Villagers from Luyi County in China’s heartland normally would have started preparing for the Lunar New Year celebration weeks ago.
Residents in hundreds of villages that make up the county of 1 million people in Henan province would be extracting oil from home-grown peanuts, a key local crop, and butchering pigs, geese and chickens in anticipation of the annual holiday. Spring festival couplets, the red scrolls proclaiming good wishes for the coming year, would decorate their doors for the event starting Jan. 22.
This year, there’s only the ominous silence that’s accompanied waves of COVID-19 around the world. Residents walking through one village’s wheat fields are all headed in the same direction: Wang Jian’s clinic, the sole place to get basic care. Everyone else is in bed battling the virus that’s spreading like wildfire, or staying home in hopes of avoiding it.