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Caixin

Wuhan will suffer long after virus is gone: 'Battlefield' diarist

Author Fang Fang discusses long-term effect of lockdown in coronavirus epicenter

Novelist-turned-celebrity blogger Fang Fang. 

WUHAN, China -- Shortly after midnight on March 25, novelist-turned-celebrity blogger Fang Fang published the final episode of her Wuhan lockdown diary, called a "battlefield diary" by some. The 64-year-old has been a writer most of her career, but never expected to become one of the nation's most-read bloggers in late January, when she started writing a diary from the epicenter of an outbreak that would go on to become a pandemic.

Between Jan. 25, the first day of the Chinese New Year, and March 24, the day Wuhan announced its lockdown would end on April 8, Fang Fang published an online diary for 60 days, expressing her views on the unprecedented public disaster that began in her adopted hometown in Central China. Her posts were published in Caixin's blog section. In the final installment, read by millions, she quoted a Biblical verse: "I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith."

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