While’s it’s been a week of relatively good news for China as regards Covid-19, in Hubei Province they might as well be celebrating. This morning, 20 March, saw the border town of Honghu join others in the province in lifting the lockdown.
On 23 January, the city of Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, was quarantined in a move that became known overnight as the Wuhan Lockdown (武汉封城). The world looked on and gasped as other cities in Hubei Province suffered the same fate. The World Health Organisation (WHO) called the move, “unprecedented in public health history”.
Almost 2 months later, on Wednesday of this week, Hubei’s Covid-19 task force announced that all anti-epidemic traffic checkpoints, province wide, are to be removed. Entry and exit checkpoints for Wuhan and the province as a whole continue.
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Today, it’s the turn of the people of Honghu to breathe that long-awaited sigh of relief, as they heard the news that Circular No. 12 from the the town’s governing body would come into effect at 9 am this morning, effectively ending the lockdown.
As reported this morning by The Paper, the Circular, that is similar to those being issued elsewhere, calls for:
- continued strong management and control over exits from Hubei;
- less formal procedures to report those returning;
- removal of all checkpoints on national and provincial trunk routes, as well as those on all streets, lanes, communities and residential areas in the city, together with those in towns, villages and communities in rural areas;
- residents to use the health code to enter and exit residential areas;
- community management to do a good job in registration, temperature monitoring and other control work;
- resumption of business by classification and in sequence;
- gradual restoration of public transport.
Honghu is hardly a well-known place. Yet, the county-level town is important for a number of reasons. Coming under the juristriction of Jingzhou, the town sits on the Yangtze River and derives its name from the adjacent Red Lake (洪湖; Honghu). This section of the Yangtze also forms the border with neighbouring Hunan Province.
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With a population of a little under one million, Honghu derives much of its economic activity from the nearby lake, producing 40 kinds of fish and a huge variety of flora, including lotus, reed and black algae. The removal of the lockdown shall be a big step in getting the lake back into production.
The city’s foreign connection comes in the form of New Zealand political activist, Rewi Alley. A member of the Chinese Communist Party, Alley carried out flood relief work in Honghu in 1932 and was instrumental in establishing the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives that promoted grassroots industrial and economic development.
In the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries hangs a painting of Alley. Elsewhere, in her 1985 New Year Honours, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him “Companion of the Queen’s Service Order” for community service.
