3月18日晚上，豆瓣网友 K 发表了这样一条广播：
一天早晨，格里高尔·萨姆沙从不安的睡梦中醒来，发现自己小区被封了。
当我看到首页有人转发这条的时候，立刻意识到它蕴藏的巨大荒诞性。我甚至不知道这句话所引用的梗具体来自哪一部小说，但我明白，这种「名著中的人物在中国」的反差将带来绝佳的创作可能。
考虑了快半小时（看书太少，流下不学无术的眼泪），我写下了自己的投稿：
人们通知树上的男爵下来做核酸。柯希莫拒绝了。
他从樱桃树跳到橄榄树，又跳到栗树上，远远地消失在了森林里。社区组织了一万名志愿者对那片森林进行了拉网式搜索，终于将柯希莫 •迪 • 隆多给架到子检测点。
注：有关其他创作的相关收集可见一条豆瓣动态引发的“疫情文学”复兴
这条引来了大概大几十条转发，遂在一天后随着原广播被和谐而湮灭。
我写道：
那条疫情防控名著改编大赏（果然）被和谐了。
——或者说，这件因戏谑荒诞时事开启的大型群体行为艺术由这可预期的消失补完了它最后的拼图，让整个不到一天的事件成了一次快闪。
以为整件事就将止步于此，没想到3月28号收到了一封豆邮，对方表示是NPR的记者，想针对这件事对我进行采访。
——这太酷了吧，你要问我我有什么想说的我可不困了.jpg
随后在第二天午后我们就通过电话完成了不到10分钟的采访。（然后我花了大概半小时平复紧张的心情（
这篇采访在4月14号放了出来，名为<Chinese writers borrow from Western classics to illustrate life in the age of COVID>，是一段7分钟的短播客。这时候和接受采访时的3月29日比起来，许多更加不可思议的事情发生了，绝对比一万个志愿者抓做测试更离谱。
另外，看了下发表出来的内容，我觉得经过编辑老师的翻译之后，比我表达的原话更有文采=v=
……
FENG: For others, adapting their own pandemic literature is a way to blow off steam in a safe way. Jon Zhang, a Beijing-based software engineer, is a writer who falls into this school. He started reading, in his spare time while working from home, “The Baron In The Trees” by Italo Calvino, a philosophical fable extolling liberty.
JON ZHANG: (Through interpreter) And I started thinking that Cosimo the baron is a character who’s rebelling against social restrictions and looking for freedom, something particularly meaningful to contemplate in China’s current reality. If a character like the baron were to live in China now, what would he do?
柯希莫男爵是文学史上经典的反抗社会规训与追求自由的人物形象，这在当今中国的社会现实下有特别的对照意义。如果「树上的男爵」这样的人物生活在当今的中国，他会遭遇些什么？
FENG: In Calvino’s telling, Cosimo manages to create a free life for himself for decades in the treetops of the Italian countryside. He succeeds in breaking free of his aristocratic family. Zhang’s story ends a bit differently.
ZHANG: (Through interpreter) People told the baron in the tree to come down and do a PCR test. Cosimo refused. He jumped from the cherry tree to the olive tree, then to the chestnut tree and disappeared into the forest far away. So the community officials organized 10,000 volunteers to conduct a search of the forest, and finally, they dragged Cosimo to the test site.
FENG: Zhang says writing pandemic fiction is an act of protest against the dozens of PCR tests the local government’s required him to do and the repetitive lockdowns he’s endured. Fiction, he believes, is the best way to illustrate the absurdity of life in the age of COVID.
ZHANG: (Through interpreter) What I want to satirize are these ossified, bureaucratic COVID-containment policies.
FENG: And he imagines himself during long stretches of boredom by imagining what the writers of yesteryear who he imitates would think if they lived a day in his shoes in China.
ZHANG: (Through interpreter) I think they would find my reality preposterous and the way we do things abnormal.
FENG: However, Jon normally keeps these thoughts to himself. That’s why he writes in private - because in fiction, anything is fair game.
Emily Feng, NPR News, Beijing.