Written in April 2020

Well it has been over 8 weeks since I had been in my apartment and I thought back to what a journey it has been! It was actually nice to be there, my place was a little bit dusty, but just as I had left it. When the door was shut though a sense of relief came over me. I was glad to be back in my own space especially to be back with all my things. It had been about 2 months since I packed my one suitcase with a few things and went to Vietnam for which I thought was 1 week and then never returned. I’d had a great time in Vietnam and at home and to be honest it had been a blessing in disguise for me, it was my fourth year of International teaching and I was starting to feel a bit burnt out from working and the constant travelling or need to want to travel. My brain has been going at a million miles an hour for a few years, the ideas in my classroom, the creative drive to make things happen, the ESL kids that don’t understand me, the repetition of rules and routines to spoilt rich kids that don’t care, the expat friends, the drama, the breakdown of my expat relationship and then still trying to be professional when that person works at the same school. Then the constant need for travel, the ever so glorious travel, I feel like I’ve been on some kind of drug for the last couple of years and sometimes when I look back at all I’ve done I have to pinch myself but it has come at a price, a psychological price which sometimes makes me question what’s next? All I’m saying is even though it looks like I’ve had an amazing time and my friends back home think I have it easy, it’s been good to take things at a slower pace over the last few weeks, even if it has been a little stressful too.

Day 1 Quarantine

My apartment generally felt like a safe zone after the horrors of what I had witnessed and I was glad to be back in my own space, a place where all my personal belonging were. Living out of suitcase does generally get tiring aswell. So, at that moment, I felt like there was no one else I would rather be than in my apartment. Generally, we were lucky to be at our apartments, other people had to go and stay at government hotels. I couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than that and the food looked, well not great… also I am the type of person that goes stir crazy in one place, I need to have space to walk around or at least go into a different room. Sitting on a bed in a hotel for 2 weeks would not send me to a good place.

Anyway, by the time I got back to my apartment, it was pretty late. The only thing I did was change my bed, then I snuggled up and fell asleep. I noticed I didn’t have my ‘care pack’ in my apartment that HR promised, everyone else on wechat was saying they had one, where was mine? It was okay I had a lot of supplies in my apartment anyhow so it was something that I would worry about tomorrow. My apartment was just how I left it, although there were black bananas on my kitchen top I had forgotten about and my plants had died but generally everything was okay.

Day 2 Quarantine

Super jet lagged, pretty much couldn’t get out of bed for most of the day. I just had a Chinese ayi banging on my door very early, shouting something very loudly. I then opened the door, to see a bucket poking through the door, I tried to push the door open but then she pushed it shut.

Went back to sleep after and wondered what that was all about? Anyhow my jet lag is always awful when I go from East to West and it takes me a couple of days or sometimes even a week to get over. The ‘wechat’ conversation in the group ‘Lingang Arrivals’ was buzzing at every moment with teachers now facing the reality of being locked inside for 2 weeks. Now, I know the whole world is in lockdown, but here, you cannot even leave your apartment to go for a walk, so it really is like being in prison for 2 weeks.

I had things left over in my apartment though, I had a big water bottle with enough water for probably 3 days depending on how many cups of tea I had, which would probably be a lot! I had bread in the freezer, lots of pasta sauce, dry pasta, noodles, cup of soups, and lots of chocolate. I also had toilet paper! I had wondered about this on the plane on the way back- what if I had no loo roll? I think the whole crazy toilet paper scrounge in the UK had made me worry about it too much.

I was a little upset my ‘care package’ had not arrived, luckily my friends Adam and Juan offered to bring some things round. Then the day went I had tea in bed and a long Netflix binge. I had been doing a lot of exercise at home at my parents and had lost a couple of kgs, but I think this quarantine was probably going to make me put it back on.

I had 2 deliveries come- first the waterman with my bottles of water for the water dispenser, because yep in China you cannot drink from the tap! When he delivered it someone from housekeeping came and took a photo of me opening the door to collect the water in my pajamas, it just seemed a little bit over the top, did they really need that evidence? The water man who speaks his mind and has previously told me “what a big ass I have and how fucking sexy it was,” (obviously I translated it from Chinese) made a point to message me after saying how difficult it was to bring the water because of how strict they were. I’m surprised he was not put off by it and gave up. It made me wonder if it was going to be like this every time I tried to order something?

Later on, in the day my friends Adam and Juan dropped off some food off for me. I opened the door to collect and had a 5-minute conversation with them while I stood in my apartment and they stood on the stairs. It was good to see some familiar faces even if it was a short chat. Upstairs I heard one of the neighbors opening the door probably listening to what was happening. I quickly then shut my door as did not want to annoy the neighbours. Anyway, I had some fresh food so I was okay, I was going to survive.

Day 3 Quarantine

Did not sleep till late as was so jet-lagged and again the lady was banging on my door waking me up at 7.30. It almost quite irritating, I just wanted to sleep and didn’t want strange people knocking at the door for whatever reason, so instead, I just ignored it this morning! Again, I wondered what she was knocking about?

I went back to sleep then about 10 ‘O’ clock I received another knock at the door and I could tell from the voices there was a lot of people outside. I opened the door and about 7 people ie. the white coats were there, and I thought to myself yep something is definitely wrong here. Anyway, probably the only one who could speak English said, “the neighbour said that you left your apartment.” That sentence echoed in my head and alarms bells went off, they were accusing me for doing something that I didn’t do. And I realized to myself that of course Adam and Juan dropped the food off yesterday so the person that opened the door would have heard. But still, I definitely did not leave my apartment or do anything wrong.

So, there I was standing there in my pajamas with the sign ‘happy’ printed on the front of them and wearing my mask and I had to say my part in front of a bunch of people that couldn’t even understand me, “I did not leave the apartment, but my friends dropped food outside, as I was hungry and had no food, so I opened the door to collect the food, and said hello.” They then made the point of saying that friends could not bring food around and housekeeping were the only people that could bring deliveries, but I argued the point that this was not communicated before entering my apartment, how was I supposed to know? And then I began to wonder why a neighbour had complained when clearly they knew I had not left my apartment?

Then along came the head of HR Selena to save the day. Obviously, I was going to be the talk of the school after this, it’s not every day that I would be graced with the presence of lovely Selena who my friend Tracey says, “could sell sand to an Arab.” Not so fashionable today though with her hazmat suit and facemask but underneath was the usual tight-fitting dress and high heels and the waft of perfume floating in the air. So, then they all started to talk very loudly together in Chinese, with me in-putting something every now and again to defend my case. Then Selena turns around to me finally and says, “you are going to have to move to another apartment.” Then I immediately felt anger, I was in my safe place, my apartment, I had travelled 1000’s of miles in a pandemic and been put through that whole ordeal at Shanghai airport, I was still jet-lagged and now I was being accused of something I didn’t do, and being told that I had to go and live in someone else’s apartment. The other housekeeping lady said, “the neighbours are very worried.” Apparently, the neighbour below me was complaining about a water leak from my bathroom which they had never mentioned before. But still, in that moment, with my pajamas on I kind of lost all sense and said, “No sorry I will not be moving, fuck the neighbors, they are being racist.” Somehow, I always find that outbursts like this sort of shock Chinese people but I was thrown out of control in this situation and not completely with it, this really wasn’t something that I had seen coming and nearly felt myself on the verge of crying. I was strong and had dealt with everything so far, but this was just the icing on the cake.

Then Selena said, “okay maybe we will send you to a hotel,” and I knew that was not what I wanted either. A couple of hours in that hotel the other night had felt depressing and the food was awful, how would I survive 2 weeks living in a room? So, I just shook my head and said ‘no, no.’ Then there were further discussions with them all, a lot of shouting going on, so much so that I kind of just wanted to shut my door on them. Then my phone was going off with other messages, and one my friends was having another drama and sending through messages from her laptop on Microsoft TEAMS. She had opened the door to the trash lady this morning, put her phone on the side gone to get her trash, gave it to the lady, shut the door and then her phone was gone. It really was a nightmare, would the trash lady have stolen the phone? Anyway, I can only imagine how awful it would be in quarantine without a phone, in 2020 you need internet and you need a good working phone! I don’t think anyone would know how to survive this precarious time otherwise.

After they all talked for a while Selena then said about going to Karen’s apartment, another teacher who had left earlier on in the year. But then it was just the effort and thought of carrying over all my cooking/kitchen things just for 2 weeks as what did Karen’s apartment have there? I had been living out of a suitcase for months on end, now I really didn’t want to have to go somewhere else. I even asked Selena if her apartment had internet because at this moment in time she seemed to forget that it might be something I needed. So apparently, I was going to be sent to an empty apartment with no internet for 2 weeks… life looked great!

The white coats had a loud conversation for a long time and then finally Selena said, “I will contact you Claire,” I got to shut the door in my pajamas. To be honest I was just happy to shut the door! They would not move me I told myself.

My first initial reaction was to call the Principle, he didn’t pick up as he was in a meeting so I had to type out a very long message- it felt kind of frustrating at the time. Anyway, the Head of HR and the Principle had my version of what had happened so now I just had to wait, and hope and pray that they didn’t make me move!

Day 4 Quarantine

Awoke in my apartment and hoped everything had been forgotten about since yesterday. In fact, it felt like a pretty normal quarantine day. The first normal like day I had had. As normal as it can get when you’re sealed inside your apartment.

I completed my youtube home exercise, taught my online lessons and watched some Netflix, it was a fairly mundane day. There was no news from anyone and no news is good news.

I spent part of my day making video calls and talking to people to give them the gossip as generally it was an interesting story, I just hoped that it wasn’t going to get more interesting.

The reason why it has been so quiet, and I heard nothing from anyone though was because from my friends messages it sounded like school and the community were contacting people in the neighbourhood and searching for my friends’ phone, so currently, I was not their top priority. There was a foreigners phone that could have been possibly been stolen, I was actually not front-line news right now.

Day 5 Quarantine

Another day, still puzzled about the outcome of this. The chaos of the other day seemed to have all been forgotten. My routine was pretty similar from the day before and I called my parents to have a discussion about the fact that nothing had been communicated to me.

Then I decided to take hands in to my own matters and sent the Principle a message, “Thanks, I don’t know if you helped in any way yesterday but I don’t have to move out of my apartment now.” He replied with a smiley face and nothing else, seemed a bit fishy but still it was a smiley face so that couldn’t be a bad thing surely? But seemed slightly passive.

I settled down for the evening with a calm mind and thought to myself that it had all been forgotten, the storm had passed. I just needed to ride out the rest of quarantine, 5 days had already passed now already.

Day 6 Quarantine

Well I had been completely wrong that the storm had passed. Just as I made a cup of tea and was munching into a Mars bar- my phone starts to ring and it’s the Principle, and I know that he only makes phone calls to staff when it’s something really serious.

He explained that the Chinese Principles had had meetings with the local housekeeping committee and members of the government because 10 people had now complained, and phoned up the police in the local area saying a foreigner had left their apartment during quarantine and that they didn’t feel safe. I thought to myself- all I did, was open up my door to collect food, I didn’t even walk out of my apartment! I asked if they had checked the CCTV footage and he replied with, “once they have made up their mind that’s it.” Baiscally, I was been wrongly accused of something without any evidence, only the word of one of my other neighbours that they heard me talking to a friend at the door of my apartment. And that one rumor had spread around the whole of the neighbourhood.

The Principle and I got into a discussion about treatment of foreigners in China, since the pandemic was now more out of control outside of China, he said he had read lots in the news about racism towards foreigners. To be honest, it was never something I had expected as in my whole time in China, I had always been treated well by others, particularly Chinese people and back home I stood up for them when people were making comments about them eating bat soup etc… when all the stereotypes others made I have personally never witnessed myself in this country. But I realized that this was others acting out of fear, in China most people have very little awareness of what goes on outside of the country as most of the news is blocked and controlled unless you have a VPN. Even though I am in Shanghai, I live in the suburbs in a remote place where perhaps people are not educated well. They are hearing the virus is spreading like crazy in the Western world, so a foreigner comes back to their apartment block and they are terrified out of their mind, especially when they think that foreigner might have left their apartment or could possibly have the virus. Anyhow, the treatment I had got in the UK when I went back to escape the coronavirus in China was a little similar too. The first day I got back, I went out to take the dogs for a walk with my Mum down by a reservoir in Wales, and at that time I had already been out of China for 2 weeks as I had been to Vietnam. We bumped into one of my Mum’s friends and she looked at me and instantly said “Are you back from China, have you been tested?” And I could see her backing away rather worriedly. The same with my friends, “well let’s meet up later on, aren’t you meant to quarantine for 14 days?” Well I had just spent nearly 14 days in Vietnam, I had been out of China for a while.

The result of all of this… was well I had to move apartments and restart my quarantine in another apartment, do the 14 days there, and then I could come back to my place here. The only problem was- who’s apartment was I going to move to? We had a discussion about it, then my Principle said he would give a couple in the UK who never came back a call to ask them. I felt a little bit strange about it though, because it’s someone’s private place after all. Anyway, he had a chat with them and the nice couple like they are- they agreed. I instantly called them up after to say thank you and we had a whole conversation about the saga again… as a lot of people had been apprehensive about coming back in the first place and this confirmed their concern.

Day 7 Quarantine

A week had nearly gone past since I had landed in Shanghai, Pudong and today I was going for a vacation to my new apartment! To be honest, I just wanted to get there and hibernate, this had all been psychologically stressful and just very, very painful.

The white coats came to pick me up, and I had to put on PPE gear, I felt like I was being taken away to a psychiatric asylum- I knew one day they would come for me! Selena the head of HR was there as well, she showed her support by wearing no protective gear, not even a facemask, just her usual self, heels and a dress and I really respected that about her. So, I left my apartment and entered the van with my 2 weeks of things packed away, I am sure the neighbors curtains were twitching.

Arriving at the apartment, the new housekeeping committee, seemed more helpful. They checked I was okay before shutting the door with the electronic seal and we added each other on wechat. They sent me nice messages to let them know if I needed anything and when my food deliveries were arriving.

Even though it wasn’t my apartment and it was kind of teasing because they had a rooftop garden that I couldn’t use, I felt a sense of peace and decided to just accept it. Like the Chinese do, they don’t make a fuss, they just accept things for how they are, and the fate that they have been given. There was nothing I could do.

Conclusion

Anyway, I am not going to bore you too much with the rest of what I did with my days in quarantine, as that’s been the same story as most of the people on the planet right now. After this, things did calm down and I could relax in my reclusive quarantine bubble.

But, I was extremely careful this time and whenever anyone knocked on my door I looked through the keyhole before opening. First of all, the trash person came at 8am every morning, which in my quarantine world was sort of irritating, as I couldn’t sleep in and I only had one day where I had a lesson at 8.30am, most of my online classes were in the afternoon, and then, the doctor came at 10am and 2am to check my temperature. I could have worn my pyjamas all day, but for some reason I also felt like I should look presentable when I opened the door, because it was my only communication with the outside world. I was also making sure I didn’t have a hot shower or exercise before temperature checking. And the food deliveries were okay, a member of the housekeeping team came to bring them up, and again, they took a photograph when I collected them from the door, don’t ask me why?!

The only thing that bothered me was one day housekeeping knocked on my door and said, “the neighbour was asking if you had left your apartment as the seal is broken and they are pregnant.” And I thought… here we go again… when actually I had not opened my door except for the required people, but I kind of knew that the doctor was not putting the paper seal back on the door, so I explained that to them. They seemed to believe me this time though. So then, whenever anyone came to door, I had to remind them to put the seal back on for fear that I was going to get accused again.

I thought I had to stay in quarantine for 7 extra days as I had been told I had to restart the 14 days from when I moved. But I was shocked when housekeeping told me I had passed quarantine after 14 days from the original date my quarantine started, and I had a green code, so all was well with the universe.

For some reason, for the first day or 2 after I stepped out of the apartment, I felt anxiety with being outside, I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb in my local area in China, the foreign girl who tried to escape quarantine. I worried that the whole of Lingang was talking about it, as if I had committed a crime. I went back to apartment though and tried to plan to plan my revenge on the neighbours, but then a few days down the line this itch eased off and I took a walk to Atarbucks. I sat there daydreaming with my matcha latte and then rode my bike around the lake with the breeze blowing my hair back and felt at peace. Nobody cared now and people just stared as usual at me- the foreigner with the orange hair. At the end of the day I wasn’t stuck in quarantine in the UK, I had done my time, it was a story to tell, I stopped looking at the news for a few days, and I tried to believe that things could go back to normal again and I wondered, would they ever?