Joschua As the spring term was about to begin at my university, I boarded a plane to take me from Beijing to Hong Kong. The past week in China has been surreal: school closures, temperature checks, masks and hazmat suits… Dozens of new coronavirus cases were being recorded every day. I barely made it into the country before all airlines ceased China-bound operations. Since arriving, China has continually been the centre of Western media attention, reporting about how dangerous and infectious of a place China has transformed into (that didn’t age well, did it?). It was definitely time to get out of there!
Staring out of the plane window, I watched as Beijing’s soil safely receded; I had a good feeling about this. Hong Kong was in much better shape, and beginning the new semester with friends, albeit online, would make time pass well until I would return to Beijing in the summer.
Upon arrival, I strolled through immigration, made my way back to campus and finally took off that uncomfortable mask. I spent the next few days catching up with friends, sometimes in large groups, and enjoying a little bit of normality again. With Hong Kong closing its border to the Mainland, there was nothing to worry about in terms of the virus. Also, the 2003 SARS epidemic made Hong Kong well-prepared in terms of the handling of diseases.
I probably shouldn’t have been this optimistic. As the days went on, you could see evermore anxiety in the eyes of Hong Kongers. As customary in Asia, many people began wearing masks out of their own initiative and as a courtesy to others (the fact that we are still seeing the exact opposite of such behaviour in Western countries almost one year into the pandemic is baffling). And although my friends and I were quite loose on masks as a group, I began wearing one at least whenever I headed out on my own.
It also didn’t take long for the university to begin distributing masks to staff and students for free, which was a very thoughtful gesture. Everyone else in Hong Kong wasn’t as lucky: the early mask shortage meant that queues in front of drug stores suddenly became horrendously long, bending and looping through the foyers of every shopping mall in town.
Several weeks in, things gradually began to get a little more serious. The government began limiting the number of people gathering in public. Mask-wearing became the norm. The university canteens halved their capacities. Gyms closed. People began panic-buying. And so on…
Hilariously, the increased panic buying (although on a much smaller scale than at Walmarts across the US in March 2020) also gave rise to the following unforgettable headline:
This story continues in part 3 of The Corona Diary.
