Citizens were furious over a speech given four days prior by Wang Zhonglin, the city's newly appointed Chinese Communist Party chief.
Fearing that if he pushed ahead with the gratitude campaign the criticism could be squarely directed at his boss, Wang quickly shelved the plan.
Instead, he decided on a safer option, a campaign to express gratitude to Wuhan citizens for their contributions, enduring the hardship of a lockdown that was imposed on Jan. 23.
President Xi points out vegetables on sale on the side of a street in Wuhan on March 10.
But Wang's excessive loyalty to Xi, symbolized by the ill-planned political campaign, rubbed Wuhan's 11 million citizens the wrong way.
One of the leading critics of the campaign was Wuhan-based author Fang Fang, a 64-year-old whose real name is Wang Fang.
At around the same time as the botched gratitude education campaign, another incident was taking place on a Wuhan street. »
