The People’s Republic of Desire

75 In the Time of SARS

SARS has changed my life.

Gone are the days with decadent lewd banquets with ten people eating twenty dishes. At home, I cook frozen dumplings.

Gone are the days that a gang of friends raids my house, drinking up my collection and taking away everything I store in my fridge. Yinsi, or privacy, once such a foreign concept, becomes a notion that everybody embraces. They don't show up unexpectedly. Instead, they talk to me by e-mails.

I am the city girl who used to crawl from one party to another. Now I have time to read, write and meditate, and do yoga! Instead of window shopping for fun, I order everything from books to noodle soups online!

As for my friends, they do the same. Lulu plans to do an exhibition called Mask Fashions after the SARS epidemic is over. But at the moment, she hides at home, writing her first soap opera Love in the Time of SARS. She locks herself in the bedroom and writes eighteen hours a day. Her mother is back in Beijing to take care of her and leaves food at the door for her to pick up. Beibei is thinking of holding an outdoor concert outside a big hospital. At the moment, all the concerts her company has sponsored have been canceled, including Rolling Stone's first China trip. As for her personal life, for the first time in seven years her marriage has become monogamous. Both she and her husband, Chairman Hua, have temporarily shut down their extramarital contacts. Chairman Hua is even learning to cook. From time to time, Beibei comes home to find him in the kitchen. CC has written her first will after her parents sent their own will to her from Hong Kong. She spends most of her time talking with a doctor in England via Yahoo Messenger. He is her cyberromance.

I realize that it's not just the lives of my friends and me that have changed so dramatically, but the whole society as well.

Vegetarianism is cool now. Restaurants that used to make a lucrative business by butchering wild animals have lost money and closed down. Some see SARS as the revenge of the animal kingdom on greedy human beings.

Bar girls, karaoke girls, and travel agents are out of jobs.

I feel that SARS has made China more like the States: people flush the toilet after they use it. They wash their hands more often. They don't stand as close when they speak. They tend not to flock into places anymore. Shops and restaurants close earlier than before – around seven o'clock. Doctors have gained respect. The economy has slowed down, and the country is cleaner, less crowded, more environmentally conscious – the slow, laid-back pace seems a little unnatural here.