Siege, house arrest, quarantine, lock down… call it what you like. Odd days galore with the coronavirus.
This is a hard piece to write. Within it, locked in a tight battle, are two very different narratives which to some readers both might hold value. One narrative is external: though laden with personal observations, none the less an attempt to record some of the happenings on a local level. The second narrative being internal: thoughts on what happens to a person or the mind when confined to your home at least 85% of your time. How to present both – I wish I knew. What follows is my attempt. More might follow… it looks like we are stuck in this rut for a while.
There’s this quote by Hunter S. Thompson: “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” As it happens, the tagline has proven quite a maxim in many occasions. These past weeks being no exception. Who are the among us to turn pro? All that follows, is strictly referring to Xiamen city and cannot be used to make generalisations for the rest of the country. Each region has gone about handling the matter differently.
The beginning
Where does one start? So, The Virus is upon us. It really all took off for the rest of us non-Wuhanese/Hubeinese just prior to the Lunar New year (about the 21st of Jan), and as a domino effect, it followed with the pulling of the hand brake on e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. As if by a stroke of a magic wand, the city of Xiamen became a ghost town, with everybody obediently kooked up in their own homes. I suppose the first few days for many, may have been self-inflicted quarantine. By that point, the entire Fujian province couldn’t have had too many cases. And with everybody celebrating the Lunar New Year, it is more than common for everything to quieten down for a brief moment. But with the days to follow – it become official. You were very sternly advised to stay at home. And, why wouldn’t you?
Public transport was cut down to next to nothing. Parks were closed off: first with just plastic police ribbons, then out came the metal fences. Wearing a face mask became compulsory pretty early on. Within a matter of few days you couldn’t go anywhere without one; bus drivers denied access to passengers with no masks. Yet, all masks and hand sanitiser had sold out within days of the news from Wuhan properly breaking through. If a particular shop got a delivery of masks, queues of more than 70 metres formed by the doors well before opening hours. Then it started with the thermometers: one’s temperature gets checked on average 3 to 4 times a day at various locations, if one chooses to leave the house. Not that one often does. At that’s when things get weird… inside and out.
For all those interested: the initial stage of being housebound, is rather like a constant slumber party. Lawless, reckless and heaps of fun. You spend all your days in pyjamas, get up when you want, go to bed at whatever hour, watch what you like, etc. – something most of us dream about in our normal busy routine on a regular basis. Talk about binging! As it so happens: the delight wears off. And when the initial pleasure abates, who you really are starts to show… How sustainable is a never-ending slumber party? How long does enforced staying at home continue to be fun?
Some get very much stuck in this initial stage. There is great allure in just letting go, running wild, abandoning all conformity to regularity. Who cares about exercise? Who cares about getting up before noon? It is too easy to forget the age-old truth which applies always: you reap what you sow. The price for stage one gets higher the longer you stay in it. And unfortunately, it is a bill that can’t be avoided. One ends up paying the price – sooner or later. Letting yourself stay in a perpetual state of lazy-Sunday-morning, as it turns out, is not pro.
Phase two
The Lunar New Year holiday got magically extended for everybody for various amounts of time. Some of the expats known to me from neighbouring countries disappeared to their respective countries. The streets remained pretty much empty. The only exception to the rule were and are the delivery men with their delivery scooters. With the official line for any form of gathering together hardening day by day, most people saw it fit to keep ordering their groceries online and have them delivered to their compounds. Good precaution. Even to this day the only place for people to be seen in any number are the big supermarkets. 90% of all the smaller scale shops stay shut.
At this point, rumours ran rampant and fear was tangible. People with the misfortune of having been born in Hubei were starting to feel the heat. At certain living quarters, people from Hubei were issued with identity cards to prove they had not gone anywhere near the province for a certain period of time. Very quickly that was extended to any person without registered residency in Fujian province. If you had local Xiamen residency, or could prove you had for a certain time period paid your social welfare fees in Xiamen, you were entitled to start partaking in a face mask draw. Much like lottery but the prize being face masks.
At around about this time also, all the other gates or pathways to living compounds got closed off and it became mandatory to use the main gate, so that everyone coming and going could have his or her temperature checked. Rather arbitrary it seems; most days my temperature has been around 33c. I have joined the ranks of other zombies, it seems. In closing various living quarters off from the outside world, some property management personnel have shown great imagination. Aside for the most common padlock and chain combos (one has to fight off the feeling of being held a prisoner), in places with not such clear defined boundaries created by fences one can see city bikes stacked shoulder-high to prevent entry.
Internally, the next stage is interesting too: one starts to create new order, new habits and new tasks within the boundaries. This phase shows what quality one’s self-discipline really is. This phase – I can see now – has quite a few different levels to it.
It involves the body and the mind: how to keep your bodily health in check in confined space and how to use your time wisely to keep your mind active. Some find keeping their body well easier than others, some will find the task of actuation the mind easier. One way or the other: both need to happen, sooner or later. Phase two is closer to pro. Not stellar, but closer. It takes a rather weird mindset to enter the zone of genuinely accomplishing things as days draw on and on, and on.
One of the many challenges in the second phase has to do with the view of the outside world. As the headlines grow more and more severe, the text message content from local authorities more demanding in nature, and people’s attitudes more fearful – the question facing one is, how do I view the outside and my fellow men? If one has made it part of the new routine to visit the outside world at least once a day, that habit starts to be emotionally under siege.
Also, many of the things that usually bring me great joy, have started to lose their appeal. Tea being one of them. Before, tea was an element which brought a nice, longed for break to the day filled with a variety of other things. To wind down by the tea table was a way of changing pace. Not so anymore. There is no busy tempo to alter. There is just long, windy hours to spend as one best sees fit. Only to start all over again the next day. To have my tea has just become a habit among the others, just to have at least some minimalistic content in my day.
Others too must be feeling that their tea drinking habits are under house arrest. It has been the official line for days now that gatherings exceeding three people are forbidden. The daily text message torrent from various departments of the municipal government educates everyone old enough to read on all sorts of things: I have received messages spelling out what is considered close contact, what symptoms I am to keep an eye out for, and among other things a long list of activities ill-advised in these critical times including playing cards. Not to mention my favourite message thus far: a reminder to keep my bowel movements regulated. Anyway, what do you think all of this has done to tea table fellowhood? Nobody sits down with their fellowman to enjoy a cup or two, and goes without saying, there are no tea stores open to find new flavours in.
Next Phase
My prediction for the next internal phase is: if one has succeeded in creating useful, up building, wholesome habits – one gets quite used to this and starts to enjoy each day as just the new normal. If one hasn’t: you start to get ill. Either mentally or physically. You might lose sight of the fact – this too shall pass. Only when this randomness of being housebound ends, we shall see who turned pro. Pro with a capital P. You know the type; not only does he or she find a way to survive being housebound, but a way to thrive. That type – the pro. Weird enough to have soared above and beyond anything normality could have delivered. This having said, enough on the internal dialogue. Let’s turn our eye outward again.
As I am writing this (10th of Feb. 2020) many people are going back to work, some higher grade students have resumed school by having their classes online, many others have returned to Fujian and Xiamen from their respective hometowns to start enjoying their 14-day quarantine. By any measure, most businesses should have under normal circumstances by now resumed more normal cash flows – but not this year. So now, as the third week of pretty much total paralyses kicks off, starts the ripple effect on the economy really show. What this means for different fields it is too early to say. My special concern being the tea merchants and other middlemen in the tea business. As for the growers: the first harvest to be picked is later in March. If this epidemic blows over by then, all should be ok. If not… hold on to your stash of greens and whites.