Heavy tropical rain is rattling down. It's not a 'going-out' kind of morning at all so my indulgence has been an archive recording of 'Under Milk Wood' on the B.B.C. World Service. A sort of 'Comfort Listening'!
When I last wrote from Zhejiang Province here in Southeast China, some 6,000 miles from my Carmarthenshire home, I was busy making plans for the week-long National Workers' Holiday beginning on May 1st. My six-month assignment at this University near the city of Quzhou was not only to have been a wonderful teaching experience but also a great opportunity to travel to a few of the many places of interest this vast, historic country has to offer the visitor.
My ambition - to get a taste of the 'real' China that is today before it changes and is gone forever in its headlong flight into the 21st Century.
Students discussed details of proposed journeys home to join family and friends or to see special places and tourist spots. They enquired eagerly about my own intended travels.
Then, quite suddenly, everything changed. Government issued controls came into force. The holiday was cancelled and the time spent instead at normal lectures, everyone confined to the campus. My 'Oriental Experience' now seems unlikely to run according to plan and all because of SARS. ........
My English Language students and I had discussed this "new disease" but only in a remote, detached way - as an example of how modern travel has scaled down this world of ours to a small size, and possibly, a dangerous degree. Now the reality is on our doorstep.
We have all lost our freedom. I must not travel on long-distance journeys, by public transport, meet with large groups of people, eat out in cafes or restaurants nor can I go to any of those magical places on my 'must see' list. Students wash clothes, air bedding and scrub dormitories repeatedly.
Everywhere disinfectant is sprayed at regular intervals. It is all so reminiscent of the frantic reaction to Foot and Mouth Disease seen in Britain not so long ago.
There is little doubt that China is in crisis. Daily Beijing, the current hot-spot, is watched by the world, whereas this province is almost disease-free but all regions must be seen to be taking the utmost precautions.
I have been provided with face-masks, a thermometerto record (and report) my daily temperature and special herbal teas - said to aid immunity and priced at a premium now.
My Chinese friends burn incense in their homes and consume vinegar with everything since it was rumoured to be the ultimate preventative. The price of this too has soared and supplies have virtually run out. There's something of a seige mentality. With the Campus gate heavily guarded I must show my identity documents each time I pass on my way to and from lectures.
As the only foreigner here I'm fairly conspicuous anyway - but this is the law.
There is no panic. No one wears a mask but the concern is great. When, eventually I return home to Wales, this episode will be recalled with interest and amusement maybe - but somehow I feel it will lack the lustre of recounting a journey to see the Terra-cotta Army, The Three Gorges Project or The Great Wall!
Kyra Somerfield
James Walton who was living in China in 2003 contacted us with this message:"It was with great interest that I read the feature by Kyra Somerfield on life in China. I left Tregaron, Ceredigion two months ago and am now teaching English in a private school in Shandong province, China. The culture difference couldn't have been any greater - a small market town in the Cambrian mountains to Jinan, a city whose population exceeds 5 million!
"I can relate directly to many of Kyra's experiences - the population, noise and food. The weather though is something else - this is the fourth hottest city in China, and for the last week or so the temperature has exceeded 35 degrees! A far cry from a wet Tregaron day in May!
"Anyway, thanks for the article, its good to know I'm not the only Cardi out here!"
