Pandemics, Vacation and Home

Last month, my city, Xi’an, was undergoing one of the most serious COVID-19 pandemics in China after the original one that took place in Wuhan. Dozens of positives were detected every day. Although the figure is not that exaggerated compared with that in France, Italy or the USA, it still greatly led to panic and turbulence in community. Just because of this, the city was totally locked down and all the public or private activities were forbidden, hoping to cut off the spread of virus.

At the very beginning of lockdown, we could still walk around freely without restriction, as long as not going outside the campus. But a few days later, an updated policy required that all the students in university should stay indoors. That’s killing to me because our final exams were not finished yet, and locking indoors means I had to go over my course in a narrow and noisy room, namely, my dormitory shared with three other roommates. The efficiency of study would be greatly affected, undoubtedly.

In this special month, other than reviewing day in day out, swab tests were the most common events we had to take part. That made me feel sick because it was not surprising that you spent over one hour on queueing with the atmosphere temperature of around 5℃, and this torment take place every two days. But thank god the administration department of our university solved the problem by arranging the time slot properly so that every student merely had to fit the recommended time and did the swab test as scheduled.

One month later, the pandemics was under controlled and the city could be unlocked gradually. On Jan. 19, 2022, my university announced the winter vacation this year, which would start in two days and last one month, but the specific returning time remains unknown due to the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemics. This announcement was based on the fact that the region my university locates in had no more positive case and had turned to “low-risk” during the lockdown, otherwise no one should be permitted to leave the region.

Regaining freedom and vacation should be exciting, however, I was not sure whether I could go back home or not, because the entry policy of each city in China changes every day owing to the unpredictability of the pandemics as well. Sometimes I could go back home without 14-day quarantine but just one day later I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be locked at home again, thus in this case you would never successfully persuade me going home, regardless of the approaching Spring Festival. And just because of the wavering of entry policy, I booked and returned the ticket for twice, and lost an amount of money as service fees.

But ultimately, I was on my way home on Jan. 25, 2022 because of the better situation. At that day, crowded passengers formed jams in Xi’an North railway station, like a blanket made by people and their heads are just like woolen ball protruding on polar fleece. It’s amazing that Chinese are sooooooo keen on rushing back home to observe the Spring Festival. Perhaps that is the homesickness and nostalgia.

Above I wrote a laundry list of stuffs happened in the past one month, actually not a weekly highlight. I do this because here is the first article of “Weekly Highlight” and it is important to start with a background introduction. And here the background is, briefly, that the Spring Festival is approaching so I went home for winter break after an uneasy month of lockdown. Next week could be kind of interesting, I hope.