What is the situation like in China?

We have been asked a lot: “what is the situation like in China now?” since late Feb.

I usually tell customers: we are pretty much like normal/usual/old time. Factories, shopping malls and restaurants are all open. All parks are crowed with people in weekends.

However, does your customer really believe that China is back to normal so soon? People may wonder: how come the virus just disappear from China like vapor?

 It is a matter of trust! Like many people concern about the situation in India. Cause the impression of some western people is that China is a fast-growing country, but dirty, and not very civilized.

Let me tell you a story of COVID-19

 1)     I went back to hometown in JiangXi province (middle China) on Jan 20th(4days before China New Year). At that time, there was no news about COVID-19. We were busy preparing goods for the new year like usual.

 Two days later we heard about the news on the phone; It tells that a new virus found in Wuhan sea food market like SAS and this virus may cause death. We did not pay attention. After all, we were in villages!

 One day before China New Year, the time when all men in village need to bring food and drinks to Ancestral Hall to memory ancestors; It is a place all passed family member names are listed and looks like a temple; villagers go there to burn holly sticks, and worship and wish good luck for the coming new year.

 I noticed that many after 1990’s young people start to wear a mask.

My wife told me that this year we should not visit relatives, I was not happy. Because visiting relatives and having meals together is all what CNY about. I told her that we can wait and see.

2)     First day after China Year is very important. This day all daughters shall visit home of their mothers. But there came with a notice from local government, suggesting we all should stay at home. We did not give them a damn and went to mother-in-law’s anyway.

Next day we found we were trapped there, cause all roads in and out of villages were blocked. It was not governmental behavior, but voluntarily by the villagers. In China, the smallest administration officer is chief of village, they can decide policies in a village.

So, we have no choice but to stay at home for further notice. Everyday we had nothing to do but playing cards, Mahjong, having nice food (we have a whole pig stock and many vegetable fields), and getting fat day by day.

 Daily update on infected numbers rocket rise by thousands every day and we were very much worried. Children were not easy to control, they never wanted to stay at home. But we have principle sticks and they had to obey.

3)     On Feb 6th, my mother-in-law was chocked by fish bone and needed to go to hospital 100KM away. We prepared paper documents explaining situation and went to city hospital and stayed there for one week.

 Although numbers of infected people were only 100 over millions of people, we were seriously scarred. Everyday in hospital means way riskier to be infected. Yet doctors did not allow us to leave. Which, made my mother-in-law felt pretty guilty to get us involved in her careless behaviors.

 I posted a WeChat moment to acquire face masks. A few very good friends in the city shared us some of their stock and we were VERY VERY grateful.

   By leaving hospital on Feb 13th, we planned to have ourselves (people accompanied in hospital) self-quarantined for three days on first floor and kept children on the second floor. The second day we found children were impossible to behave, and this self-quarantine was cancelled.

    I started to cough and my wife felt head ache the following days, which made us feel we could be infected. I even tried to drink 100-200ml Chinese wine (40-50% alcohol) every meal to keep the virus away. The more you look at the symptoms the more you feel you are in the spot for it. Luckily, we had no fever and soon recovered.

 4)     Usually from 6th day of CNY on, people started to return to big cities to work. This year, we did not know when. Back-to-work date had been postponed again and again.

 We had a joke: On Feb 1st, I was told that back-to-work time will be postpone a week; A week later boss told me that we have to postpone one more week; Another 10 days later boss called me saying that I don’t have to return, cause our company already bankrupted.

 But on Feb 15th, I managed to return back to Shenzhen. Of course, we need to be quarantined for 14 days at home. But here we have Wi-Fi and warm weather, that’s all we need.

 5)     On Feb 24th, we were noticed that factories are allowed to be on small scale re-open. Even at that time, we noticed that only 20-30% employees were qualified to be back to work: you need to finish your 14 days quarantine, and many people still trapped in hometown and not back to Shenzhen yet.

 6)     Early March, we noticed that we have reached the peak of infected numbers, and the healed numbers began to surpass the number of new infections since Feb 15th. This was a very good sign. It means that the virus had been controlled in China. At least we had a very good chance to be cured if we were infected.

 7)     We started to work, to contact customers. Yet you may have heard: In Feb. customers kept pushing suppliers: when you can ship my products? In March we kept asking customers: When you can receive the shipments?

 8)     On March 25th, Hubei province is un-locked. On April 8th, Wuhan city is un-locked.

We started to have some fun in weekends in parks and shopping malls. We had too much take-away food, now we can enjoy some real food in restaurants.

9)     But we did not have much business in April, as customers in other countries were in quarantine. In April, I started to hear that many factories in China are closed. Many of them started to ask employees to go back home until economy gets better. They are half-unemployed. Production only lasted till April and there were no new orders coming in. Bosses had to make a decision: either invest to make face masks or let employees go home and wait.

 10) But we did not stop. Business men started to invest on face masks/PPE, thermometer guns, online class web cameras, and many more since Feb. In April, every ordinary people became a dealer of PPE products, asking price for millions; Other bosses simply stay put and invest more on technologies, hoping their updated products can be more competitive after the plague.

 11) As we are entering May, the whole world is re-opening again. I hope that everyone stayed in perfect health and economy will recover soon. We are in one world and shall fight together with love and cooperation.

 12) “The virus will not disappear/vanish for all; it will always be there, in different variations. As long as it does not affect our lives, we just need to learn how to live together with it.” Says doctor Zhong Nanshan, expert of Respiratory diseases in China.

 Today there are only 737 infected patients in cure in China (plus over 16,00 travel in cases), but we lost over 46 hundreds of lives, and spent trillions of money fighting again it. China survived and I am sure that the whole world will do the same.