Wen Chen's View

  Li Wenliang was an ordinary Chinese young professional before December 30, 2019. The 33-year-old doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital had a successful career and a happy family. Basketball and fried chicken were his favorites. He was a typical young Chinese elite who enjoyed life and followed every government instruction - no matter how confusing or contradictory the instructions can be. He had been a diligent and honest student throughout his life. As a Chinese Communist Party member, he fully supported the authority's crackdown on Hong Kong protesters. He did not expect anything to go wrong, like most Chinese who regard themselves as "doing well" under the Communist regime.   At 4 pm on December 30, Ai Fen, another doctor in Wuhan Central Hospital, sent a picture of a patient report to an internal medical chat group. The report indicated unknown pneumonia caused by a "SARS-like" virus. At 5:17 pm, Li Wenliang forwarded the picture to another medical worker's...

Twenty years ago, a colleague commented that my homeland China had "free doctors," and it was a better system than the U.S. I was so surprised that a Ph.D. from a top university in the U.S. had such an impression. I grew up in China, but I had never seen a free doctor anywhere. The whole education system and the entire mainstream media system gave a wrong impression of China to Americans. My daughters learned little about Chinese history in their high school history class. Unless they major in Asian Studies in college, I doubt that they will know much about the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) history from the American education system. College Board, the company creating AP curriculum and SATs, has collaborated with the Chinese government in getting the material. Quite a few universities, including Standford and UCLA, teach Chinese curriculum via Confucius Institute , a Chinese language program sponsored by the Chinese government. It is not hard to understand why Confuci...

    The Huanan Seafood Market   1/1/2020: Huanan Seafood Market was closed and cleaned up. 3/5/2020: Local authority completely remodeled Huanan Seafood Market. 5/12/2020: The Chinese Disease Control Center said animal samples from the market (collected between 1/1 - 1/12/2020) had no infection of SARS-CoV-2, thus ruled out the possibility that the Huanan Seafood Market was the origin of COVID-19.   Biosafety in China   2004: SARS virus escaped twice from laboratories in China. 2015: Wuhan Institute of Virology published their successful research on whether they can genetically modify a bat coronavirus to infect human cells. The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells. 9/18/2019: Wuhan held an emergency response drill for "Novel Coronavirus." 1/3/2020: A Chinese scientist, Li Ning, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental animals to local markets.  2/1...

  A ladybug can eat 50 aphids per day. They are best friends for an organic garden. Our roses used to suffer from aphids every spring.  If we did not spray pesticides, a whole plant would be gone within days because aphids propagate at a seemingly exponential speed. After we decided to have a 100% organic garden, the first test we faced was when aphids came back to the roses. I went to Home Depot and came back with a package of 1,500 live ladybugs. My father-in-law, a life-time farmer from China, curiously looked at the bugs and shook his head. "They will be all gone within hours," said he, "it is not going to work!" Strictly following the instruction, I released the ladybugs to the rose bushes, like a well-trained professional biologist. Then I patiently waited for the results. Nothing magical happened when I checked the roses on the second day. There were only a couple of ladybugs left. I cannot tell if the aphids were under control. After another two days of weig...

Medical Workers   12/1 - 12/30/2019: Wuhan hospitals received at least 27 cases of "unidentified" pneumonia. The virus, identified via genome sequence (at least nine samples), is a "SARS-like" (82% identical to SARS) coronavirus. 12/30/2019 ~4 pm: Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, alerted her classmates on WeChat about the new SARS-like virus without disclosing patient detail. 12/30/2019 5:17 pm: Dr. Li Wenliang forwarded Ai Fen's warning to a WeChat doctor group, reminding others to take protection. The message quickly spread on social media. 12/31/2019 1:30 am - 4 am: Local authority called Li Wenliang to a meeting, warned him not to "spread the rumor," and threatened to fire him.  12/31/2019 - 1/3/2020: Eight doctors, including Li Wenliang, received warnings from the authority. They signed statements admitting that they "spread lies." Chinese National TV reported the eight doctors' reprimand and a...