Letters offer words of encouragement

On the eve of Spring Festival, which fell on Jan 25 this year, Shanghai nurse Xu Shikun was having dinner－the most significant meal of the festival－with his wife, toddler son and parents.

But a call abruptly changed the atmosphere. The nurse, born in 1988, was asked to join the first batch of a 136-member Shanghai medical support team to go to Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak.

His wife Xia Jianglin, also a member of the medical staff, wrote an emotional letter to convey the deep feeling of love and longing seven days after his departure.

In the latest and specially-made season of Letters Alive, a highly praised cultural TV show that invites celebrities to recite remarkable correspondence, actress Michelle Ye read Xia's letter with tears in her eyes.

"Now Lele (nickname of their son) is well behaved. He always supervises his grandparents to ensure they wear facial masks while going outside … He always warns us to be careful as there are 'monsters' (referring to the virus) outside, and proudly says his father is a hero who's fighting the 'monsters'," writes Xia, the devoted wife, in her letter.

The special season, with each of the 15 episodes spanning around five minutes, was released on the streaming platform Tencent Video since Monday.

Unlike previous content, which were produced in a finely designed stage surrounded by an audience to re-create the scenes when the letters were written, the new episodes are all shot by the celebrities in their own homes.

Consecutively from 2017 to last year, the previous three seasons had respectively earned 8.9, 9.2 and 9.1 points on Douban, one of the country's most popular review sites.

Guan Zhengwen, the show's chief director, says the specially tailored season has selected the 15 letters from hundreds of letters and correspondence, as the crew wanted to comprehensively portray those people from different backgrounds who are battling the epidemic.

Upcoming episodes, which will be hosted by more stars, including actors Li Guangjie, Hai Yitian and singer Ji Jie, include letters conveying respect to a delivery man and a family's encouragement to a soldier who is dispatched to Wuhan.

One of the highlighted letters is written by Cai Yi, a doctor from the Central Hospital of Wuhan, to mourn a shopkeeper who died of novel coronavirus infection.

In Cai's letter, he recalls the shopkeeper Lin Jun－who had run a convenience store in the hospital for many years－as a nice and sincere person who likes to help others.

"We paid little attention to ordinary people like Lin in our daily lives. But we suddenly realized how important they were when they passed away," writes the emotional Cai.

Explaining how he decided to lead his team－including another four young doctors－to take an additional 14-day shift, Cai writes: "Even if there could be enough substitutes to take over our job, I don't want to retreat and rest. I just want to work at the hospital to save as many patients as possible … I may get infected one day … but I have no fear."

China has implemented an isolation policy to urge people to avoid unnecessary trips, thus letter writing is one of the most important means to express feelings, says Guan.

"But it was a big problem for us to figure out how to produce the new season. It's obviously impractical to build stages and organize an audience as well as to use professional facilities to shoot the scenes," adds Guan.

With footage shot by stars through their own smartphones, the crew has worked on a tight schedule to edit the videos by adding music and news photos.

"It only took four days from when we decided to make such a season to when the first episode was released online. Most of our young colleagues slept only a few hours and the stars also overcame difficulties such as learning by themselves how to manipulate light during filming," says Guan.

"For us, the new content might be a bit coarse, but it will be part of the collective memory to commemorate this special time," he concludes.