I am a little ashamed to admit I’m not always the most up to date with current news. Littered with politics, deaths, shootings and the occasional case of corporate embezzlement, there’s simply so much that happens in the world around us and no possible way to stay as up to date as you’d like while still living an engaged, focused life.
The coronavirus first came to my knowledge around the third week of January. Because I am a Chinese-American, a good portion of my extended family from my mom’s side lives in China—Guangzhou to be specific. It’s near the south coast, around Hong Kong, if you’ve never heard of it.
I, like many others, first thought the name choice was interesting. I read up on a few articles about it. The virus was so new that they didn’t really even have a name for it yet, but were just calling it a coronavirus, which is an umbrella term for a specific type of virus. SARS and MERS were also coronaviruses, but had specific names. At the time, my knowledge of SARS didn’t go much beyond something my uncle recalled from the early 2000s as a global epidemic.
The origin city of the coronavirus, Wuhan, also had absolutely no meaning to me. I looked it up. Wuhan wasn’t some small rural village I was expecting—it’s a big city! It’s been compared to Chicago in the US as its role as an industrial powerhouse of China.
When I first read about the coronavirus, no thought crossed my mind that it would affect me directly or change my life. I was slated to study abroad in Shanghai, China the following month. My flight was booked for February 11th, and I was peacefully waiting, enjoying my extended winter break at home in Boise, Idaho before I was to start my semester abroad—full of exploration, new experiences, and especially for interning at MSLGROUP, a world-renowned PR firm under Publicis Groupe. I thought that Wuhan’s coronavirus cases were a small issue, quick to be controlled and would never affect my trip to Shanghai, a city that was several hundred miles away, in another province, quite frankly in a different region of the country.
I had read all about and studied fake news in my classes at BU. After all, I am a communications major in a bustling city. I always affiliated it with politics, or things that were a little further removed from me, not quite within the dialogue shared within my own home.
Within days, the articles published about the coronavirus online multiplied exponentially. It was the only thing that my family’s WeChat conversation consisted of: screenshots of snippets of articles, my dad claiming “have you heard….” every night about something he might have glanced over on a Weibo thread. From false claims of a charter flight for US citizens in Wuhan before this was actually finalized, to efficiency of Purell hand sanitizer to prevent disease, and the percentage of bacterial filtration on earloop masks, every media outlet in the world was trying to have the most up-to-date information as the disease spread and information passed across time zones.
As the disease spread, I never once thought that my program would get canceled. Other students began messaging me with their concerns, which I quickly blew off. The common flu kills a good thousand people each year, so I didn’t see how coronavirus was any different, besides the fact that it didn’t react to antibiotics, not much was known about it, and that it was virtually symptomless until several days later.
As Beijing became increasingly concerned and ramped up security on their city borders, I began to merely consider the possibility of my program in Shanghai getting canceled. My family in Guangzhou kept us updated about the situation on the ground—people avoided leaving their homes as much as possible, and no person was seen without an earloop face mask if they were. When the Chinese government mandated that any educational institution in the country was not allowed to start their term before February 17th, my uncle sent us a screenshot from something he read online. We had an assumption that this would apply to Fudan, the university that BU Abroad partnered with for my program and where I would be taking classes. Still, at this time, I didn’t foresee any change in my plans—I would be arriving in Shanghai on February 12th, we would have a weeklong trip to Xi’an, and classes would start the following week. I wasn’t willing to make any move until I heard directly from the university.
On Monday, January 27th, my entire world flipped around. I was delivered a dilemma in the form of an email from Gareth McFeely, the executive director of BU Global Programs. Following suit from the request of the Chinese government, Fudan University postponed their spring semester start term, but to no specific date at the moment. Consequently, my study abroad program was postponed indefinitely. The US State had raised travel advisory to China to a level 3, on a scale of 4, with 4 being “do not travel”. As each Google search for “coronavirus update” (which I typed into the Google app every hour on the dot) came back with news that wasn’t great, I could see the problem of the coronavirus becoming more and more serious. The email stated that there was still a plan to offer the program in the upcoming semester, but there was no guarantee and no way to know at the moment. I had the option to return back to campus and enroll in courses two weeks late into the semester. The last day to add into a class was Monday, February 3rd. If I chose to stay with the program, I was taking a huge gamble, granted if the program were ultimately cancelled, I would have wasted a semester where I could have taken classes and pushed back graduation.
The thing with a viral outbreak that I didn’t realize until I was directly affected by one is this—no one can predict what can happen. No amount of technology, no amount of past experience, nothing can give you a definite answer to when the end is near. Additionally, my mom pointed out the significant difference in my abroad experience if I did end up going—I would live behind earloop face masks (which I was prepared for, we had stocked up on at least a hundred just from scouring every store that sold them in our area) and live in a city where anything could change at the drop of a pin.
My decision was a difficult one no matter what I chose, but I knew I had to choose the better of the two bads. I couldn’t see myself taking the risk with the potential of a pushed back graduation date, but I could see myself returning to Boston and starting the semester late, even though it was not where I had envisioned spending my spring semester. As soon as I made my decision, I picked up the phone and began calling. I called my advising office in COM, who were the first people I cried to and helped me every step of the way. I knew in this moment that I was supported.
I called housing, and was immediately held the last remaining apartment vacancy in the building I was living in before I went abroad. I called United Airlines to change my flight, rerouting to Boston at an earlier date, and thankfully I did, because the next day flights from the US to China were significantly cut in the beginning weeks of February.
On one side, it was hard to grapple with the fact that I would be starting the semester not only late, but in a totally different place than I had foreseen. Things I said goodbye to (temporarily), such as leadership positions, student organizations, jobs, I would be coming back to sooner than expected. People I thought I wouldn’t get to see again, I would, which was a double-edged sword. There were so many tearful goodbyes in my last week in Boston because I had so many good friends who were seniors, and granted the Shanghai program would have ended in June, I wouldn’t have been able to see them walk at graduation, and now would get to. At the same time, there were people I was perfectly okay with leaving behind for a semester, that now I would have to interact with closely again.
For a while, I was in a state of pure shock. I felt so many emotions, I was sad, angry, scared, but most of all, confused. Yes, I was angry, but at what? I couldn’t be mad at patient zero of the coronavirus, the likelihood of this patient being dead was high, and they were inevitably dealt the worst hand at life so I couldn’t even make that comparison with my current situation. There were people in Wuhan waiting in lines for hours to get the medical help they need, in hospitals that are overcrowded and not equipped to handle the surge in patients. And the people my heart resided with the most were those who were in global isolation, unable to return to their homes because they had closed their borders but unable to stay where they were previously because of the refusal to take them in.
I have never felt more thankful and supported than in the past week. I am so lucky to have so many welcome arms to run home to in Boston, to have so many people willing to accommodate and ease my transition back to life on campus, and to have the financial freedom to make decisions easily. I recognized quickly that there were many people who didn’t have this ability, and although life is not about comparison or making your situations more bearable by comparing to those who have it worse than you, it is very important to be aware of the upper hand you may be dealt and recognizing your position before quick judgments.
Not only were the news articles swimming on the internet directly affecting me, I found myself on Boston headlines shortly after! I was contacted by a reporter and ended up having my FaceTime interview broadcasted on Channel 4. I think it is important that people are aware of the situations students from programs like mine are facing, and to be kind and understanding. Most importantly, however, I think it is crucial for people to take a step back and recognize that a viral outbreak in China is not a reasoning or excuse to be racist and xenophobic; there should never be a time that this is justifiable.
A person with smaller eyes and black hair is not automatically Chinese. Because a person is of Chinese descent does not mean that they hold a Chinese passport or are a Chinese citizen. Nonetheless, if a person is from Wuhan, China, it does not mean they are automatically sick with the coronavirus. It is important for people everywhere to recognize the origins of the disease but recognizing the extreme ignorance in calling those of Chinese descent “dog-eaters” or judging an entire ethnicity because of decisions by a political party. The US, like China, also has areas that are less developed. If you have never stepped foot in the country of China, you are not allowed to make judgements about a “backwards system” because you yourself have not seen how the entire country is run on the ability to pay with a mere QR code. You are not allowed to judge a place that is foreign to you when you reap the benefits every day, from the very computer or mobile device you are likely reading this article on. Simply put, you are not allowed to be racist because of what your perceptions are about this coronavirus in comparison with SARS because it is in your duty as a global citizen to be humane.
I have faith that with science, with time, and with luck, the coronavirus will be a problem well of the past by the fall semester, which is when I hope to travel to Shanghai to complete my semester abroad. I am determined and headstrong. Shanghai was in my plans and although I saw myself there this semester and things panned out differently, I am willing to change what my plans were for the fall semester to make all those experiences I longed for still a possibility.
I was so bored while I was home that I began going to yoga every single day for the past month. From my very first class, when my instructor shared that her fiancé’s grandfather just passed away, and expressed how humans are able to understand and connect with one another through shared experiences of deep joy and deep sorrow, I knew that this was my outlet for healing. Earlier in January, my own grandfather passed away. Through each curveball life threw at me in the past month, I learned the importance of releasing in order to receive. I thanked my body for my strength to hold myself together, to support me through life. If it weren’t for the practice of yoga that I was able to apply to my own life, I do not believe I could have handled this past month the way I was able to.
With this, I hope you take the mantra: release to receive, into your everyday lives. There are so many things that you can never see, never plan, but also never avoid. Each day, be thankful for the vessel that is your body, and its strength to carry you forward.
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