The First week of February

Turn February, the day is noticeably longer. When I exit the building around 5:45 pm this week, I am no longer enveloped in the pitch dark as it was months ago. The night sky is still dim, but the vanishing sunset leaves the sky glowing, and the western corner afar hidden behind the tall buildings radiates in orange or pink color, a sight delighting me for a moment before I head home.

The temperature plummeted 10F degrees from Sunday February 2, thanks to the powerful cold wind sweeping across the area for two consecutive days. It finally died down as the week progressed to Wednesday. But the coldness lingered. At lunch time on Wednesday, as I walked out of the heated building towards my car for a nap, I had to wrap my arms around my chest to brace for it. Though the sun tried hard to ward off the coldness, the air was still chilled by wind. I hurriedly ducked in the car parked under the shade, as the experience tells me that even in the coldest season of the year, I cannot stay long in the car if the sun relentlessly penetrates it. But not that day. Shutting myself in the tightly closed car for 15 minutes, I still felt cold and was unable to fall asleep. I decided to move my car into the sunny spot.  The car radio was automatically turned on at the ignition. A live broadcasting of impeachment trial over the radio was echoing in the car. A female voice was calling each senator’s name for his or her vote, and then repeated over the micro phone: “Mr. Alexander, Guilty(?); Mr. Brown, Not Guilty(？);  Mr. Brussel, Guilty(?); Mr. Clair, Not guilty?……”. At the beginning, I attempted to count if “Guilty” would outnumber “Not Guilty”, but soon this intermittently monotonous repetition bored me, and I turned the radio off.

I lay down again, letting the warm sunlight shower all over me.  Not long the blood seemed to be running, and so was my mind. I recalled the videos Mom posted on Wechat family group in the morning, a scene of furious locals yelling and fighting in the supermarket. Caged indoors all days for weeks now with food supply running out, these bad-tempered and edgy people scrambled to the stores for replenishment, culminating in riots and unrest.

Then on late Thursday, the breaking news of Dr Li’s death sparked raging seethe across the nation. The outpouring of grief and anger flooded over the strictly censored media.  The simmering undercurrent agony, once erupted, was channeled into criticizing the bureaucracy and its suppression of eight outspoken doctors or whistleblowers, who warned of a new deadly virus before the epidemic became rampant.  Li wenliang, an otherwise ordinary eye doctor, is remembered as a hero, whose death is a tragic toll.

But for whom the bell tolls? It tolls for us.  “A healthy society should not have just one voice” is what Dr. Li left behind awakeningly for us, in the time when we cry for his loss.  A different voice shall never and can never be silenced.

二月的枇杷和洒落一地的金雨花