Counting from 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic has affected the world for three years. People around the world have paid a heavy price. Many countries that have enjoyed peace and prosperity for many years may have been faced with such a severe test for the first time in decades. But from a macro-historical perspective, the new coronavirus is not really the most powerful. The great influenza about 100 years ago caused much more damage than and new coronavirus .
Many people have heard of this historical event. Due to the special time it occurred (at the end of World War I, many media implemented wartime media controls), it was not reported on a large scale until it reached Spain because Spain did not implement wartime controls. Therefore, the epidemic was named "Spanish Flu". In fact, there is no evidence that the virus originated in Spain. In fact, this flu lasted for many years. It can be simply divided into three waves, which occurred in the spring of 1918, the autumn of 1918, and the winter of 1919 to the spring of 1920. The second wave was the most lethal. According to estimates, this influenza infected about a quarter of the world's population (500 million people) at that time, and caused approximately 20 million to 100 million deaths worldwide, with a rough estimate of 50 million deaths.
The military hospital at Fort Riley in Kansas, USA, was filled.
Such a tragic result naturally profoundly affected the world and even led to the early end of World War I. However, as a Chinese, there seems to be a question: Was China affected at that time?
Judging from current history textbooks and the memory of the entire nation, it seems that we indeed lack the memory of this period of history. It seems that this pandemic has nothing to do with China and is not a major event in Chinese history. But is this really the case?
The answer is of course no. In 1918, the world had long formed a whole and all places were connected with each other. How could China be immune to this? In fact, the first wave of the epidemic spread to Taiwan, China (which was occupied by Japan at the time). The epidemic broke out in Keelung Port in early June 1918, and then spread to the entire island. According to statistics, 40,000 people died in the epidemic in Taiwan in the past two years, of which the Japanese mortality rate was 1.1% and the Han Chinese mortality rate was 3.3%.
"Taiwan Daily News" warning about the influenza epidemic, December 14, 1919
In mainland China, the epidemic was also quite serious. In 1918, the epidemic spread across China from south to north. In May of that year, more than 10,000 people in Wenzhou were infected with influenza. In June, influenza patients were first discovered among school and post office employees in Guangdong Province. Immediately afterwards, influenza also occurred in mental hospitals, seminaries, and other places. Hospitals across the province were full. In July, an epidemic suddenly broke out in Gejiu, Yunnan, and it was very serious. The epidemic has also spread rapidly in the two major cities of Shanghai and Beijing. In Shaoxing, Zhejiang, a newspaper recorded that "in one village, there are ten households and nine households, and nine out of ten people in the same family will die. The poorest households are the most common, and the cries are corresponding, and it is unbearable to hear." The coffins were sold out, and "there were countless corpses waiting to be packed." The mortality rate was as high as 10%, and the situation was tragic.
Tang Baoyue, the wife of modern diplomat Gu Weijun , contracted influenza and died when she went to Philadelphia to attend a diplomatic occasion on behalf of her husband in 1918.
How many people died in China due to this epidemic? At that time, the Chinese government was in political chaos and warlords were fighting. Accurate statistics were impossible. Some scholars analyzed in 1991 that the death toll in China at that time was between 5 million and 9 million. However, this kind of research was criticized for being imprecise. In 1998, Japanese scholar Wataru Iijima estimated the death toll in China to be between 1 million and 1.28 million based on valid information provided by Chinese port cities. However, this evaluation was also rejected by some people because this estimate was based on the belief that the epidemic had not penetrated deeply into mainland China at that time. Some reports from newspapers, post offices and missionary reports at the time showed that the influenza had indeed penetrated into mainland China and was severe in some areas of rural China. However, at that time, many Chinese people did not know what the disease was, and some people called it "bone pain disease."
There is no doubt that China was indeed hit by the epidemic at that time, with many deaths. So why does this memory seem to disappear?
The most important memory of the Chinese people from 1918 to 1920 is the May 4th Movement. Obviously, resistance to internal and external reactionary forces was the main contradiction in Chinese society at that time.
In fact, the answer is simple. The reason is: in the tragic Republic of China, this was really not a major social disaster.
For example, take today's COVID-19 epidemic. Major countries in the world have been severely affected. However, in some of the least developed and poor countries, it may be difficult for the COVID-19 to have an additional huge impact on the local area, because these places are usually hit by various disasters, and a virus with a low fatality rate really cannot make waves. Just like the single-digit death tolls in terrorist attacks in European and American countries now make headlines all over the world, the tragedy in Africa that killed hundreds of people may only be a small news item,
Today's China is civilized and wealthy, and has a reverence for life, but in 1918 At that time, people in China were really in dire straits. Every year, countless people died due to famine, war, floods, droughts, locust plagues, cholera, , plague, etc. The additional impact of the pandemic was not obvious. For the Chinese nation at that time, "plagues" were already commonplace. The mortality rate of this pandemic may be lower, so there is nothing that needs too much attention.
Refugee camps in Shandong during the famine in 1920
I will cite some of the tragic events in China at that time.
Cholera broke out in 47 counties in Henan in 1919. According to incomplete statistics, 185,251 people were infected and 46,947 died.
In 1920, North China , there was a severe drought in 17 counties in five provinces, with 30 million victims and about 500,000 deaths. At the end of the year, an earthquake occurred in Haiyuan, Gansu Province, killing 237,000 people.
In 1921, floods occurred in many provinces across the country, with more than 10 million victims and 25,000 deaths. That year, there was a famine in Hunan, also known as the Xinyou Spring Famine. Five million people suffered from starvation and tens of thousands died.
In 1922, floods, droughts, and wind disasters occurred in many places across the country, and hurricanes and tsunamis occurred in Shantou, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries.
In 1923, floods occurred in 12 provinces, killing more than 100,000 people.
There are countless such things. As for warlords' melees, bandits slaughtering villages, bandits robberies, and all kinds of armed fights, they are commonplace. Compared with these, is the flu a small thing? I have to say that this is really sad in the history of the Chinese nation.
Author: Yunfan
