Why an American mother rushed her daughters back to Shanghai during the Covid-19 outbreak
As the coronavirus raged in mainland China, a Shanghai-based American packed her two daughters off to her native United States. But after witnessing the two countries’ markedly different approaches, she found herself rushing them back
On March 15, I flew home to the United States to bring my daughters back to Shanghai. The sharp contrast between the way China has sought to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and the way the US has handled the pandemic has been alarming.
My family has been navigating the shifting geography of Covid-19 for months, as the virus first emerged in China, our country of residence, and then moved onto our native home, the US. We are Americans with a home in Virginia, but a couple years ago I took a job in Shanghai, and we moved there, with my husband commuting to his job in Washington.
When the coronavirus began to shut down China over the Lunar New Year holiday in January, we were on holiday in Japan. Once Shanghai schools began announcing closures, we decided the girls – aged 13 and 10 – should fly back to the US unaccompanied to stay with my husband while I returned to work in Shanghai. The subsequent Chinese lockdown would separate us for two months.
By mid-March, we had reached a turning point. The girls had just enrolled in their old schools when those institutions announced a shutdown. Meanwhile, their Shanghai school was sending out upbeat notices about reopening in the near future. And with US cases on the rise and China tightening its borders, I figured it was now or never.
I was on the ground in the US for less than 36 hours, but saw enough to be alarmed. If I hadn’t forcefully volunteered that I had just come from living in China, I don’t think anyone would have checked me for fever before entering the US.
Once I declared myself, I was escorted to a “CDC line” for a cursory temperature check (with a large group of Mormon missionaries returning from Europe), given a Centres for Disease Control and Prevention flier about Covid-19 symptoms and asked to stay home and minimise my trips outside for 14 days.
