Corona

Corona

The woman had to go, I decided. I wasn’t in the rideshare from Guangzhou to Foshan by some coincidental occurrence. It was Spring Festival and many people were traveling all over China at the time, mostly to visit family.

She was pretty, dressed well, but probably not too rich, as she wouldn’t be sharing a ride if that was the case. I wasn’t sure if she had a mental illness or she was just an idiot. They are one in the same anyhow, on a certain level (No, I am not saying mentally ill people are idiots, but I am saying idiots are mentally ill, by definition, even if not currently recognized as falling into that category).

Before she started into her diatribe, she had had some foresight to ask where we were all from.

“Canada,” I lied. That’s still a tricky lie, as a lot of these people were currently upset with Canadians due to the whole Huawei debacle. Still, it’s usually better than telling people I’m American, what with the trade war and all, and I can’t fake the fuck with British or Australian accents, even though most non-native speakers of English cannot discern particular accents, in the same way I usually can’t tell the difference between regional accents among those who speak Chinese. I was speaking Mandarin, but had no idea if anyone spoke English in the car.

When she was satisfied that there were no Americans in the vehicle, she began: “Okay, this virus is no accident. It was started by the US Government.”

“That doesn’t seem plausible,” stated the driver. Good for him. I might let him live.

“You think the US isn’t capable of doing something like that?” asked the woman angrily, she didn’t seem to be the sort of person that tolerated people who disagreed with her nonsense, or introduced logic into an illogical rant.

“I’m sure they are, but why would they decide to release a virus in Wuhan? Why not in Beijing?”

“You are just a stupid driver, probably not educated, so I will explain. We would know for sure that it was the US government if they did it in Beijing. Besides our superior security would stop them if they tried that in Beijing. Wuhan is centrally located, so it would be easier to spread about the nation.” The woman carried on with crazier nonsense for a bit and insulted the driver again for good measure.

The driver persisted, “That would be inhumane, if a government were truly capable of doing that.”

“Inhumane? You think the US is humane? They start a new war every day. They are not at all humane. They plan on dominating the entire world and they won’t stop just to be humane.”

I took a moment to look at the other passenger, another woman, of an age with the overly opinionated one, but less pretty. She seemed totally engrossed in her smart phone and I wasn’t sure if she was even paying attention to the conversation.

I considered the old idiom about a pot and a kettle and a color, but wasn’t sure if it would translate well. I also briefly considered bringing up the atrocities of Mao, but that is a delicate subject that could easily turn the driver and the other woman against me. I had to minimize the casualties that would play out at the end of the conversation, as that is my job. I decided on truth, and the public were given this particular truth: “The news has stated that the virus started with people eating wild, diseased animals, probably bats.” Now, there was a bit more that I didn’t bother to add: it wasn’t one-hundred percent confirmed that bats were actually to blame, but bats often carry the virus and bats were sold at the fish market that the disease had been traced to. The viral video of people eating bats was proved not to have even come from the Wuhan area at all, where the virus started.

The driver seemed to have smiled, although it was difficult to tell with the mask on, but you can look at the corners of a person’s eyes to see a smile too, and nodded as he made eye contact with me through the rear-view mirror.

The woman looked at me disgustedly. I was curious if she would quit or continue her argument in a ridiculous fashion. She opted for the latter: “The Canadian media? Who cares what they say? The US media? They will say—”

“The Chinese media.” I interrupted.

“Well, they are just saying that not to cause alarm, or they might not know the true cause. I’m sure our government knows.”

The driver decided to give his two cents again, “If that were true, then the US government would be killing its own people. The virus has already reached the US.”

“No, the virus is a chemical that the US engineered not to hurt Americans, only Chinese.”

There were two extremely ludicrous things about her last statement. One was that Americans are not a race. I’m not sure if it is possible to create a virus that affects certain races, even though there are diseases that seem prone to specifically infect some races or a particular gender more than others. However, I know for a fact that you can’t create a virus that only affects a particular nationality, or create one that a particular nationality is immune to. Viruses don’t understand the human concepts of property and borders. There was another problem with her statement, having to do with her usage of the word, “Chemical,” but the driver addressed that one.

“A disease isn’t a chemical. It can be a weapon, but it is not a chemical weapon, it is a biological weapon.”

“No,” she insisted, “When someone creates a disease, it is a chemical.” Well, that was her mindset, instead of simply stating that she made a mistake in word usage, she opted to firmly dig in and not budge.

How do you argue with complete nonsense? You don’t. “Where did you get all this information?” I asked.

“It’s not hard to figure out,” she said, “They probably did the same things with SARS a few years ago.” That was why my employers put me on this job. The rumors caused some mild social disruptions during SARS, and my employers don’t like that.

“Okay, did someone else tell you about it, or did you think of it on your own?” I was concerned that this was a bit invasive, but I had to know.

“She looked at me suspiciously for a short period of time, then replied, “Of course I realized it on my own. I’m not stupid.” That was great, if true, making my job much easier.

The Chinese state-controlled media is usually pretty efficient at telling people what to think, but sometimes things get a little out of hand, when citizens take the information they are given and run with it, there are sometimes some unwanted consequences. For example, on the anniversary of the Japanese invasion, it is not uncommon for a few citizens to go out into the night vandalizing Japanese cars, even though the owners of said cars are actually Chinese.

“So...no one else told you this? You just made it up?” I asked. I would have to pry some more information from her later under much different circumstances.

“I didn’t make it up. It’s just history repeating itself.” She seemed to get upset. She probably felt like she was getting ganged up on. I imagined that she felt that way quite a bit, probably every time she opened her mouth in front of people who graduated, or even partially attended, high school.

I glanced over at the other woman, the quiet one. She still seemed preoccupied with her telephone. I had to ask, “What do you think?”

Initially, the woman didn’t seem to realize I was speaking to her, maybe she didn’t even realize people were talking. After a few moments she looked up from her phone, then it seemed to register that she realized she was asked a question. I could almost see her brain put the conversation on rewind, to hear the last bit. “I’m just going to listen to the news.” She glanced at each of us in turn, then went back to her phone.

That was a good answer. That’s the answer my employers want for now. I work for a rather prominent government.

“The media always says what the government wants it to say, and how can we even know for sure unless we get a VPN?” The driver piped up again. I looked at him, all I could see were his eyes, as he was the only one in the car wearing a face mask, a blue, surgical mask. He had some slight wrinkles around his eyes, and I guessed he was in his early to mid-thirties.

This wasn’t extremely bad, but it was slightly troubling. He wasn’t going against my directives just yet, but that conversation could meander down a path that my employers wouldn’t like. My employers currently want the people of China to believe what is being stated, to take all the correct precautions against the virus, and to remain calm. They don’t want the disease spreading and they certainly don’t want a particular rumor spreading, hence me.

I decided to say something: “Can we really trust any media? If the media is state run, then it is a propaganda tool for the government. If it is privately run, sure, it may attack the government, but if a corporation is a sponsor of this privately-run media, then the corporation, if powerful enough, can ensure that it never gets attacked or even gets a second glance toward it. This corporation can even buy it.” It’s actually more complicated than that because you also have to take in political agendas of the powerful corporations and their wants and goals, but I decided not to elaborate too much on that.

“So, you are saying that we can’t trust anything the media says?” The driver was intelligent, I thought. Not at all what the woman accused him of being.

“Just because a media outlet can be corrupted, and they all can, doesn’t mean they also can’t speak the truth. I am sure that most of the time they are. You just have to look at the source. If you are looking at media from other countries then you know they are not blaming the Chinese government. State run medias are not blaming corporations for the virus. We have to assume the speculation on how it was started is true for now.”

The driver nodded and seemed to agree.

The woman shook her head, almost violently. “What do you know? Canadians don’t know anything. They just do whatever the US tells them to do.” That wasn’t exactly true. “The US government will do anything it can to keep its power, including killing innocent people.” That one was true, to an extent, but I couldn’t admit it at that time, and all the nonsense she was spouting about was certainly not true of the virus. Even if it happened to be true, I had a job to do.

The woman had to go, but that wasn’t my only job. I needed to do a bit of research into what the others in the car were thinking, and if they were being troublesome, then they had to go as well. However, the other two seemed okay, not promoting radical ideas.

No one said anything for a few minutes, but that wasn’t enough for the woman. “If you all want to live in the dark ages, that is fine. The US government is constantly trying to undermine our own government. Did you know that all people are actually Chinese? All cultures are built on China. We have 6,000 years of civilization. I hate to be the one to tell you, Canadian, but all cultures are built on China.”

I just smiled and pretended to tune out. Of course, I listened, it’s my job...and she was saying some more bizarre shit that was interesting to listen to.

The driver was curious and asked her to explain. She went on about how the ancient civilizations of the Western world were all faked because they were embarrassed to come from China. The Parthenon, the Coliseum, the Egyptian pyramids, all faked in an attempt to create “fake” histories of cultures. Really, in her mind, all other cultures were only 300 years old.

That was harmless. The theory was actually widely known, if not widely accepted. There were some Chinese “scholars” who have promoted that theory in the past. Most people sincere about the study of history (including most Chinese scientists and historians and laymen and even those of severely low IQs) find such overwhelming evidence to the contrary that they won’t even bother debating the nutjobs who claim it to be true.

More time went by until we arrived at my stop. My stop was carefully decided in advance I planned it out in conjunction with the woman’s. I already knew where the woman would stop, a mere block away. As I exited the vehicle the driver nodded at me as I waved at him. The phone woman completely ignored me, and the other scowled.

It was a brisk walk to catch up with the car. If you run in public, then you draw attention to yourself, so that was not an option. I was two hundred yards back when it pulled over again, and the woman got out. I began following her home. I would also probably have to take care of her entire family. China is a severely family-oriented culture, and the strange behavior and the particular theory that my employers weren’t fond of probably didn’t begin and end with her. I pictured her entering the apartment and saying, “I’m home, mom and dad! I have brought our demise with me!” They wouldn’t be the first family wiped out in China around the time of the virus, but it would be the virus that did most of the killing, not me.

My employers are quite powerful, a strong government, as I have already stated. You might be thinking the US government, but you would be wrong. They currently have no dog in this fight. My employers want to control the information related to the virus. I work for the Chinese.

People often disappear in this country, if they disagree too dramatically with things that they are not supposed to disagree with. Who do you think makes them disappear?

It was going to be a long night.