Year of the Rat

2020, As it Happened, Around the World

By: Jorah Kai

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The Year of the Metal Rat, 2020.
A time of plague, panic, and planetary upheaval.

While some masked up and locked down to protect the vulnerable, others weaponized denial, stormed public spaces, and called basic science tyranny. Around the world, truth fractured into echo chambers, and dystopia crept in on viral feet.

From inside China's Zero COVID bubble, Jorah Kai chronicles an unforgettable year—one where he swaps classrooms for quarantines and nightly news for neighborhood resilience. As the world burns, he reaches out to friends and frontline voices across the globe, weaving a chorus of intimate dispatches from thirty-three cities in sixteen countries.

From the streets of Chicago to Italy, Uganda, Vietnam, and the Netherlands, these voices form a living time capsule—each snapshot a story of fear, faith, fury, and the strange comfort of connection across closed borders.

"It's the metaphor of the yin and the yang. Right now, we are in the yin. It's a kind of disaster." —Jean-Claude Van Damme

A sequel to the international bestseller The Invisible War (Kai's Diary), Year of the Rat is both witness and warning, a global memoir of science, solidarity, and surrealism. Featuring frontline letters, viral dreams, cyberpunk cities, celebrity cameos, and the secrets of Shaolin, this is the story of how the world stood still—and what it took to survive.

Because in the darkest days, the stories we share are how we find our way back to the light.