stood sentry with
Speaker 1: temperature scanners, ready to turn away anyone whose reading was
Speaker 1: too high. Green codes required even to ride the subway
Speaker 1: have become the city's most precious possession, and one that's
Speaker 1: easy to lose is Merely visiting a building around the
Speaker 1: same time as a person later found to be infected
Speaker 1: can turn them yellow. And apartment compounds still reserve the
Speaker 1: right to bar residents from leaving if cases are reported there,
Speaker 1: as they did during the lockdown. Even in the first
Speaker 1: city to confront the virus, following a containment effort as
Speaker 1: intense as any in the history of public health, the
Speaker 1: danger remains acute. Asymptomatic cases and imported cases are still risks.
Speaker 1: Wang Xinghuan, the president of one of the city's major
Speaker 1: hospitals and of the LEA shan Shan Facility, told reporters
Speaker 1: at a press conference before the latter's closing, and many
Speaker 1: residents are still susceptible. Wang's hospital gave antibody tests to
Speaker 1: all thirty six hundred of its staff, and fewer than
Speaker 1: three percent came back positive, a result that shows there's
Speaker 1: no herd immunity in Wuhan. There's only one way to
Speaker 1: durably protect the population, he said, a vaccine. Wuhan's businesses
Speaker 1: are nevertheless hoping for a safe but speedy return to
Speaker 1: conspicu was consumption. In the days before the city fully
Speaker 1: reopened for business, the sales team at a local Audi
Speaker 1: dealership gathered for their daily meeting. The twenty or so
Speaker 1: salespeople were all dressed in dark suits and face masks,
Speaker 1: standing well over a meter apart in neat columns as
Speaker 1: a manager briefed them on the day's plans. A colleague
Speaker 1: made his way through the group, spraying everyone with disinfectant
Speaker 1: as they spun around to ensure full coverage. Customers may
Speaker 1: not be kind enough to tell you if they don't
Speaker 1: feel well, so try not to bring them into the store,
Speaker 1: the manager said, just talk to them at the entrance
Speaker 1: if possible. After reopening on March twenty three, the dealership
Speaker 1: had been selling about seven cars per day, on pace
Speaker 1: with last year, despite all the restrictions. Most were relatively
Speaker 1: low end vehicles, such as the A three, which retails
Speaker 1: for about two thousand u n Twenty eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: the kind of car often bought by families to complement
Speaker 1: a bigger, fancier model. People are not willing to take
Speaker 1: public transport and on, said the marketing director, who asked
Speaker 1: to be identified by only his surname Pan, and they
Speaker 1: don't dare commute by de D, the ubiquitous ride hailing app.
Speaker 1: The focus now, Pan said, was on following up with
Speaker 1: people who had expressed interest in an Audi in the
Speaker 1: past but hadn't bought one. They might be ready to bite.
Speaker 1: The dealership was looking to expand its current staff of
Speaker 1: about one fifty and employees would soon receive the pay
Speaker 1: they'd missed during the lockdown. Another salesperson added, it's like
Speaker 1: a boom for many other businesses in Wuhan, though it's
Speaker 1: anything but. Benny Shao is director of international operations at
Speaker 1: Wuhan Boyan Paper and Plastic, which produces the kind of
Speaker 1: unremarkable but essential goods that still form the backbone of
Speaker 1: Chinese industry. In his case, their disposable cups, which Buoyan
Speaker 1: sells to US airlines and Japanese retailers, among other clients.
Speaker 1: Shall works from an office inside a dilapidated residential compound,
Speaker 1: and wearing a battered gray blazer over a green button down,
Speaker 1: he didn't quite look the part of an international dealmaker,
Speaker 1: but he beamed with pride as he showed off a
Speaker 1: glass cabinet in his office stuffed with examples of his craft,
Speaker 1: from thin plastic vessels for economy class soda to a
Speaker 1: sturdy tumbler he'd tried unsuccessfully to sell the Starbucks. The
Speaker 1: first months of the pandemic were challenging for Shaw, as
Speaker 1: they were for everyone in Wuhan. His wife, now retired,
Speaker 1: spent her career as a doctor at Chehe Hospital, one
Speaker 1: of the first to report cases of what was later
Speaker 1: identified as the coronavirus, and she'd begun hearing from colleagues
Speaker 1: in mid January about the impending crisis. Sick residents were
Speaker 1: lining up outside Scheh at ten pm in the freezing cold,
Speaker 1: many of them older people who could barely make it.
Speaker 1: Shall recalled patients were really desperately looking for help. He
Speaker 1: and his wife had stocked up on food before the
Speaker 1: lockdown began, but three weeks in they started to run out.
Speaker 1: Unlike in Europe and the U S, Wuhan's contained measures
Speaker 1: made it difficult for people to leave their buildings even
Speaker 1: to buy groceries, forcing them to rely on delivery apps,
Speaker 1: government drop offs, and neighbors who wrangled permission to go out.
Speaker 1: At one point, Chao had to spend twenty six u
Speaker 1: n almost four dollars for a single cabbage, more than
Speaker 1: triple the usual price. Some of the vegetables provided by
Speaker 1: local officials were barely edible. He returned in late March
Speaker 1: to a company in severe trouble. Orders in the first
Speaker 1: half of the year were headed for a fifty percent drop,
Speaker 1: with demand from food deliveries failing to offset the calamitous
Speaker 1: decline in air travel. The government had made some financial
Speaker 1: help available, but chall wasn't sure he'd be able to
Speaker 1: avoid layoffs back in January and February. I was expecting
Speaker 1: things to come back to normal in April, he said. Instead,
Speaker 1: I was just calling the bank this morning to tell
Speaker 1: them that I can't repay the interest on our loan.
Speaker 1: For a country that's experienced an essentially uninterrupted boom throughout
Speaker 1: the living memory of anyone younger than fifty, broad based
Speaker 1: economic pain is deeply unfamiliar. The Chinese economy shrank six
Speaker 1: point eight percent in the first quarter of the year,
Speaker 1: and the International Monetary Fund estimates it will grow just
Speaker 1: one point two percent in twenty twenty, the slowest pace
Speaker 1: of expansion since nineteen seventy six. Urban unemployment a widely
Speaker 1: scrutinized indicator of overall joblessness rose to a record six
Speaker 1: point two percent in February, before pulling back slightly in March.
Speaker 1: And it's not clear what China's business model will look
Speaker 1: like in a world where Europe, the U S, and
Speaker 1: other key markets for its goods are flirting with a depression.
Speaker 1: Chao is sixty four, part of a Chinese generation that
Speaker 1: had seen more than its share of history even before
Speaker 1: the coronavirus emerged. But he struggled to recall anything in
Speaker 1: his experience that was more dramatic, save perhaps the famine
Speaker 1: of the Great Leap Forward when he was a young child.
Speaker 1: This is the biggest crisis of my lifetime, he said.
Speaker 1: The entrance to Wuhan's Byan dan Shan Cemetery is marked
Speaker 1: by an impressive stone gate with the pagoda style roof
Speaker 1: and a frieze of a ferocious looking dragon, but in
Speaker 1: recent weeks it's been partly hidden behind a series of
Speaker 1: bright yellow crowd control barriers, surrounded by temporary metal fencing
Speaker 1: and watched carefully by police. Almost no one is permitted
Speaker 1: to enter until April, and even then access is likely
Speaker 1: to be strictly controlled. Officially, no patients in Wuhan are
Speaker 1: still dying from COVID nineteen, but the treatment of those
Speaker 1: who did pass away remains an extremely sensitive subject. On
Speaker 1: Tomb Sweeping Day in early April, when Chinese families traditionally
Speaker 1: gather to pay respects to their ancestors, Wuhan's cemeteries were
Speaker 1: kept closed. Funerals have been banned until at least the
Speaker 1: end of the month, and family members of the dead
Speaker 1: have reported pressure from government officials to mourn quickly and quietly.
Speaker 1: According to the government, these measures are purely a matter
Speaker 1: of public health because family gatherings are a potential vector
Speaker 1: for infection, but the restrictions also help Beijing avoid having
Speaker 1: funerals come a venue for people to vent anger about
Speaker 1: how the epidemic was handled, or to ask uncomfortable questions
Speaker 1: about subjects such as China's true death toll. Whatever the
Speaker 1: reasons for maintaining the band, some mental health providers in
Speaker 1: Wuhan have expressed fears that the inability to properly mourn
Speaker 1: loved ones will have deep and enduring psychological consequences. The
Speaker 1: city's residents were the first to undergo the unprecedented social
Speaker 1: shutdown that's been repeated around the world, and it seems
Speaker 1: certain to mark many of them for a long time,
Speaker 1: especially if it's compounded by a prolonged economic slump. Yeao
Speaker 1: John is among those struggling to move on the petit.
Speaker 1: Fifty year old is the founder and general manager of
Speaker 1: Wuhan Well Held Photoelectric, a manufacturer of welding helmets and
Speaker 1: protective masks that exports to France, Germany and the US.
Speaker 1: She came back to work on March thirteenth after waiting
Speaker 1: through approvals from four layers of government, including her local
Speaker 1: neighborhood committee, which took fifteen days to assess well hells
Speaker 1: of city to prevent infections. We can't afford to have
Speaker 1: a single one, Yow said in an interview at her factory.
Speaker 1: Every day the production line can run is crucial. Well
Speaker 1: Hell was trying to catch up on orders that hadn't
Speaker 1: been able to complete in the first few months of
Speaker 1: the year. Even as Yew wasn't sure her customers in
Speaker 1: lockdown overseas markets would be able to take the deliveries,
Speaker 1: she had no idea when more business would come in
Speaker 1: given what's happening to the global economy. Despite the uncertainties.
Speaker 1: She was trying to focus on work rather than what
Speaker 1: the city had just gone through. I can't see news
Speaker 1: about medical workers without crying, Yow said, choking back tears
Speaker 1: and rubbing a jade key chain attached to her phone.
Speaker 1: She was having trouble sleeping as she turned over the
Speaker 1: stories of doctors and nurses who had succumbed to COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen again and again in her head. I don't know
Speaker 1: these people, but if someone tells me what happened to them,
Speaker 1: it's devastating. These deaths aren't just numbers or strange names
Speaker 1: to me, their vivid lives. She leave that many of
Speaker 1: her neighbors and colleagues were experiencing similar emotions but might
Speaker 1: not be willing or able to talk about them. Many
Speaker 1: other people are traumatized but can't recognize the problem or
Speaker 1: express their feelings. She said. The pandemic was causing Yao
Speaker 1: to rethink her life. She spent almost half of last
Speaker 1: year on the road, often visiting clients overseas. Now, she
Speaker 1: said she wanted to spend much more time at home,
Speaker 1: keeping her family close. Her son was supposed to return
Speaker 1: to Australia for university in February, but he was unable
Speaker 1: to get there. For obvious reasons. Yow didn't want him
Speaker 1: to go back. Even after seemingly world shattering events, human
Speaker 1: behavior has a way of reverting to the mean. In
Speaker 1: the weeks after September eleven, commentators predicted the end of globalization,
Speaker 1: of the skyscraper of irony, which all needless to say, persisted.
Speaker 1: Within a couple of years of the global financial crisis,
Speaker 1: banks and homebuyers were back to arranging risky mortgages, and
Speaker 1: the very wealthy we're back to and then well beyond
Speaker 1: pre two thousand eight levels of excess. It's reasonable to
Speaker 1: think this time will be different. Hardly anyone alive today
Speaker 1: has endured a pandemic this severe, and the basic problem
Speaker 1: it's created that anyone, whether friend, family, or stranger, might
Speaker 1: be a vector for lethal infection is uniquely corrosive to
Speaker 1: the daily interactions that keep countries and economies going. An
Speaker 1: effective vaccine could be at least a year off, and
Speaker 1: given what the world has learned about how quickly a
Speaker 1: novel pathogen can shut everything down, even that might not
Speaker 1: return things to the way they were. Wuhan was the
Speaker 1: first place to traverse both sides of the COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: curve and how it changes or doesn't in the diseases
Speaker 1: aftermath will say a lot to the rest of us.
Speaker 1: Many of the city's methods won't be universally applicable. Few
Speaker 1: other governments could assemble the all seeing anti viral surveillance
Speaker 1: China is trying to put in place, even if they
Speaker 1: wanted to. Fewer still probably have populations that would tolerate it.
Speaker 1: But whatever the tactics, the key lesson of Wuhan could
Speaker 1: be that the price of beating the virus is never
Speaker 1: ending vigilance and a reordering of priorities that will be
Speaker 1: hard for many to accept. At a Starbucks in one
Speaker 1: of Wuhan's fancier shopping districts, ma Ren Wren, a thirty
Speaker 1: two year old entrepreneur who runs a small marketing agency,
Speaker 1: talked about how he was sorting out these questions for himself.
Speaker 1: The store was open, but only serving drinks to go,
Speaker 1: with customers permitted to sit at outdoor tables. Security guards
Speaker 1: were keeping a close eye on things, interrupting conversations to
Speaker 1: tell patrons to keep their masks on in between SIPs
Speaker 1: and not sit too close together. Ma who was wearing
Speaker 1: fashionably oversized glasses, a black baseball cap, and of course,
Speaker 1: a light blue medical mask, had gone to stay at
Speaker 1: his parents apartment on Januar, intending to help take care
Speaker 1: of them, but soon he began to suspe act that
Speaker 1: he might be sick. It was a time of greatly
Speaker 1: heightened emotion. No one knew the true fatality rate, and
Speaker 1: people in Wuhan were seeing reports on social media of
Speaker 1: appalling conditions in overwhelmed hospitals. I wrote my last words
Speaker 1: one night and decided to say farewell to my parents
Speaker 1: and go to the hospital alone. The next morning, Ma recalled,
Speaker 1: I knew that if I went, I couldn't necessarily expect
Speaker 1: to come back. He changed his mind at the last
Speaker 1: minute and eventually felt better, though the psychological effects lingered.
Speaker 1: He began having panic attacks, his breath short and his
Speaker 1: heart pounding. After looking up the symptoms online, he concluded
Speaker 1: that he was experiencing post traumatic stress experiences like his
Speaker 1: MA thought would make many people more introspective and more
Speaker 1: focused on those closest to them. We will put aside
Speaker 1: more time for ourselves and our families, and for the
Speaker 1: other relationships that seemed truly worth holding onto during the crisis,
Speaker 1: he said, misfortune tests the sincerity of friendship. Ma was
Speaker 1: now trying to get his company back on its feet.
Speaker 1: The government had recently sent him a tax rebate as
Speaker 1: part of its stimulus measures, but this would help only
Speaker 1: so much. Tourism has collapsed and few potential clients have
Speaker 1: much money for promotion. There's nothing to do but move on,
Speaker 1: he said. Ma had inevitably lowered his ambitions, and for
Speaker 1: the time being, he was all right with that. We
Speaker 1: worked NonStop for years, chasing every opportunity, he said. Now
Speaker 1: everyone I know has one goal for it's to survive
Speaker 1: with assistance from Gau Yen, huts Fen and Jin Chen Hong.
Speaker 1: And that's this week's cover story by Sharon Chen and
Speaker 1: Matthew Campbell, all about life in Wuhan, Carol And To
Speaker 1: read more on this story and other stories in the
Speaker 1: magazine this week, go to Bloomberg dot com and also
Speaker 1: be sure to check out our daily Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: radio show and podcast wherever you download your podcasts.