On platforms like Twitter, one commenter about the show on Weibo said that “in real life, they pushed women forward” on the front lines. “In propaganda, they buried women.” The comment was liked more than 30,000 times.
The episode was the pilot of a new show, “Harms in Harms”, which dramatizes Wuhan’s war against the outbreak. Wuhan was little known outside of China before the epidemic, but the infection spread there and then became a strong warning about the dangers of the virus around the world. Frightened residents shared photos of people returning from overcrowded hospitals, and they vented their anger at officials who allowed the virus to spread uncontrollably in an attempt to hide it.
This frustration is far from the focus of the show, which was broadcast by a Chinese state broadcaster and produced by Shen Haixiong, deputy minister of the Communist Party’s publicity department. Instead, the show has “touching stories” built on the front lines of the epidemic and a sense of the Chinese people’s “courage to fight and win.”
In the Wuhan bus company scene, dozens of drivers file in the meeting room before the downdown is imposed. An official explained that the government has requested volunteers for the emergency transport team. A number of men have joined the leadership of the Communist Party cadre.
After reviewing the roster, the officer announces that the list is made up of men. “Will female Kamaraj also go ahead?” He says.
He isolated the woman sitting in the back row and asked her to volunteer. But she said her family has come a long way to visit her for the upcoming lunar new year holiday. “I really can’t,” he replies.
In response to the show, social media users began sharing screenshots of state media reports of women’s participation in the epidemic response. Many also began using the hashtag “Request Heroes in Harms to ‘Stop Earring.’ A poll asking whether the show should be canceled received more than 91,000 “yes” votes with about 6,800 votes for “no”.
