Hello again and welcome back to Britain under the Microscope. Hello, Anlan.

Hello, everybody.

Today we're going to do a special episode of this segment faced with the pandemic that is COVID-19. Now the whole world is really busy coping and finding out measures to contain it. Anlan,we know that you're from London and I've been reading and watching news from London. It is getting quite serious there.

Yes, it is. I've been in Beijing for the whole time. And now London has become quite serious now. There are social distancing measures put in place, people working from home. Many of the quarantine measures that other countries have seen, including China, have now started to appear in the UK.

The thing is this whole virus outbreak has turned into a pandemic which is basically not seen in our lifetime even in probably our parents lifetime. But one thing I have noticed is that you would usually expect people to panic in this kind of situation. But if you look at some of the news about the UK or if you look at social media messages, you constantly see this banner that says keep calm and carry on. That particular message is associated with Britain, right? Because I keep seeing it again and again, even before this whole outbreak.

That's because it's linked to a time where the UK faced a massive crisis, faced a massive challenge, which was called the blitz.

The blitz. That's a war reference, right?

So many politicians, many newspapers, many people refer to something called the blitz spirit.

And blitz, that was second world war.

The blitz was the bombing campaign against the UK by the Nazi Luftwaffe.

That was between 1940 and 1941?

It was just after France had surrendered, and the United States and Russia were not in the war. So the German army was only about 20 miles, so roughly about 30 kilometers across the sea from the UK.

So back then that was a really dark and dangerous period for the UK.

Very much so.

But why is keep calm and carry on related to blitz? Who came up with the whole slogan?

It was the government,the government expected that society would collapse in the face of bombing. You have to remember that back then people didn't really understand what would happen if there was huge bombing on a very large scale. It was quite new.

And it's understandable that people were really scared.

Yep, and they put forward these posters, but they actually didn't put them forward in the end. The sign wasn't actually shown during the war.

Wasn't it?

No, it was found only a few years ago in a government warehouse. Those posters were only to be used if there was an invasion.

Oh, and it was never used.

It was never used. So that message has always been associated with the blitz, and also what we call the blitz spirit.

So the blitz spirit essentially is just as the slogan says, keep calm and carry on, no matter what kind of adversity you face.

So you have to remember that it was a terrifying time. People, especially in London, were bombed almost every night. I still remember the stories from my grandparents.

They lived through.

They lived through it. They were from London, and they lived quite close to the centre of London, which was one of the primary targets. And there were stories about people being bombed. People not sure what was gonna happen the next night. They all happened at night. It very rarely happened during the day. And many people had to sleep in the London underground. Lots of people were bombed out, so their homes were destroyed.

China is a nation that lived through its own share of wars. Personally I've never had the experience, but it's so hard to imagine how people could manage that kind of calm spirit during times like this. But why is it used now? It is not exactly wartime, I know there's a virus, but it's not really war.

It is being used now because it was seen as a time during which people were very stoic.

Stoic. What does that mean? STOIC?

Stoic or stoical, it's a philosophy that you accept whatever is happening to you, you don't let it affect your emotions.

I remember one of the earlier episode we did when we discussed the movie Dunkirk. And then you mentioned that there is particular part of the British psyche, the British mentality, which is referred to as stiff upper lip.

That is seen as an ideal adhere to that people should behave in such a way that they don't show their emotions. They are able to accept everything that...

Able to endure everything and pull through.Would you say that this mentality is still very central to the British psyche?

I think it's an ideal, it's what we would hope to be. In some cases, it's difficult. People are human.

This is something I wanted to ask. It is an ideal spirit. It is an ideal situation. You want people to keep calm. But in face of bombing, in face of pandemic, people are still people, human, they are human, they'll be scared, they'll be irrational, they can be selfish. So did this actually happen during the war?

Yeah, it did. You have to think that back then, there was a lot of censorship. There was quite a bit of propaganda. But as you say, people were scared, people acted irrationally. People were sometimes selfish. But then again, there were lots of people who did great things. They helped other people, they rescued people who were in trouble. They volunteered their time, their money, their services in lots of cases to help other people.

That was in the war. What about in the war against this pandemic? What is happening in the UK nowadays?

Well, to be honest, I can only go by what my family had telling me, and also the news. My family is still in London. Some people did start hoarding food and supplies before the lockdown. So they went to the supermarkets and was taking lots and lots of things off the shelves and cleared everything. Some people did act selfishly by ignoring the social distancing rules that have been put in place now. But on the other side, there were lots of great stories.

For example, I've heard that in terms of volunteers. On the first day after you set up the volunteer program, over half a million people signed up to be volunteers in different capacities. Some people were working the hot line, the help line; some people were trying to help delivering groceries to people who cannot really get out of the house.

Some people are taking care of their elderly neighbors, I think to my parents situation, they are in London. They can't go out, but their neighbors are still volunteering to help them to go and get food and surprise for them.

That's very nice. And they're okay for now. You know what, actually that you're talking about human being human, but they're also able to do great things to help other people. I think it is same cross the world. I've been following a lot of news obviously on Chinese media and also on media from around the world. It is surprising and not really that surprising to see that, even though there are vast differences between cultures and histories, but you see people acting pretty much in the same way. And you read the same type of stories, for example, volunteering to deliver groceries to their neighbors or things like, I always remember that I've seen this in Wuhan. There was this family restaurants or this family, they were cooking lots and lots of packed lunch. They delivered them to medical workers. Exactly the same story happened in London as well.

There were volunteer groups that were sending sandwiches and delivering sandwiches to local hospitals, including my own local hospital as well. And there was a story of a paramedic a few days ago who was queuing at a supermarket.

So in ambulances... It was the end of his shift. And now in the UK you have to queue to go into a supermarket. So people let him go first. So he didn't have to queue. And then when he collected all of his groceries and he was about to pay, someone run up and paid for his groceries as a way of saying thank you.

That's very nice. As we're also applauding our medical workers. We call them angels clad in white. And you guys were doing something called clap for medical workers? So you see these video clips of, for example a doctor or nurse, they got out of their house to go to work in the morning. And then the entire street, all their neighbors came out and they're clapping for this person. They are rooting for him or her.

That's the thing that I take away from this. We have the word in English and in many other languages as well. The word hero. Now lots of people use that word a lot. But for me, a hero is just an ordinary person who does extraordinary things.

I think we have exactly the same saying, heroes are ordinary people who do extraordinary things. And to be honest, you can focus on the really grim side of it. You can focus on the scary numbers, you can focus on the selfishness of some people. But what really gives me hope in this very difficult time is that you can still see light, you can see the brightness of humanity,you can see the light of humanity all across the globe. And then seeing these ordinary people turned into extraordinary heroes.

And the point is humanity, even though that this is Britain under the Microscope. This is not something that is unique to one country or one group of people. This is something now throughout the entire globe, use mentioned the light of humanity. That's all of humanity. That's every person on this planet.

Exactly. And for those of you who are listening to our show, for those of you who have made your contribution, who are ordinary people turned into extraordinary heroes in this battle against this pandemic.

We’d like to say thank you.

Thank you so very very much. And together we're gonna get through this. Thank you Anlan for coming to the show for doing this special episode.

It was my pleasure.

And hope always well with your family in the UK.

Thank you.

And all of you out there. Be safe.

Take care of yourselves.

And your loved ones. We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.

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