I am really, really sorry.
Poised for our eighth entry to China in a scant two weeks, a trip I have been planning virtually since we saw the 2006 total solar eclipse in Turkey, we must cancel.
We had itineraries to the Sunday market in Kashgar in western China, on from there into Central Asia, through the Torugart Pass and across Kygyzstan to Almaty, Kazakhstan.
We have planned to visit both the Sunday market in Kashgar and the Torugart Pass, literally, for years, and the people who have planned all this for us are specialists who have done a considerable amount of work. Toward them, those who did good work, I'm feeling mighty guilty.
On 22 July, the longest total solar eclipse anyone alive will ever have the chance to see will be visible from India into the Pacific. We went to great pains last fall to secure our spot to see it on the 10,167 foot (3099 meter) Mt. Emei, south of Chengdu in Szechuan province, China.
We submitted our request to all the travel agents we could find in China. Of those that replied, all said the one hotel atop Mt. Emei (or Emei Shan) straight on the eclipse’s center line, was fully booked by tour groups.
All but one. One resourceful travel agent, who lives in Guilin, China, and works for China Odyssey Travel, said he could do it. Leo Huang told us if we could pay the tariff for a suite, it could be ours. We took it, paid our deposit and signed up friends to join us.
We did all this well before there was swine flu, and we’ve been most eager to go. I’ve spent more on camera gear than I have a right to.
But as we come down to departure, this swine flu, which didn’t even exist when we began planning, has made the Chinese government crazy. Leo himself was quarantined, for being on a train among 150 people, one of whom was suspected of having the flu.
The Chinese government, from here, looks to be going berserk. I link to many stories below, which describe healthy people being pulled from their travel plans into quarantine. The general rule seems to be that if someone has a fever on an incoming flight, passengers three rows either side of the suspect are summarily quarantined for seven days.
I posted a few days ago on the experience of a man I know from high school:
“We just barely missed quarantine. There was 1 guy with a fever on our plane about 10 rows up from us, they quarantined 3 rows ahead and 3 rows behind him across the plane! The decision to do this took 2 hours! This was flying into Shanghai. Then they followed me to my destination city and kept coming by to take my temperature. After they finally saw I was not sick they left me alone for the rest of the trip.”
Were we to be quarantined for seven days merely because of where we happened to sit on an airplane, we would miss the eclipse. We’d be unable to make it to western China for the famous Sunday market in Kashgar, and we would miss our connection into Central Asia, a week long itinerary for which we’ve hired the best tour company operating in that part of the world, Stantours. I feel guilty to cancel their good work, too.
We remind ourselves, though no consolation, that the fact is, we all really want to go. It's the Chinese government that is making the trip unpalatable. Perhaps China Odyssey Travel, and Stantours, will accept that we’ll book through them when we eventually make this trip (sans eclipse) – at some point after the Chinese government drops the xenophobia.
There’s nothing good to be said. As Reuters notes “China has been eager to show it can effectively control H1N1, after its cover-up of SARS contributed to the spread of that disease.” The Chinese government seems to be over-reacting to its prior negligence and putting on a show of what James Fallows describes as Security Theatre, in this case “no matter how hazily connected to systematic public health reasoning, (Chinese anti-flu efforts) seem part of a resolute effort to protect the Chinese people against lax standards elsewhere, notably including the United States.”
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing posts this travel alert, which points out that
“In some instances, children have been separated from their parents because either the parent or the child tested positive for 2009-H1N1 and was placed in quarantine for treatment. This situation presents the possibility of Chinese medical personnel administering medications to minors without first having consulted their parents.
The Department of State has received reports about unsuitable quarantine conditions, including the unavailability of suitable drinking water and food, unsanitary conditions, and the inability to communicate with others.”
In reply to my email the consulate in our destination, Chendgu, confirmed there was really nothing they could do.
China is the only country in the world summarily plucking even transit passengers out of planes and locking them up. In spite of unhappiness in the Chinese tourism industry, sagging demand at Chinese hotels and whatever harm may be done to China's reputation around the world, it appears that the more important thing to the leadership is to give the impression of Protecting The People.
A bitter a lesson for people like me, who pride themselves on jumping from place to place around the globe, is that the Chinese government can do just that, arbitrarily and on high, because of the type of authoritarian government they are.
Australian Tom Hands, who, according to Australian ABC News, "was only supposed to be transiting through Shanghai on his way to a holiday in Canada," related, "It's been a bit like a jail and we kind of just hang around the same room and go a little bit insane." He said he had not had fresh food in the hotel where he is being held. Australians appear to have a special skill at being snared when China isn’t even their destination.
A CBS News employee named Marsha Cooke, somebody you’d expect to be a grizzled, or at least seasoned pro in the ways of international travel, ends her story like this: “I'd like to offer some advice to future travelers: Think carefully when entering China, because in this land, fever, flu and fear are a prescription for misery.”
Here’s more of what they’re saying around the web, including many stories about what travelers to and through China have been experiencing these last few weeks:
The Daily Beast reports that China is “putting thousands of healthy travelers into quarantine. The measures have quickly turned into a witch hunt for a cough or a runny nose.”
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“Chinese authorities tracked down Westwood resident Mike Su recently at a networking banquet in Beijing. They forced him to pack his bags, then whisked him away to a budget hotel on the edge of the city where they detained him for a week.
Su's crime? On his flight from Los Angeles, the website director had the misfortune of sitting near someone who had allegedly contracted the H1N1 flu.
"I felt like I was going to prison," said Su, 33. "I read the headlines in the news, but I never thought I'd be the guy who gets quarantined."
The detention meant Su didn't get a chance to strike deals in China for his company, Beverly Hills-based Break Media. He never exhibited any symptoms of the pandemic flu.”
(You can read more of this story. Su wrote Life in the Big House about his experience on his web site, A Product Guy.)
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The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported as long as a month ago that “More than 400 Chinese air crew quarantined after A/H1N1 flu outbreak.”
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A Eureka, California newspaper relates the story of a Local student and teacher sequestered in China because of H1N1 fears.
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The Denver Post reports that
“University of Colorado student Thomas Spradling was lounging in the lobby of his classy hotel in the center of Beijing on Monday — just two days into his Asian summer vacation — when men in white hazmat suits came for him and his mother…. The pair was forced to put on masks, herded into the back of an ambulance and driven to a rundown hotel on the outskirts of Beijing. Spradling and his mother, Barbara, had sat within three rows of someone with swine-flu-like symptoms on their flight to Beijing. And those unfortunate seat assignments had just landed the pair in Chinese quarantine.”
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The Denver Post also tells the story of the Puc family:
“Their vacation of a lifetime was derailed Sunday when they and several hundred other passengers from their flight to China were detained because someone on the plane was diagnosed with H1N1 virus…. No one was allowed to leave the plane for about an hour because Chinese doctors found a teen and perhaps one other person on the flight suffering from flu symptoms.
The Puc' family lucked out and missed an initial quarantine order by one row of seats.
They enjoyed a day of sightseeing and shopping in Shanghai and returned to their hotel, a Marriott Renaissance.
They all were asleep when they received a call from the desk: Chinese authorities were making arrangements to have them quarantined….
The ride to the quarantine hotel was in an ambulance in the dark of night with a driver who didn't speak English. It was a miserable, hot and humid three-hour ride, Puc' said.”
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Someone on the Silk Road International site blogs about his experience, which seems to have left him just the least bit bitter.
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Jonathan M. Metzl writes on the site Midwest Voices,
“We now sit in a rural motel in a field beside a chicken farm, awaiting the passage of seven days. A physician, an engineer, a pharmacist, a photographer and her two children, three businessmen, a banker, and many others. According to the U.S. Consulate, the Chinese government quarantined more than 400 Americans, and countless Chinese and other nationals, over the past weeks. More ambulances arrive daily, and the number of held people grows with each arriving flight.”
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But enough.
You might think we're lily-livered home boys who don't know the rough-and-tumble of the developing world. We're no swashbucklers, we're not heedless blundering adventurers, but the 100-odd countries under our belt include such gems of traveler comfort as Ivory Coast, Burma and immediate postwar Bosnia. We've been robbed (of a pittance) in Transylvania, detained (briefly) by Namibian authorities and I've had a prized camera lens prised from my possession during Milosevic's last days in Belgrade. My extra-intrepid wife has called for various necessary physical repair at clinics in the Cook Islands, Malawi and Vietnam.
Or you might suggest that we tough it out and we have surely been round and round about doing just that. Ultimately though, as our would-have-been companions put it best,
"If we did decide to go, we'd be spending the next two weeks dreading the uncertainty of the enterprise. Then we'd have a full day of dreading the China process that awaits at two airports. IF we made it to Chengdu, we'd spend our time dreading the knock on the door inviting us to pack our bags and begin our "special moment". If that doesn't come, we'll still spend our time dreading the process of getting back out of China. I don't see any shoulder's down time for any of us until we're on the back side of China.
A certain amount of trepidation should always accompanying a globe trotting adventure, but there's way too much trepidation involved here for my money. We travel for pleasure, among other things, and this trip stopped being a pleasure some days back."
I might add that well over a decade's worth of the average annual urban Chinese income of RMB 8,472 (US$ 1,058) is in the mix, too, for each canceling couple.
I am truly sorry to those who have done good work for us. We’ll try to watch the 22 July eclipse online, a cold consolation. The next viable eclipse for us, after a quick look, is a disappointingly long wait – until 2016. We’ll make other plans, and should you be planning a trip to China, best of luck to you, and let us hear how it goes.
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While I was writing this, FedEx showed up with our passports, fresh back from Washington, stamped and ready with entry visas to China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
(Photo of the author, under Chinese health care, is courtesy of EarthPhotos.com.)
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