My Dairy of Quarantine
- Annie Zhang
- Jul 15, 2020
- 11 min read
A DOCUMENT ON THE JOURNEY OF FIVE RETURN STUDENTS
Written by: Annie Zhang
Returnees were waiting in lines for the temperature test and enquiry at Xianyang International Airport in Xi’an, Shaanxi, on March 23. Photo provided by: Shu Gege
It is March 30, the seventh day of Rachel Zhou’s quarantine period and the halfway done of the required dates.
In avoid of the Coronavirus pandemic, Zhou, 21, returned from Scotland at March 23 and stayed in Howard Johnson Riverview Hotel (Guangzhou) for a 14-days in site quarantine under the policy restriction by the Chinese government.
She is not along. In the hotel she stayed for quarantine, there are two more returned students who came back to China for the same reason. A few kilometres away, Sun Guang, 19, who is a student from LSE and has also returned from Britain one week before Zhou on March 17, is staying for home quarantine and looking forward to the end of his isolation. Slightly different with the other returned students, Shu Gege, 19, who studied at the University of Exeter, is under forced isolation in Binzhou, Shandong, as one of the fellow passengers aboard the same flight with her was diagnosed with the Coronavirus.
They are just part of the returned students who rushed back to the home country after the People’s Government of Guangdong Province announced a regulation on March 14, demanding returnees from 19 specified countries or regions to serve out 14-days quarantine from the announcing date. Policies kept updating, extended the range of quarantine to all the returnees and no longer allowed home isolations from the midnight of March 21.
Other provinces also followed to execute the epidemic checks in the boarders. Shandong Provincial People's Government required all inbound Chinese returnees as well as foreigners arrival in the province to undergo a 14-days home-based or centralized quarantine from March 18.
During the long days of quarantine, the returned students started to reflect on their experience of travelling back home under the global pandemic, keeping it as a diary documenting all their struggles.
30 Hours Back Home
Flight information is always changing.
Cumber Li, a schoolmate of Zhou, was refreshing the flight booking pages anxiously days before leaving the UK as the flight information was always changing. She just found that the connecting flight she booked was cancelled, forcing her to rearrange her travel plan again. And she can’t remember how many times it is to receive a cancellation apologize for back-home flight, as the numbers of flight from Edinburg to Netherland has been greatly cut down. To make sure she could catch the flight to China on March 23, Cumber decided to book an early flight and spend 16 more hours waiting at the Netherlands airport.
Compared to her friend Zhou, Li was already the lucky one. Zhou applied the word “arduous” to describe her journey, as she has spent over 40 hours on her journey and stop at Doha, Qatar and Phnom Penh, Cambodia before finally landing at Guangzhou.
But getting the flight ticket booked is just the first step to return home. Shu, the student from Exeter, introduced her ride from the dormitory to London Heathrow Airport, “I left at 1 p.m. before dawn, and spent three and a half hour to take the rental car to the airport with five other students. And we don’t know each other.”
In order to get protection, the returned students put on whole suits of protective equipment including protective clothing, masks and goggles, which was a great burden for them.
“It was really hard to wear all these suits for 30 hours, and you wanted to take them off since it was too anoxic,” said Zhou.
Zhou’s experience was shared by Sun, who flew back from the London Heathrow, “my suit has gained 200 per cent of head-returns!” He said with a frustrated smile since the Britons were downplaying the virus disease at the time he returned. Sun described the strange gaze she received when wearing the whole protective equipment in the busy airport, “others stared at me as if I had two heads.” And he was mad about being asked to take photos together,
“they really should take care of themselves instead of taking photos for me!”
“I have to leave”
What urges the overseas Chinese students to return was the severe situation of their residential areas.
Devon is one of the earliest British cities reported coronavirus cases, where Shu Gege’s college is based.
“The first case diagnosed in my school was a Spanish student. He was suffering from serious physical reactions and even lose the ability to climb stairs,” Shu was scared and feeling hopeless by the feeble response from local doctors, “they only recommend the patient to recover naturally at home. That’s all!”
Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Zhou, who studies at the University of Aberdeen, also decided to leave Scotland on March 23 despite at that time her surrounding epidemic was not so serious, “But I was worried that the risk of infection might be uncontrolled. Since the school did not conduct any effective measures such as school closure when the Coronavirus started to spread. What they have done was to suggest us to go back home, that is, China.”
The street view of Edinburg in late December, 2019. People were passing by without any face covers. Photo by: Annie Zhang
The college's loose attitude was led by the late school closure decisions by the government. On March 16’s COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms) meeting, authoritative still emphasized that “school closure was not the step the country should take at this moment”.
In addition to the UK government’s attitude, the discrimination from locals became a further boost on students’ determination to return home.
“Some of the local people might frown and lean over on the side of the road to keep a distance as soon as they saw that we are Asian, while others would still be very nice and say Hello to us,” Zhou admitted the existence of two extreme attitudes facing at this particular time and frankly claimed that she was thus frustrated.
To Shu, this led to her fear of wearing masks. She shared her experience of a drunken Briton shouting “Chinese don’t!" at her when seeing the mask on her face. The hatre on masked Asian was severe in Exeter, as a case reported that two Hong Kong students wearing masks had been beaten up by the locals.
“I did grateful to the help from nice people here, but the discrimination still exists especially when the epidemic is severe. No matter in consideration of the safety or to protect my dignity,” Shu made her decision, “I have to leave!”
University of Edinburgh. Photo by: Annie Zhang
Long Flight and Long Wait
The countdown of returning home was triggered when boarding on the plane.
The flight is no longer providing meals as the regular practices under the highly infectious disease; instead, every passenger just got distributed with a bag of food ration at the very start of the flight by the masked flight attendants.
Even if been given the supplications of food and water, most of the return students are not dare to take risks removing their masks to intake any foods. “I spent most of the time on-board sleeping because when you are asleep you won’t feel hungry or thirsty,” said Zhou. And to reduce the chance of infection to the largest extend, she only drank water when the thirsty feeling was becoming unbearable and didn’t use the restroom at all during the whole journey, “Some of my friends even prepared adult diapers.”
Continuous temperature checks were conducted throughout Shu Gege’s returned flight from Abu Dhabi to Xi’an. It became a nightmare for Shu as more than one passenger on her flight were found to have fevers at the very first check.
“There was not a long-distance between my seat and the girl who finally got a positive result in the virus test,” she said, “and I freaked out!”
In order to lessen the chance to get infected, Shu kept awake during the whole 17-hours journey and didn’t take off her facemask apart from drinking water. Her friend even wore an adult diaper to avoid using the toilet.
She was slightly dehydrated when the captain finally announced the landing at Xian at 8 p.m. in the morning, and her flight’s destination was changed from Beijing to Xian in reducing the pressure of inspections.
Quarantine officers on board were taking passengers’ temperature on a flight from Abu Dhabi to Xi’an. Photo provided by: Shu Gege
Now it is the time for endless waiting.
As soon as the plane landed, the quarantine officers got on board to conduct temperature tests for passengers, distinguished those who tested to have fevers to stay at the plane for further examination. Shu has waited for three hours before finally disembarked from the plane, during the time she received three more temperature tests. “I kept texting with my friends and family members because I was having a strong feeling of anxiety and uncertainness,” she said, still under great stress even though the landing at home country brought her some relief.
Luckily, Shu had no symptoms. And it was already noon time when she finally followed the asymptomatic group to disembark from the plane, waited in lines in a specific zone of the airport tarmac for further inspections.
Under the regulations released by the local Prevention and Control Office for COVID-19, all returnees were demanded to undergo two-step tests, including the detailed symptom questioning of their past 14-days and the free nucleic acid testing via throat and nose. Shu accomplished all the required tests at about 2 p.m., feeling that her body has reached the limit.
“Our passengers have to wait in an airport lounge for further instruction. But because of my Chinese telephone card has expired, I have to rely on WeChat to get in touch with my parents.” She mentioned the kindness of companions who journeyed with her, for which they switch on the personal hotspot for her to contact her family without accepting her request to pay back the communication expenses. “I was deeply touched by their act of helping each other, it feels like home,” she said.
For 19-year-old Becky, her waiting time was even doubled because of the mild symptom—headache she suffered while landed at Guangzhou at 3 p.m., March 23. She then informed the quarantine officers of her symptom in the questioning and had been taken to a nucleic acid test and blood drawing after her temperature was measured above 37 degrees.
“I was marked with a red label and had to stay in a separated room, and kept waiting for the pending result,” said Becky Ho.
During the time she witnessed a passenger who was waiting together in the same zone with her being taken away in an ambulance, causing Becky an intensive feeling of anxiety. Especially her luggage and passport were temporarily withheld for four hours before she finally received a negative result for her tests.
The long wait had extended till midnight. After filled her empty stomach by the rice porridge, soda crackers and water handed by staff, Ho was taken to a coach to join six passengers including Zhou, and waited to be transferred to the isolation hotel.
And it was already 4:30 a.m. on the next day when she finally arrived, the total waiting time for 12.5 hours before settled.
The Quarantine
Return to China on March 17, three days after the announcement of forced quarantine on returnees by the People’s Government of Guangdong Province, the 19-year-old returned student Sun Yuexing has stayed in an unnamed hotel in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou for 48 hours before finally been allowed to return home for further isolation.
Sun has documented his returning journey in an article published on March 20 on his personal WeChat official account, expressing his personal views on the hostile attitudes towards returned students. The article has unexpectedly gained the page view reaching a million. The high clicking then led to great distress on Sun, “someone even threat to flesh search on me,” he was forced to delete his diary from the official account platform on March 23 in the protection of himself as well as his family.
Sun’s experience was more torturous than Becky’s. Sun was in good health condition when he arrived in Hong Kong, but his tests of body temperature and nucleic acid were conducted strictly. After being checked three times in temperature, he was taken to a holding area at the airport, waiting with more than 100 people. He indicated that everyone there was anxious and flustered. After an endless wait, a bus finally came to take them. Dramatically, the bus was broken down on the way without warning, which made their journey home much more unpredictable. By the time they finally reached a hotel located in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, 13.5 hours had passed.
So, finally got settled.
The nightmare of Sun has just started, as he has to stay in designed quarantine site for 48 hours before finally can return home for further home isolation. The condition of his hotel was not satisfying—literally—with the huge noise produced by the nearby construction site and terrible sanitary conditions, and he even discovered two hairs from different people on his sheet.
“I almost couldn’t fall asleep during that 48 hours because of the never-stop noise and kept fighting with countless mosquitos,” Sun made a lot of flak on his appalling stay at the unnamed hotel.
The girls’ experiences are much more satisfying, for they could beard all the expenditures on room and board to stay in a high-end hotel according to the updated policy requirement.
The bay window of Cumber’s quarantine room in Howard Johnson Riverview Hotel, Guangzhou. Photo provided by: Cumber Li
The daily lives of site quarantine are rather insipid compared with the returning process. “We are feeling like living the life as piggy,” joked by Zhou, “Every day we just fall asleep after finishing the meal sent by hotel staffs, and when we are awake, there is another meal coming.” Medical staffs take the temperatures of the students three times a day, and all the meals are dispended to the desk in front of their rooms.
For the home quarantine that Sun takes, the process is slightly different. Each day a group of quarantine officers will come to his room to conduct the temperature test as well as raising the symptom questions to confirm his condition, and an auto monitor was set in front of the entrance of his room, releasing alarm whenever he opened the door.
One of the meals Rachel had during her quarantine period.
Photo provided by: Rachel Zhou
When the right to leave the room been deprived, it is common that the return students to divert attention to other places. Becca kept observing the changes in her surroundings, while the other students turned to a more common field—social media. And they saw a lot of negative voice on the public opinion towards return students’ group, criticising them brought troubles to the whole country.
The hostile attitudes toward the returned students on the social media had led to Sun’s deeper thinking during the long quarantine period, and he is feeling sad for the public’s misunderstanding on the students abroad.
“We’ve even been criticised on bringing troubles to the whole country!” Sun felt wronged, “China is my home country, and how could they not allow me to come home?”
Sun expressed extreme anger with those comments assaulted overseas students. “I’m really angry with those who assaulted overseas students,” said Sun. He argued with online opinions. “They had no idea what we were experiencing and what difficulties the overseas students would face if they couldn’t return home.”
The grievance of Sun was shared by other returned students.
Zhou mentioned about two details, as their study plan abroad has long been confirmed and they returned to China only because the college allowed them to do so.
“We are not coming back to China out of fleeing purpose,” she said.
Shu was feeling sorry for the girl who finally got the positive result in the coronavirus test, “She is just a student who wants to return home.”
The girl had sent a long message to the passengers who on the same plane with her after diagnosed, explaining that she has received medical treatments to maintain a good health condition before boarding the plane, and taken every measure to isolate herself from other passengers during the whole flight. “I sincerely wish that the public opinions won’t attack her,” said Shu, “everyone wants to return to the safe place when facing difficulties, and please give us more understandings.”
By the end of March, there are still approximately 1.42 million of Chinese students who could only stay overseas during the pandemic according to the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council in China; the students above are the lucky ones who were able to return.
Until April 5, Rachel, Cumber and Becky are still isolated in the hotel, waiting for the final release.
For Shu Gege, her quarantine in the community is almost done and she is looking forward to having a new haircut after she could get in touch with the outside world.
Sun has already stepped out from his quarantine period. He is still facing tons of comments to reply, but to him, the feeling of freedom suddenly became unfamiliar. “That’s it? I can walk around Guangzhou city now?” He laughs with a strung.
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