I have a good friend from childhood, Adam, with whom we often talked about how even though I studied Chinese, he ended up in China. It's not easy to maintain our friendship over many years from such a distance, but if there is a desire and energy on both sides, it works, and thankfully I can say with gratitude in my heart that it's not an issue for either of us.
I wanted to talk to Adam about the health care situation in China, and what the situation is there on the endometriosis front, but the current situation has turned our topic in a very different direction.
But that's okay, because all he had to say about the health care situation in China was that he couldn't really comment on it, because he never used the services, because he is rarely sick, so that's it. Health care is paid, expensive, but affordable in relation to salaries, and the hospitals are well equipped.
On the endometriosis front, she also had little to tell, the topic is not at all in the spotlight in China, young people in her circle of acquaintances had not heard of it at all, and she was the one who educated her friends and acquaintances there about the disease. As a result, we ended up talking about the coronavirus. Since I know that EndoBlog readers are open-minded, curious people who try to get their information from credible sources about world affairs and avoid fake news, I thought you would welcome Adam's account of what life is like in coronavirus-infected China.
Please welcome Adam's experiences.
My name is Ádám Huzella, I have been teaching English in a Chinese comprehensive school for almost 4 years. I live in the capital of Henan province in central China (Zhengzhou, a city of 10 million people), the northern neighbour of Hubei province (the hotspot of the coronavirus). Fortunately, I am not in China at the moment, but I am in daily contact with many of my Chinese and foreign friends, colleagues and acquaintances, so I get first-hand information and I also follow Chinese social media closely.
I left the city on 10 January and headed to Hong Kong, in southern China, to start my Chinese New Year holiday. That was when the first news about the Wuhan virus started to come in, but we didn't pay too much attention to it at the time. Slowly the news got serious.
The first big shock for us was the closure of Wuhan, a city of 12 million people, and after that it was all over the Chinese media, with New Year celebrations cancelled and family visits affected. It is a huge thing for China, to imagine Christmas and New Year being cancelled at home at one moment and even worse. The first doctor - now sadly deceased - who warned of the new threatening virus was treated quite seriously by the Chinese authorities accused of spreading rumours, so unfortunately by the time the virus was out, 5 million people had already left Vuhan.
At the moment, I could describe Kina as a surreal apocalyptic ghost town, or even a ghost country. Not primarily because of the virus, which is obviously a serious problem and there is panic in many places, but rather because of the provisions that have been put in place in response to it. Flights have been grounded, there are travel restrictions within the country, curfews, and often only one person per household is allowed out every two days to go shopping and go home, masked and dressed.
Economically, the country is going to suffer a lot, and the worst thing is the uncertainty, we don't know what to expect, when will it start to improve or will it get worse for a long time? A small proportion of workers have jobs that they can do from home in a 'home office' way, not so much here. The school where I work, and all other schools across China, have closed. The children are the most feared. The food supply is relatively good, with temporary shortages of fresh produce (fruit, vegetables, meat). Industry and the service sector are crippled. Schools, kindergartens, universities are closed, we only know dates for how long they will definitely not open, but when they will actually open is an absolute question. It is very difficult to bear.
Many people doubt the statistics, believing the real numbers to be much higher.
Otherwise, with all due respect to the Chinese, who are tolerating the confinement, many of them the total lack of work and income, extremely well and seemingly calmly and serenely. Most of them are well stocked up on durable food and masks. Psychologically, this confinement and isolation can be very stressful when coupled with the worry about the virus.
Those who go out alone are very lonely, those with families can get on each other's nerves after a while. They joke that in 9 months there will be a 'boom' in childbirth, although I can imagine that too, and I've heard of people wearing masks at home and not letting their family members within two metres...
This is not quality of life, it is vegetation and simple survival. I don't know, and no one knows, how a sealed, closed area like Vuhan, or even a quarantined ship, can be the site of such an epidemic. We can only hope.
Personally, I'm not worried about my own health, but I understand that this has turned into a serious issue that needs to be taken seriously. I feel sorry for the Chinese people who are being racially attacked or discriminated against worldwide because of it.
There's a lot of motivational and propaganda material on Chinese social media, "Yes, we are strong, we can beat the virus, we can do it" - it's going on everywhere. The closures, the schools being closed, the deaths of health workers and the lack of masks, the lack of medicines is becoming more and more obvious and obviously not helping. Unfortunately, however, I believe that there is nothing to be gained here, at best there is minimal damage and loss.
I am currently on "forced leave" in Thailand. I don't know how long there will be no school, unfortunately there is a smear and we haven't even received our January salary yet.
I'm in Thailand, they are the ones who surprisingly have not closed the border to Chinese jets and tourists. Thailand may sound good to many, but there's a lot of uncertainty about my job and salary future, and I hadn't planned such a long holiday. For now, I can do nothing but wait patiently for further news on whether I should return to Kina anytime soon, whether I will have a job or whether I should go home to Hungary.
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