SHANGHAI--A Chinese woman whose two-month blog about life in Wuhan under "lockdown" attracted millions of readers is now under fire over plans to publish an English translation in the United States.

Fang Fang, 65, began the blog that became known as the “Wuhan Diary” on Jan. 25, two days after the capital of Hubei province in central China was deemed to be the initial epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak and sealed off from the outside world.

Fang initially recorded the devastating impact the spreading illness was having on the daily lives of local residents, but later began criticizing local authorities for dragging their heels in response to the health crisis that would spread around the world.

Fang was said to have about 100 million followers, many of whom praised her honest appraisal of the situation that kept the city of more than 11 million souls under lockdown for months.

The initial outpouring of sympathy for her strident criticism of local officials was due in part to spreading mistrust of the government apparatus after a doctor who raised red flags from an early stage was later disciplined and eventually died because he himself became infected with COVID-19.

But that all changed when word got out on April 8 that a publishing company in the United States was planning an English translation of the Wuhan Diary.

Fang wrote about what she experienced through e-mail messages sent to The Asahi Shimbun.

In one email she wrote: “Yesterday, I went out with a friend for a meal and life in the streets had returned to such a state of normalcy that I almost forgot about using a face mask. On the other hand, a typhoon of criticism has been directed at me over the internet claiming I was ‘selling a negative image of China to Western nations.’ All I did was write what I heard and saw and felt with my heart.”

Fang’s Wuhan Diary was a compilation of daily social media entries that had currency for two months.

In another email, she wrote about the extreme criticism she has weathered since the plan for an English translation emerged.

“It is a very puzzling situation because I have no idea why this criticism has arisen,” she wrote.

Much of the criticism said that a mistaken image of China would be transmitted abroad as the diary focused only on the tragic situation in Wuhan until the lockdown was lifted on April 8.

The escalating war of words between China and the United States over how the novel coronavirus spread has added fuel to the criticism over Fang’s planned English translation.

Social media posts labeled Fang a “traitor” who was hurting China for her own personal gain and was only benefiting the interests of the United States.

Her blog was the focus of attention over the social media because it provided an entirely different perspective from the daily announcements by government officials and state-run media about COVID-19.

“What I wanted to put down in words was the lives of individual residents living in a city where infections were spreading,” she wrote in the email. “I wanted to observe and understand this pandemic from the standpoint of one citizen.”

While government announcements tended to focus on the number of new infections and deaths, Fang tried to put a human face to what was happening in her hometown.

“During the early stage of the spreading infections, the medical care structure in Wuhan collapsed and many people died,” she wrote. “Since I have lived in Wuhan for more than 60 years, there were many among the dead who I was close to.”

One entry described a young girl chasing after a hearse carrying her mother’s body because restrictions did not allow bereaved family members from seeing off the dead.

In her email, Fang explained she was heartened that so many readers wanted to know “what was happening in Wuhan under a lockdown.”

Despite the outcry, she has no plans to cancel the English translation because she did not want foreign readers to lose the opportunity to learn about what happened in Wuhan.

She also plans to publish her diary in a Japanese translation.

“I hope Japanese readers will also learn about the sadness related to those who died,” she wrote in the email.