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| Guests wearing masks at Shanghai Disneyland. Image source. |
Basically, in late January everyone in China was in a panic about the coronavirus, and there were a bunch of new policies to help stop the spread. Temperature checks when you enter a public place. Notify HR at your job if you've traveled, and self-quarantine at home for 2 weeks if you have. Stay home as much as possible, and wear a mask if you go out. Wash your hands. The city of Shanghai extended the Chinese New Year holiday for an extra week, so that people would stay at home.
February 10 was the day that people started going back to work in Shanghai. I went to the office that day (quite nervous) and found that actually most people at my job were working from home. For the next 2 weeks, I worked from home some days and went to the office some days. And during those 2 weeks, I saw that the number of people on the subways increased gradually- like, at the beginning there were entire rows of empty seats, but by now the subways are back to full capacity.
By late February, most people at my job were back in the office- though some were still required to work from home or use vacation time because they'd traveled or because a relative from Hubei province had visited them. We all wore masks in the office. Things were getting better.
And then in early March, the rest of the world suddenly went through the exact same thing. In response, the Chinese government required all international travelers to quarantine for 2 weeks upon entering the country. If you're low-risk (based on health checks and where you traveled from), you get to quarantine at home; otherwise you're in a quarantine hotel. Then they made the rules even more strict: Starting March 28, no foreign citizens can enter China. Even people like me- I've lived in China for 6 years, I have a residence permit, I have a job and an apartment here, I married a Chinese man. Nope, can't enter China. Fortunately I am already in China, so this isn't a problem. But I know people who left in February because of the coronavirus, and now they can't get back in. There are even families who are separated because of this- various family members stuck in different countries.
Meanwhile, things are starting to open again. There are some events going on- not anything too big though. (And still a lot of Zoom events.) Restaurants, malls, hair salons, gyms, etc- they're open. Some places require you to show your green QR code in order to enter- this is a system which checks what cities you have traveled to in the past 14 days and assigns you a color to indicate how high-risk you are. If you get green, then you won't be restricted from entering public places.
Things are open, but we're very much not "back to normal." We're still all wearing masks. Security guards are still doing temperature checks when you enter public places. Travel is still highly discouraged. And since I have a baby, I'm being even more careful- I go to the office 5 days a week, and we've had to take our baby to get his vaccines a bunch of times, but besides that I've only been out to a restaurant 1 time and a mall 1 time since this whole thing started in late January.
So basically that's the situation in Shanghai.
So I'm fine; I'm not worried about getting the virus, and my job hasn't been affected by this. But I am an immigrant, and this whole pandemic situation is uniquely bad for immigrants. I worry about my family in the US. I don't really know what they're going through- yes I talk to them every day, and I read the news, but that's not the same as being there. And I don't even know when I'm going to be able to see them again. Maybe in the summer? Maybe at Christmas? Maybe not??? Who knows??? We're safe here in China, so we're not going to travel anywhere else until it's safe there. (Also the Chinese government won't let me back in if I leave.)
And I wanted to start working on our plans for moving to the US. I sort of hinted at this last year in my "6 Years Later" series. I'm ready to be done living in China. Even more so now that I have a baby and I'm thinking about how I want to raise him; in the US I'll have access to all the resources I need to raise him the way I want to. So it's time to start thinking about where we want to live, and how to find a job, and how much money we'll need for moving expenses, and how to get my husband a green card. Or rather, it would be time to start thinking about that, but now we're in a pandemic and all the plans are on hold. And also the US economy is a disaster, and also racists are being racist to Chinese people. We certainly can't move to the US right now- so when, then? Next year? The year after? Who knows???
I know my situation is much better than a lot of people in the world, but still it's hard because I'm an immigrant. I worry about what's going on in my country, while I'm so far away. And it's screwing up all my move-back-to-the-US plans. But for now, I'm okay.
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Here's the link to all my COVID-19 posts
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