Kansas City mom braves uncertainty, forced quarantine to retrieve daughter from China
“Mama!”
I heard that sweet, familiar voice as I approached my parents’ apartment complex in China. My 4-year-old daughter, Annie, was waving to me, holding a huge flower bouquet.
I picked her up and hugged her tight. She was about as light as she was when I last held her, but a few inches taller. We’d been apart for six months. She was 4 1/2 now.
She rested her head on my shoulder and softly said, “I love you, Mama.”
Last October, my husband and I sent Annie to stay with her grandparents in China for what we thought would be several weeks. We wanted her to experience the culture and get to know her extended family. I planned to bring her back home after the Chinese New Year in late January.
But days before my departure, the coronavirus struck China, and the city of Wuhan (my husband’s hometown) was on lockdown. I worried if I went, I would miss being a part of The Star’s Super Bowl coverage. Worse, I did not want to expose Annie and myself to the high risk of infection during international travel.
I canceled my trip, hoping there would be a better time to travel if I would patiently wait a few months.
But things kept getting worse. My husband scored a ticket for a March 27 flight to Beijing for me. But as the day drew near, my family was debating if I should come as the pandemic swept across the United States. In the meantime, countries were closing their borders, and airlines were suspending international flights.
“It will only get harder,” I said. “I have to go now.”
I convinced my family that as long as I’d strictly follow hygiene guidelines, I should be fine and so would Annie.
I would soon learn the magnitude of the hygiene requirements in China, something Americans will probably never see, or put up with.
Tested and tested again
I flew from Kansas City to Los Angeles on March 26. There were so few passengers that it was open seating. Everybody sat far away from one another. The flight attendants did not wear masks, but some passengers did. I wore an N95 mask throughout the entire flight.
The international terminal at the Los Angeles airport was packed. Dozens of college-age Chinese travelers wore protective gear from head to toe, a combination of laboratory goggles, face masks, gloves, hazmat suits and even shoe covers. The Air China crew wore the same level of protective gear as medical staff fighting on the front lines of the coronavirus.
While we waited to check in, airline staff checked all passengers’ temperatures and handed out forms asking whether they had traveled to coronavirus-affected countries in the past two weeks. My temperature was taken two more times while I got on the plane.
After the bustle of boarding, the main cabin settled into a depressing silence as no one was chatting or snacking. It was a full flight with no empty seats. Later I learned that some tickets for the flight were sold for as much as $10,000 as international students were fighting to return to China after campuses closed.
The airline normally would serve a couple of meals during the 13-hour flight, but in the time of COVID-19, few passengers would dare to take off their masks. I devoured a sandwich before boarding so that I did not need to eat, drink or use the bathroom during the flight. I wiped down everything around me and used hand sanitizer every 15 minutes.
Before landing, we filled out a China Customs health declaration form about our travel history. Instead of landing in my original destination, Beijing, the flight was diverted to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia province. That’s a recent policy of the Chinese government, sending Beijing-bound international flights to nearby cities, where travelers go through a myriad of health screenings for coronavirus.
We were told to take our belongings and get off the plane. No one knew what to expect.
Inside the airport, I walked through a line of blue curtains and sat down with some staff.
“Where did you live in the past two weeks?” a man asked in Mandarin.
“Kansas City.”
“Were there any reported COVID-19 cases in your neighborhood?”
“No.”
“Have you taken any fever reducer, cold or cough medicine in the past two weeks?
“No.”
The man went through a list of questions on my health declaration form and checked my temperature. After I passed, I was told to follow other people to the next area. Some staff wearing China Customs protective suits sprayed disinfectant right at us while we walked down the hallway. Next came the passport checkpoint.
Just when I thought all the screening might be over, we were instructed to get on an airport bus. To where? We were not told. But people didn’t bother to question, either.
We arrived at a big airport warehouse, which was converted to a temporary clinic with lines of military-style tents inside. In the first tent, a nurse checked my blood pressure and temperature.
The second tent was for COVID-19 tests. The nurses did a throat swab on me and drew two tubes of my blood. Since early March, China has been giving these tests to international passengers for free. I’d heard the tests were painful, but they weren’t. But a 6-foot-tall 19-year-old man after me got a nasal swab. His nose was bleeding, and his eyes filled with tears.
“Why didn’t you do a nasal swab on me?” I asked.
“Your nostril is too small,” the nurse answered impatiently, her eyes focused on her work.
Quarantined
I took my luggage and got on a coach along with another two dozen passengers. I had prepared for a forced quarantine, but I had no idea where and how.
“They are not sending us back to Beijing,” some passengers whispered.
At that moment, I realized we were going to be quarantined at a local hotel for the next 14 days.
A fleet of eight coaches drove through the city like ambulances, blaring a short hoo-hoo siren and passing through traffic lights. We got off at a seemingly busy part of the city. I walked through a shabby alley and saw the entrance to our quarantine hotel. It looked so filthy and run-down I worried it might collapse, just like the one earlier in March in Quanzhou in South China.
In front of me, a couple and their two toddler girls were told they would be separated into two rooms, each parent taking one child. The father pleaded, saying his girls clung to their mom. He said he had chronic hypertension and needed to stay with a partner. The staffer, his face all covered in protective gear, explained that this government measure was to prevent the infection of an entire household.
“If we die, we die together,” the father shouted. “We accept it. Our family just wants to stay together.”
“It is the order from above. We just execute it. You have to stay in two rooms.”
“Can I talk to your supervisor? Can you ask for an exception for me?”
“No, we can’t do that. Please understand our job.”
The conversation would go nowhere.
Inside the hotel, the hallway was covered in plastic, for spraying disinfectant. The elevator, the walls and floor were all covered. It looked so horrifying and surreal, making me feel like I was a giant scary virus and everybody’s enemy.
I was told to get inside my room and not come out. There were cameras everywhere. If I broke the rule, I would be jailed.
An instruction sheet on the wall in my room told me the Wi-Fi password, the times when meals would be delivered to my door and how much I needed to pay. 6,000 yuan, or about $850, including room and meals for 15 days. Wow, I thought, this is a lot of money, the amount an average household could make per month in Hohhot. There were more than 150 people quarantined at this hotel. That easily added up to almost 900,000 yuan, a great revenue source for the local government.
From the moment I left my home in Kansas City to the moment I sat down on the bed in that 200-square-foot hotel room in this strange city, it was 34 hours. I was exhausted. Realizing I would be locked up here for 14 days, away from my family in China and in the States, I broke down.
But then I had to pull myself together when I video chatted with Annie, assuring her everything would be fine. At 4 1/2, she amazed me with how much she understood about the pandemic. She would count down my days and tell me the latest coronavirus news she learned from TV.
“Mom, the newscast says there are more than 200,000 cases in America. Can you believe it?”
“Well, sweetheart, I guess it’s true.”
Given how contagious the virus is, I knew this forced quarantine would provide peace and security to Annie and my parents. And I would not have to carry the worry and guilt when I’d finally reunite with them.
On the first day of my quarantine, the local newspaper reported that there were five new presumptive positive cases in the province, all from my flight. These five people were transferred to a local hospital and isolated there under close observation. Being able to stay in the hotel meant that I had passed the COVID-19 tests at the airport.
I was provided bottled water, a mercury thermometer and a spray bottle for disinfecting my room. A nurse in full protective gear checked my temperature, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Another hotel staffer would drop off my three meals at my door.
Two days before my release, I passed another throat swab test. On Day 14, I was given my release documents and COVID-19 test results and flown back to Beijing at no charge. And then I was free.
Reunited
From there, I took another flight to my hometown, Xi’an. I was ecstatic to receive a green QR code on my smartphone when I landed. The green/yellow/red health code system is a new method of surveillance and coronavirus contact tracing in China. Green means a user is symptom-free and should be able to move around the city freely. I could even take a Didi (Chinese Uber) ride home.
At the gate of my parents’ apartment complex, Annie was waiting for me. After being apart for 185 days, I finally held her little body in my arms. I thought I would never, ever, let go again.
China largely returned to normal in April. Businesses and shops are open, but people are still required to wear masks in public. During the two weeks at my parents’ place, I was still afraid to go to public places, though. My mother told me if I ended up being somewhere with someone who later was confirmed to have COVID-19, the police would find me and force me to quarantine in a hotel at my own expense again.
My mission was to bring Annie home, and I would not dare risk going out.
Traveling back to the States was physically exhausting but mentally easier than the trip there. Although there were still rounds of temperature checks, forms to fill out and documents to check, there were fewer travelers. I made sure Annie had her mask on all the time, even when she napped on the flights.
Annie and I are currently in our 14-day quarantine on the lower level of our home, separated from her dad and her baby brother. But the two of us had so much to catch up on, and all her old toys have become fresh pleasures to her again.
With my family under the same roof, my nightmare finally ended. But I know out there the pandemic is far from over. People are still debating if wearing masks is necessary.
I saw the drastic differences of how the East and the West have taken on the coronavirus.
I can’t help wondering if we can somehow meet in the middle for a better battle plan.
