Tough quarantine measures have spread across China

WEIJI VILLAGE is a bleak spot in winter, even without the disease-control roadblock just up the road complete with medical staff in blue protective suits, using pistol-shaped electronic thermometers to check the foreheads of drivers and passengers for signs of fever. The village’s colour palette ranges from the grey of the sky to flat green fields of winter wheat and the brown of mud-filled potholes so deep that ordinary cars cannot pass. China is full of rural scenes like this one, in a forgotten corner of Henan province. Weiji’s only distinction is that it is a border village, a short walk from Hubei, an inland province of nearly 60m people (roughly the population of Italy) that has been all but sealed off from the outside world to slow the spread of a dangerous new coronavirus.

Chinese cities brim with migrant workers from villages like Weiji, hauling bricks on building sites or delivering fast food on electric mopeds. During China’s rapid growth of the past 40 years, such people have helped spread wealth to the countryside. They send money back to home villages with taps on a smartphone app—for China is way ahead of the West when it comes to mobile payments—and return in person for the lunar new year, laden with gifts of city-bought clothes and fancy foods. Not this year, however.