Community workers visit a family that has recently returned from Italy, which has been badly affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak, in Beijing last week. During the visit, the workers tested the family members' temperatures. ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY
Foreign nationals are employing many measures to maintain normal lives in troubled times. Christine Low reports.
As Pre-K teacher Katie Hamons had already gone home to the United States during Christmas, she decided not to go anywhere during the Spring Festival holiday. Moreover, she had begun fostering puppies and did not think that it would be fair to leave them soon after getting them.
Then, news of the novel coronavirus outbreak broke, prompting many anxious foreigners to leave China. However, Hamons felt "surprisingly calm" about the situation, despite describing herself as an anxious person.
"I am a naturally anxious person, but I am staying informed and not letting rumors and other media influence me," said the English language teacher during an interview on WeChat. "I have also decided to take this time and use it to be productive."
With the Spring Festival holiday extended and many people still working from home after the holidays have ended, locals and foreigners like Hamons found themselves having more free time to spare. For Hamons, she used it to start on her blog and film vlogs－something which she had wanted to do for a long time, but could not find the time to do so till now.
In her first blog and vlog entries, Hamons documented snippets of her life in Beijing and wrote about how she had been coping amid several disruptions to normal daily life, offering her readers suggestions on what they could do during this rare free time. She said that writing has helped her in a therapeutic sense, as it helped put her thoughts into words so that she could deal with them. She also hopes that her vlogs will help her viewers understand what it is like in Beijing during the crisis.
Noticing that other foreigners were also trying to cope with the unexpected situation, Hamons reached out to them in one support group on WeChat, asking them if they would like to join her in making a collaborative video by sending her short video clips of themselves focusing on why they have chosen to stay in China and how they are dealing with it.
For those who are far away from home, support groups like these have provided much needed comfort and reassurance to those in similar situations. The support group, called Staying Put Support, of which Hamons is a member, was created to give all foreign women deciding to stay on in China for various reasons a space to connect, share information, thoughts and ideas, and to support each other during this uncertain time.
Kellie Henry, another member of the support group, is a homemaker who lives in Shanghai with her husband and teenage daughter. As the United States native and her family have been living in the Chinese city for almost 11 years, they consider it their home. Hence, as they had already planned for a quiet Spring Festival holiday at home, Henry felt that the sudden turn of events was not really that different for her family, except that they did not go out a lot to eat, as they would have liked to, and did not go to see the lanterns at Yu Garden at night.
"Maybe my husband and I are unusual, but we haven't really been too worried about this situation," Henry said. "I mean, obviously it is very bad in Wuhan or Hubei and if we were there, I'm sure we'd feel differently.
"However, I don't feel like we are at any great risk staying put here in Shanghai, and where are we going to go? This is our home, we feel safe here. Our dog is here, our lives are here."
Foreign students film themselves to record their lives during the outbreak in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, last month. PENG ZHAOZHI/XINHUA
Education
While Henry and her family have not encountered any difficult problems or situations so far, her current concern is to figure out how to ensure continuity of her daughter's education, with schools setting up e-learning for students staying at home.
"Of course, we, as parents, will have to help facilitate that in a more hands-on way than, you know, just sending her off to school for the day where they have all of the resources," she said. "It's the early days for this yet, lessons just started so we are trying to work it out. We'll see how it goes."
On joining support groups like Staying Put Support on WeChat, Henry thinks that the group has been great, and it is of comfort to her knowing that the members are all going through it together and that they can keep each other company.
"A handful of other groups have been helpful, too. For example, the one for Americans I'm in has lots of well-informed people, and also some staff from our consulate check in there to make sure everyone is getting up-to-date, correct information pertinent to US citizens," she said.
"I am definitely being judicious though about what groups I engage with, and I have 'walked away' from ones where there was negativity, or people being bitchy, or sharing 'news' from unreliable sources. I ain't got time for that."
Hamons agrees as well. "It's helpful to have groups that aren't focused on every little piece of information that comes out," she said. "It's good for one's mental health, too."
An expat buys vegetables at a store in Beijing last week. CHEN ZHONGHAO/XINHUA
Satire
Posts from one blog have also been shared several times in group chats, providing comic relief to many foreign readers staying within the confines of their homes. The Escaped Lunatic－the name of the blog and author, by which readers all know him－is run by Brent Wen Zhilong from the United States. Even before the outbreak happened, Wen had been entertaining his readers with his mostly animated and occasionally satirical blog posts about his life in China for a few years.
Wen, who prefers to go by his Chinese name, has been fascinated with China all of his life, and eventually moved to China permanently in 2009 for a job doing outsourcing and website content management and creation services for the financial industry. In his spare time, Wen blogs about his life in the outskirts of Dongguan in Guangdong province, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
One post which Wen wrote and has been receiving lots of attention from readers is titled A Cat's Guide to the Coronavirus Outbreak. Adopting the voice of his pet cat Stripy, Wen wrote a bilingual post in English and Mandarin on some issues related to domesticated pets and the novel coronavirus.
"One particularly bad aspect of Covid-19 is the unfortunate spread of incorrect information," said Wen in an interview over WeChat. "I was telling 'Stripy Emperor' about people abandoning pets (and doing worse things to pets) because they believed rumors that falsely claimed pets could carry the virus," he continued jokingly. Thus, Wen was inspired to write a post explaining that cats and dogs could not spread the virus.
Another reason why Wen felt the need to write such a blog post was because of the rise of the irrational fear that people started to have toward pets due to the outbreak. He experienced it firsthand when he tried to bring his other pet cat Pandora to the vet for her spaying appointment.
"The Didi driver tried to make us put her in the trunk of his car," he said. "I refused and managed to grab a passing taxi."
When asked what advice he would give people to cope during this difficult time, Wen provided this tongue-in-cheek response.
"Keep informed, but don't spend all day reading every scrap of information on the subject," he said. "The virus causes enough inconvenience, but I'm not going to let it be in charge of every moment of my life.
"Most of all, try to keep your sense of humor. You've got access to a million hilarious cat videos in the palm of your hand," Wen said. "Take a break and watch something funny. Laughter is good for you. Trust me on this. I'm a professional lunatic."
As for Hamons, she said that it is up to individuals to do what is best for themselves.
"If it helps to go home, then go home," Hamons said. "If it helps to stay and use this time productively, then do that. You know yourself and what you need for your own health."
