(Minghui.org) What is the year of Geng-Zi? The concept originated from the traditional Chinese 60-year chronology. People in ancient China had long noticed that natural disasters, upheavals and impactful events tended to occur in the year of Geng-Zi. Consequently, there have always been sayings in China about the Geng-Zi prophecy, Geng-Zi disaster, Geng-Zi hurdle, Geng-Zi reincarnation, etc.
As we have just entered 2020, another Geng-Zi year, we should take a look at what happened in a few Geng-Zi years in Chinese history.
In 1840, the first Opium War forced China to open its ports and cede Hong Kong to Britain, and various foreign powers began to force the weak ruling Qing Dynasty to cede territories and sign unequal treaties. This is what the Chinese people refer to as the beginning of “Hundred Years of Shame” and a Geng-Zi disaster.
In 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing, and China was pushed to the verge of being divided up. The incident is historically referred to as the “Geng-Zi National Tragedy.”
In 1960, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had been in power for 11 years, launched the “Great Leap Forward” campaign, which led to three years of famine in which around 45 million people starved to death–another Geng-Zi disaster.
We now return to the current Geng-Zi year of 2020, when the “Wuhan coronavirus” epidemic has now spread across all of China and endangered many other countries around the world. Can we pull through this Geng-Zi hurdle? The situation at the moment is rather dire.
An video posted online on February 1, 2020 showed eight corpses in yellow body bags being carried out from the Wuhan Fifth Hospital in just five minutes (Note: Yellow body bags are used for patients who died of severe infectious diseases).
On February 3, Huang, a staff member of Wuchang Funeral Home, revealed some internal conditions of his workplace to Guyu Lab, a Chinese media platform affiliated with Tencent. According to Huang, the number of deaths had increased significantly even before the Chinese New Year. He said higher-ups sent over a van and four people from Suizhou City to help cope with the increasing workload, and that from January 26, the second day of Chinese New Year, all staff members were required to go to work, with no exceptions.
“All male staff at our funeral home are picking up and moving bodies now, and female staff are answering the phones, disinfecting the funeral home, and so on,” Huang said. “We work 24 hours a day. Our four phone lines are operating 24 hours a day, … the staff are exhausted.” Huang said that outsiders could hardly imagine their heavy workload, with shifts as long as 30 hours and constantly working overnight.
Huang usually works in the office, but due to the grave situation and the rapid increase in the number of deaths, he has to join the front line picking up dead bodies. He said he was saddened to see the deceased and their family members. Some patients never got to see their family members from the moment they were hospitalized. The funeral home also canceled all mourning ceremonies. All they do now is to pick up bodies and cremate them. Family members of the deceased are expected to come and pick up the ashes when the epidemic is over.
He said he had seen videos online and knew that doctors were also working very hard and on the verge of collapse. He said the funeral home desperately needed protective equipment and hoped kindhearted people could offer some help.
Wuhan has now converted a number of large public facilities into shelter hospitals, with over 4,000 beds laid out in rows in the open space. Between each two rows of beds is a portable room divider. These include the Wuhan International Conference and Exhibition Center, Wuhan Hongshan Gymnasium, and a culture complex known as the “Wuhan Living Room.”
He Anquan, a graduate of Shanghai Second Medical University currently working in New York, told Radio Free Asia, “[The makeshift hospitals] aim to minimize the costs of controlling the possible source of infection [suspected cases]. Even patients in Wuhan's hospitals cannot be treated properly, how can they possibly provide better medical care for patients in such closed environments?”
“It is not right to put patients of suspected cases inside such facilities for isolation,” he explained, “as a closed environment without proper isolation equipment will create even better conditions for the virus to transmit.”
China has now shut down 55 cities, and the number is likely to increase. Some government premises and military compounds in Beijing have also been closed.
Harvard public health scientist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding described the current coronavirus outbreak as “thermonuclear pandemic level.” The Wuhan coronavirus is certainly a formidable hurdle in the Geng-Zi year of 2020, and how to pull through it still remains a big question for humanity as a whole.
Note: The so-called “Great Leap Forward” was a nationwide campaign started by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1958. The campaign was characterized by lies, such as false reports of rice production reaching over 5,000 kg per acre from all across China. The CCP declared that China had stored enough grain for the whole nation to last at least 50 years and mobilized the population to produce steel instead. Many peasants thus threw their tools into makeshift furnaces. Villagers across the country had free meals in their villages, and the land became deserted and barren. Starting from the Geng-Zi year of 1960, famine spread across China and lasted for three years. Tens of millions died from starvation.
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