Sars effect

Sars effect
Peoples Republic of Desire
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
by Annie Wang, SCMP PRD

SARS HAS CHANGED Niuniu's life. Gone are the carefree days of decadent, lewd banquets with 10 people eating 20 to 30 dishes. These days, she stays at home and prepares frozen dumplings.

Gone are the days when a gang of friends might raid her house, drink up all of her liquor-cabinet's stock and finish every morsel in her fridge. Yinsi, or privacy - once such a foreign concept - becomes a notion that everybody embraces now. People don't show up at your house unexpectedly any more. Instead, the circle of friends communicates mostly by telephone. They forward and copy e-mails of Sars-related news and rumours to Niuniu as everyday greetings.

Niuniu, the city girl known to crawl from one party to another, now has time to read, write, meditate and even to practise yoga. Instead of window-shopping for fun, she orders everything from books to noodle soups on-line.

As for the life of her friends: Lulu plans to hold a Mask Fashion theme exhibition when the Sars outbreak is over. But at the moment, she hides at home, writing her first soap opera, Love In The Era Of Sars. She locks herself in the bedroom and writes for 18 hours a day. Her mother leaves food at the door for her to pick up.

Beibei is thinking about holding an outdoor concert outside a big hospital when Beijing is clean from Sars. At the moment, all the concerts her company has sponsored have been cancelled. She has no work to do. As for her personal life, her marriage becomes monogamous for the first time in seven years. Both she and her husband, Chairman Hua, have temporarily closed contact with their lovers due to the fear of Sars. Chairman Hua, feeling bored, is learning to cook for fun. From time to time, Beibei returns home to find him in the kitchen.

CC has written her first will after her parents sent her theirs from Hong Kong. She spends most of her time talking with a doctor in England via Yahoo Messenger. He is her cyber-romantic interest these days.

The good news is that the relationship is absolutely safe. The bad news is there's no sex.

Niuniu realises that her and her friends' lives aren't the only things that have changed so dramatically; society has changed as well.

Vegetarianism is another cool concept. Restaurants that did lucrative business in the butchery of wild animals have closed down. Some of the owners see Sars as the animal kingdom's revenge on greedy humans. The two-footed and upright dominant species has been brought to heel by the forces of nature.

The streets are kept cleaner with the expansion of the government's cleaning forces. The crowds in the shopping malls are getting smaller. There are fewer traffic jams. Shops and restaurants close earlier, at about 7pm.

Doctors, never part of the upper-class professions in China, become more respected. So do the whistle blowers.

Bar girls, karaoke girls and even street-walkers have had to rethink their methods because clients are few and far between.

Niuniu heard that the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen has also seen a major reduction in crossings. Many ''second wives'' in Shenzhen have to endure lengthy waits for conjugal visits by their Hong Kong men.

She feels that, in a way, Sars has made China more like America: cleaner, less crowded, with slower economical growth and environmentally conscious É even the boredom and isolation created by staying at home is similar.

Her major reason for returning to China from the United States was to avoid the boring, predictable, repetitious suburban life in America. What she craved for was the primitive passion in China. But now it has transferred into a deadly epidemic and she feels bored to death in the heart of the country.

One thing that bothers Niuniu a lot is that everybody has become faceless. It is becoming harder to find a new object of desire when all you can see are the eyes and foreheads of members of the opposite sex.

One day, as she walks towards a convenience store in the neighbourhood to buy bottled water, Niuniu stops to watch a public-health official issue commands to his staff, all of whom wear protective outerwear. When the official removes his surgical mask, Niuniu gasps.

''Look at that, he's a double for Ricky Martin,'' she exclaims. The outer world and society may indeed have changed drastically, but inside Niuniu - certain things never change.

Not enough

i know i haven't written or added anything in almost a week! partly from being swamped with my work, and partly from an urge to disconnect myself somewhat from the flow. despite that, there were quite a number of interesting articles that i collected in my article link file. especially the article on north korean defectors, efforts at spam legislation, and a Newshour piece on blogging. i feel like i am so behind. but will have to weed them out and post them later.

went to the tail end of the Costume Benefit at the Met the other night. they just get worse and worse every year. sometimes, i don't even know why i still go to the parties, as i get so bored.

anyway, another week goes by. and what have i done? not enough. not enough.

Elliot Erwitt

"i deplore what's happened to our craft which has been undermined by people changing pictures with [electronic or digital means], which undermines the entire good thing about photography which is supposed to be a representation about what *is* rather than what you can make up in the laboratory."

-- elliot erwitt, 7 march 03, with melissa block on NPR's All Things Considered