Northern Slant contributor Callum McNeill has been teaching English near Shanghai and travelled back to the UK because of the Coronavirus outbreak, which has swept through mainland China since being first reported at the end of December.

 

For the past few months, I have been living in the city of Jiangyin, in Jiangsu province, a coastal Chinese province north of Shanghai and about seven hours from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.

I was first informed about the outbreak of the virus in the second-last week of January, after the school where I was working told us they had to close on the advice of the regional government. Myself and a work colleague, who I know from my time during my masters in Liverpool, decided to fly back after hearing that the Chinese government was planning to impose travel restrictions in and out of China. We booked a flight leaving on the 30th January, the day before they started to impose the ban.

The flights we took to leave China were not affected by the restrictions and our first flight departed from Shanghai Pudong Airport on Cathay Dragon to London (via Hong Kong). Before getting onto the plane at Shanghai, we were scanned by Chinese officials in full bio-suits (it felt like something you might see after a nuclear incident). They took every passenger’s temperature to ensure they were not carrying the virus; then the same procedure was carried out when we arrived at Hong Kong for our connecting flight to London Heathrow on Cathay Pacific.

Both of these flights were extremely busy and the airline had imposed strict rules: for example, there was no handing out of hot towels or extra blankets for passengers. On the flight to London, the majority of passengers seemed to be UK citizens or from the European Union.

When we arrived into London, members of Public Health England boarded the plane to determine if anyone had symptoms of the virus. Luckily, no one had reported any ill-effects during the flight, so there was no need for the 14-day quarantine period. I am now back in London until I am told by my company that it is safe to return to China.

Last week, other Britons were urged to leave the country “if they can” and the Foreign Office said this weekend their final repatriation flight had left Wuhan with some 200 people on board.

As of Sunday, the number of deaths in China had reached 811 and there are more than 37,000 infections. The New York Times reports that there have been 288 confirmed cases and one death in two dozen other countries.

On Saturday, the World Health Organization said that the number of cases in China appeared to be stabilizing, but with news of the first death of an American in Wuhan, the spread of infection among cruise ship passengers in Japan, as well as a number of Britons contracting the virus in a French ski resort, global concerns are still understandably high.

In China, the outbreak has now exceeded the numbers affected during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, which occurred in 2002 and 2003. During that outbreak, nearly 650 people died in mainland China and Hong Kong and a total of 774 worldwide.

Recent events have had a significant domestic and international impact on China, not only in an economic sense but also socially and politically. These combined effects have ranged from an increased vocal opposition and disapproval on social media platform WeChat – the Chinese version of Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp rolled into one – particularly since the death last week of Dr Li Wenliang, who had issued early warnings about the virus. According to Foreign Policy magazine he has become the first “virus martyr.”

What has been less common for now has been any physical disapproval on the streets directed towards the provisional and central governments in both Wuhan and Beijing. But there has been increased support for pro-democracy and medical staff protests in Hong Kong, aimed at the actions of the territory’s pro-Beijing executive on combating the outbreak.

Despite Russia’s recent closure of its 2,700-mile land border with China to curtail the spread of the virus, internal battles within China have not so far been magnified by international perceptions outside the country, but it’s unclear how geo-political relationships will evolve in the coming weeks or months; in particular what might be the implications for how China has handled information over the spread of the virus.

At a central and local level, however, the Chinese government has not faced this amount of pressure since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, an event which has been wiped from the history of the Chinese people by the central government. How the next few months unfold will say much about China’s role in the world and the modern relationship between the government and its citizens.

Because of the virus outbreak, my teaching position in China has been put on hold; and my friend and I are waiting for confirmation from the company as to when it might be safe for us to return to China to resume teaching. Although I do wish to go back to China – and I had a return flight booked for later this month – I believe it is important not to rush into decisions that could affect the health and safety of myself or others who might be in the same predicament.

I have been keeping in constant contact with my company via email and WeChat, and the latest advice I have been given is that the situation remains critical.  They believe that I will most likely not be able to return until March because of the advice of the Chinese health ministry and central government.