Coronavirus Lockdown

22^nd January - 24^th February 2020

Just as I was leaving Saipan the news of the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.  My original plan was to return to my flat for a few days, wash clothes, have a short rest and fly to Urumqi to visit my girlfriend for the new year.  Very quickly things started to get worse and this was not going to work...  I got as far as spending the evening in the Holiday Inn near Tianjin airport, but in the evening we decided it was best that I not fly across the country should I get stuck there.  Things increasingly started to tighten in Wuhan.  Concerned that she may become trapped in far west China, Mandy flew back a few days later and came to stay with me.

And so the days rolled by.  At first we could go out to the shops, but most never reopened after the Chinese New Year.  Long distance deliveries from Taobao and those relying on the postal system ceased a fortnight prior to the New Year (yes, they close the postal system for a fortnight) and remained closed into February.  Takeaway deliveries ceased, most restaurants were not open and then even the big chains closed, and the delivery drivers were no longer allowed onto the estate. Places increasing wanted you to wear a mask (regardless of their efficacy) such as public services, shops and the school before they closed to staff.  Shops ran out of masks and hand sanitisers.  We were fortunate to find one store that had a few remaining.  Mostly throughout this period fresh produce like fruit and veg have been in constant supply.  But the bread ran out, bakeries had closed for the new year and as factories were closed none was like to arrive until early February.  The school term was suspended a fortnight until late February.

They started taking temperature readings on the gate to the estate in an informal manner, and then there started to be more and more staff out there, recording names, phone numbers or anyone coming into the estate.  But the irony now was that there was no where worth going anyway, everything was shut.  Taxis were strictly local only.

Also staying was Mandy’s lovely doggie, who helps keep us company.  We could take her for frequent walks to stop her chewing my plants.  Chinese people are bizarrely frightened by dogs.  If she were to run up to someone they put their arms in the air, shout or get on a wall to escape them, yet she doesn’t bite or bark, or even touch them!  There some great fear of disease, especially rabies.  She’s clearly not a wild dog, or with any likelihood of having rabies, The fuss made is idiotic.  Anyway, Mandy had to return to Beijing as her school was due to start at the end of February and they were insisting everyone do a fortnight isolation when returning to Beijing.  She was searching for a taxi for days but all had been closed down, eventually she got one but it costs three times the normal rate.  When she got to her estate she was issued with a card dated upon return that she would have to wait two weeks before she could turn in for a replacement that would allow her outside.  As of writing this, she has only recently taken her first trip outside in a fortnight.  Meanwhile I was now on my own for the foreseeable future.

And then things started getting much worse.  The UK started chartering flights to get people out of Wuhan, but there was confusion with the Chinese authorities preventing partners and children of British citizens leaving if they held chinese citizenship.  I cannot imagine anyone bugging out and leaving their kids behind, so of course people still remain there.  Then the Foreign Office ‘advises’ all Britons leave ‘if they can’.  The reality is that the taxis are local, and the wisdom of taking public transport or going into a crowded airport is highly questionable.  Leaping on a plane to fly home, and living in the UK isn’t cheap and for all I knew, I could be flying back within a week or two.  It simply didn’t seem practical, or worthwhile.  Some others on the estate decided that it was worth going home, one chose to take the train, another had family drive them to the airport.  In total, about half dozen of us from school remain in the area, everyone else is abroad.

I think the UK government has been behind the curve on a lot of this.  They were slow to charter flights out of Wuhan, they were later than most to fly people off the quarantined ship held off the coast of Japan.  When one of my friends flew home from Beijing there were no checks of any sort at the airport, no advice given.  Yet two days after this they announced that it was a major health risk.  Other than the advice to leave, the Foreign Office has done nothing and given no helpful advice.  As a friend opined, they have told us to leave so as to wash their hands of those remaining should things turn for the worse.

I said that the shops were mostly well stocked.  But then the water ran out.  For days I could not buy fresh water in the shops, thankfully I had thought to stock about 30 litres worth in the flat.  The water in China is not safe to drink, even when boiled as if can contain pollutants and chemicals not removed by boiling like bacteria.  I was going to update this blog almost immediately after the piece on Saipan but then the VPN stopped working.  Appears that information control and censorship is currently high on the agenda of the Chinese Government while thousands are infected by a disease with a 2% fatality rate (if statistics are to be believed).  There are a lot of nasty rumours online and it would be nice is the World Health Organisation and Foreign Office would explicitly say they have confidence in the data given out by Chinese government.  I feel they repeat it, as there’s nothing better to go on, but give little indication of their faith in them.  It’s not necessarily malicious, if they run out of testing kits then the statistics will be affected by insufficient detection.  All that aside, having all the VPN blocked and suddenly unable to contact people in the UK is distressing for everyone.  It worried my family and friends that I suddenly stopped communicating for nearly a week, and I need that communication for my own sanity.

Anyway, water arrived back in the shops and I have a healthy stock. I cant get sausages, bacon, cheese and other nice things from Walmart, that’s all run out.  But delivery services have very gradually started to open, Taobao opened up again and I was able to buy in some model kits again to build.

This is all I do now, do online lessons for school, watch TV and make model kits.  Sure, it seems a lot but I need a selection.  The opening for school was pushed back to mid March, and then again to the 22^nd.  I don’t know how this can work... as much as we try to do in online classes, it’s no substitute for teaching in person.  I realise now that if we do not return before the end of March... it leaves only April to complete the content of the course, and teach and practice the content for the practical exams. Where does revision and a full mock exam fit into this?  They have only done a mock exam at Christmas that covers the inorganic part of the chemistry course.  We shall have to see, but it seems like a long way out of the woods yet.

Holiday to Saipan

A long time since updating the blog.  After golden week we went through a period where the VPN was especially bad and whenever I would find time to write, it was not working.  Weeks started to roll by and, as with all things that don’t get attention, was forgotten.  Although there were few things of particular note in the months prior to Christmas.  A few colourful school events, we worked almost straight through Christmas.  There was a staff meal on the evening of Christmas Eve, we worked in the day, and then got Christmas Day and Boxing Day off.  Yet in typical Chinese fashion we had to work a couple weekends to give the time back.  Imagine.  You at least got Christmas Day off in a Victorian workhouse for Christ’s sake.

December 6^th was my birthday, time to hang out with friends.  International postal services are so shocking in China I asked family not even attempt to post anything. There is at least one thing sent in late September/early October that never arrived.

December 9^th I attended a training even in Beijing for school.  The event was not especially interesting, it was free so what can you expect?) and the highlight was meeting a lovely girl called Mandy. Over the last couple months we have become very close, and I’m sure she will feature in future postings.

Eventually we got through the mock exams, we marked and completed reports and finally, on the 11^th January, we broke up for the end of term.  A hell of a slog since mid August.

14^th-22^nd January 2020

I could have gone anywhere for my January holiday, and I will go to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc, in the coming year.  But I wanted to do something different, go somewhere small, far from anywhere.  Somewhere that people would say ‘where’s that?’.  Saipan was also on my list for the submerged vehicles offshore that I had seen years ago online but though were so far, in too remote a place, for me to every visit.  Yet now I am a direct flight away.

Saipan was one of those Pacific Islands that saw heavy fighting between the US and Japan in WW2.  Now part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory, it has previously changed hands between the Spanish, Germans and Japanese. I was there for the weather, the scenery, and the history.  The island suffers annual typhoons and tsumani, some of which have affected tourism causing businesses to close.  The island has many closed properties, holiday parks and complexes that once thrived but stand empty. It reflects the problems common to many coastal resorts in the UK, and everywhere in Saipan is near the coast. Aside from cafes and restaurants, many properties are occupied by massage parlours, 24 hour poker houses or insurance brokers.  But the people are friendly, and the places I ate were very good.  The Ete cafe a short walk from my hotel did a great breakfast in the mornings, and the Oleai restaurant south of the town I ate in every other day.  Near the submerged tanks I would go for a swim, walk a short distance to dry off and go in to eat.  The hotel I stayed in was a strange place, I arrived at 1am, and at first they gave me a room that hadn’t been cleaned from the last occupant!  Some embarrassment on their part and I got a new room.  The hotel was for the Chinese visitors to the island, but was very quiet, and the breakfast included was basic chinese fare.  I went on holiday to get away from this stuff, watery rice and fried noodles.  Ugh!  That’s why I went up the road to the Ete cafe to get some sausage, egg and bacon.

I travelled mostly along the west coast of the island during my week long visit.  I tried on one occasion to walk to the peak on the island, but the tourist map I had was vague, my phone had no signal, and I got a bit lost.  The heat and humidity was oppressive, whenever I went out I took as much water as I could comfortably carry but it was never enough.  So I gave up on that.

The highlight for me was going to see the three submerged Sherman tanks little more than a mile from my hotel.  I bought snorkel gear on the first morning and went swimming every day.  The water was warm and clear, I could see plants and corals, and many types of fish all around.  The water was rarely so deep that I could not stand up if I so needed.

I went out to a different Sherman each of the first three days, and then made repeat visits in the evenings thereafter.  It always made a good point to aim for when swimming out to while looking at the sea-life.  The tanks have act life artificial reefs, and are teeming with sea-life.  Fish swim in and around the wheels and tracks and shelter throughout their corroded structures.  There are small difference between the tanks although they are all M4A2 variants, they all have the distinctive Diesel engine deck.  The internet widely identifies the southernmost as an M4A3 but my researches since all seem to go back to one reference in an article from the 70s.  Shows how one person’s error can be repeated wide and far despite the vehicles being open to public access.

There are monuments to events on the island, not all war related such as those to 13 fishermen lost to a typhoon in 1986 as the the Japanese that established the sugar cane industry on the island during the 1930s.  The japanese gardens were particularly beautiful, with monuments to the sugar cane industry and memorials to peace, I would see these elsewhere though the meaning behind them raised some questions.

The western length of Saipan has a well signposted heritage trail marking notable structures and sights that survived the war.  Many are Japanese bunkers but also remains of a church tower and sections of walls from pre-war buildings.

The very north of the island is the location of the Last Command Post and the Banzai and Suicide cliffs.  At the end of the battle on Saipan the Japanese were forced into the north of the island.  Japanese propaganda and downright brainwashing led soldiers to fight to the death and civilians alike to commit suicide before surrender for fear of torture and rape by barbaric American soldiers.  Saipan was the site of by far the biggest Banzai (suicide) charge by Japanese troops of the entire war.  Over 4000 charged American forces, some injured and barely armed, in one blaze of glory.  The Americans killed them almost to a man while taking approx 700 casualities. Some survivors among troops and civilians took their own lives jumping from Banzai cliff in to the deep churning sea, or inland from Suicide cliff, a fall of hundreds of meters onto rock.  And if you doubt any of this, there is wartime footage of people ignoring the pleas of Japanese and Americans and leaping into the sea.

There are many japanese memorials in this area, the coastline at Banzai cliff has many of them, one even opened by a visit from the Emperor himself.  But looking at them, I can’t help but think the tone of the memorial is inappropriate, they broadly wish for world peace, and honour the dead, but lack any sense of guilt or contrition.  The black stone above, revering loyal and brave soldiers giving their lives defending their homeland.  Saipan wasn’t their homeland, it was taken from the Germans by Japanese imperial expansion, they mistreated the people living there, they kidnapped women from Korea and forced them into sex slavery, those troops were ‘loyal’ to The cruellest, violent nationalism, and many died because their own government blinded them with frightening lies about American troops to force both soldiers and civilians to fight to the death or take suicide over surrender.

The taxi driver who took me up to the Command Post in the morning stopped at another Japanese memorial to let me out, I recall him looking at it, and then said something I couldn’t understand while making a dismissive look.  I looked at him as if to ask what he meant, and he laughed and shook his head.  But I got the message, the feelings still run deep here, there is rightfully a lot of bad feeling towards the Japanese, for their actions in the war and their continued refusal to take any responsibility.

Back down nearer the hotel I got to see a few more locations of interest.  The last I will mention is the old Japanese Jail. A pre-war building that supposedly held some American airmen and were executed just prior to the invasion.  The most extraordinary claim of this location is that it held Amelia Earhart.  Yes, local folklore has it that she crashed here and was held by the japanese and either died of disease or was executed for reasons that make little sense when you give it any thought, but it makes for a good story.

On the last day I booked a ride on the Saipan Submarine.  A trip that takes you into deeper water to see a Japanese wreck and sea-life.  Was an enjoyable experience, never been on a submarine before, the water was pretty clear and they sprinkle some food out the sub to attract the fish.  I hoped to see more wrecks but the water is quite shallow for a lot of them, and there were a lot of fish.  Whole thing took an hour, as the weather was a bit grey out, glad to do something indoors.

That’s mostly it for Saipan, I wonder if I shall come back.  I’ve seen a lot of the war related things, but it is a very nice place to be.  Of course, Guam is 120 miles south and that has sights of its own.  I headed to the airport at midnight with a flight at 1am!  Of course, when I got back to Beijing all hell was breaking loose in Wuhan.