“I found the panic bizarre” – Dronfield woman shares story of month-long coronavirus quarantine in China

Lucy Hamilton, 26, who is originally from Dronfield, and her fiancé Dave Griffin, 29, were forced to stay in their 12th floor apartment in Ningbo, near to Shanghai, after Covid-19 shut down the country.

The pair moved to Ningbo, in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, in 2018, so Dave, a lecturer with Nottingham University, could teach at the institution’s Ningbo campus, while Lucy finished her PhD.

Now, as fears grow that similar measures may soon be implemented in the UK, Lucy is sharing her experience to show others what it might be like.

Lucy, who also works as an English teacher, said: “We were all winding down for the Chinese New Year holidays, so it was about mid-January when I heard someone first mention it. They said corona, like the beer, so I had no idea what they were talking about and then we broke up for the New Year.

“It meant five days of no teaching, no evening commute, time to focus and finish my thesis corrections. Dave was spending the week in the UK - a quick catch-up with friends and family and some wedding preparations.

“I was staying in China cat sitting for a colleague, and it was supposed to be for five-days then we would go back to work. In the group chat for the building we live in, people then started saying we shouldn’t travel, we shouldn’t go and visit people in villages for the holidays – it all amplified quite quickly after that.

“A few days later, I had a message from my boss saying we would not be returning to work on January 29. In an effort to contain a virus outbreak in Wuhan, 400 miles away, governments had extended the holiday to February 3. Those visiting family in rural villages were urged not to return to the city. Flights into China began to be cancelled.”

Lucy says China went into lockdown not long after this, with the government stating that only one person per household was allowed to leave their home every two days so that they could visit one of the few supermarkets that remained open.

Luckily, Dave managed to fly back to Ningbo from the UK and was able to reunite with Lucy before the situation intensified.

“Because the great firewall of China limits our access to news sites, ironically, people at home were hearing more about coronavirus than I was,” Lucy added. “When my VPN finally connected, my social media accounts were swamped.

“I found the panic bizarre. There was an amplification of security. We also had to get QR codes and it was illegal to go out without your medical mask on.

“We live on a university campus and the students weren’t here anyway because they’d all gone home for the holidays but we weren’t allowed off the campus.

“We weren’t quite sure of the penalties of say, if we did go out without a mask on, how they would enforce it. There was security on all the gates and its just strange being in a foreign country as you don’t quite understand the laws and legislation anyway.”

After the Foreign Office issued advice for British nationals, the couple looked at flying back to the UK but eventually decided to stay in China.

Now, two months later and having spent Dave’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, and their anniversary all in lockdown, the pair are still off work and are teaching their lessons online from home.

Lucy said: “Things are getting better. New outbreaks in our province, Zhejiang, are declining and a few places have started opening again. I did go and meet my boss in a cafe yesterday and we had to sit on separate tables which was quite strange.

“There have been acts of solidarity. There is a group going around rescuing pets from apartments their owners haven’t been able to return to. Employers have been ordering food packages to be delivered to staff who can’t leave our apartments – my employer did this.

“There’s also a very community feel - people delivering masks to each other so we can leave buildings. There was a limit on two masks per person from medical stores for a while. People over here are very grateful that other countries sent masks over when we ran out! It feels very much like we’re all in it together.”

Lucy added: “The difficult part now is knowing how long this whole thing is going to go on for, we’re still sometimes having difficulty getting off the campus as the security guards won’t always let us out and they want to know where we’re going.

“It’s quite rare in your adult life that you do just get two months where you can spend loads of time together; where you don’t have the commute to work, you can spend your dinner breaks together – it’s just trying to make the most of the opportunity.”

Lucy says both her and Dave are now worried about the ever-changing situation in the UK, as they intend to return for their wedding in Buxton in July.

“We’ve been getting quite a lot of messages with people asking for tips on how to survive quarantine and how to work from home. Looking at the situation in the UK right now is quite a shock.

“Because we were already in quite an unfamiliar environment in China, it’s almost like this quarantine was a China thing. It was another unusual thing to deal with but now seeing it in the UK, we’re just not quite sure how it is going to be enforced.”