SARS wars: how a deadly disease is helping Chinese journalists fight Party censors.

• Author: Fallows, Tad

NOWHERE IS THE EFFECT OF THE SARS epidemic more apparent than in Beijing. And nowhere in Beijing is it more strikingly evident than in the city's bustling public transportation system. When I first arrived in early April, I moved into an apartment conveniently situated along Municipal Bus Line 10. What I hadn't counted on was quite how many of my 14 million fellow residents I'd have to compete with. Thanks to an automobile tax that doubles the price of cars, public transportation literally overflows with humanity. I was nearly late to my first day of work at a Beijing news magazine, as bus after jam-packed bus rolled past my departure queue. Several days later, I wandered through some of Beijing's old Hutong neighborhoods, brimming with pride at having mastered the system well enough to get home--until three buses came and went, each so flail I couldn't squeeze through the doors. Eventually, I gave in and hailed a taxi.

But all that changed after SARS. My first inkling of the coming panic came a week later when, at a World Health Organization press briefing about the situation in faraway Guandong Province, a German reporter, like the soothsayer in Julius Caesar, suddenly began screaming, "I thought you were doctors and not diplomats! Why don't you tell us the government is still lying about Beijing?" My fellow reporters largely ignored him. But over the next several weeks, rumors of a cover-up became more common, and as they did, the city gradually shut down. Suddenly there was no wait for a table at a popular teahouse. Then food deliveries started arriving at my office, to prevent any lunchtime exposure. Each day something else closed: schools, movie theaters, Internet cafes, barbershops, the Forbidden City. Rather than panic, people watched the energy gradually drain from the city.

For me, this process culminated one day in early May; when I descended into the Dongsi Shitiao subway station at 9:30 p.m.--and found myself completely alone. The newspaper girls had departed days earlier. And when I boarded a train, I encountered just two other passengers.

At the time, SARS had infected barely 1500 people and caused fewer than 100 deaths in Beijing; tragic, certainly, but not enough to singlehandedly shutter a city of 14 million. What prompted the alarm was ignorance stemming directly from government censorship and misinformation. As rumors leaked out of military hospitals, it became increasingly clear that the authorities were lying. But no...