“No, Jane, I don’t have the Corona virus.”

When I wrote this tweet in October 2019, I wasn’t actually being serious:

I arrived home after Chinese New Year for what I assumed would be a couple of weeks. I assumed the word ‘Coronavirus’ would fade from memory very quickly and I’d be reunited with my students in a timely fashion.

This was not the case. A few weeks passed, then a few weeks more, then months. The Coronavirus hadn’t faded from memory; if anything, it had grown.

We, as Western society watched, perhaps a little smug: “that won’t happen to us. Asia is so different from us, it won’t affect here.” We watched it spread to Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and, of course, all over mainland China. We watched Asian countries restrict flights to China. We even watched some of our own airlines cancel flights to these countries. We sat back and believed we were invincible from it. Then suddenly, cases appeared in the US, Spain, Australia, Sweden. Finally, the news we anticipated arrived: the Corona virus had spread to the UK. Nowhere was safe. And everything got a little scarier.

Now, for the common lay person the Corona virus will not interfere with their life in any way – even for me, I am dramatising these events but I think very little of the virus even though I have students, work colleagues and friends back in Beijing who are living in this lockdown nightmare. But, when flights are being cancelled, quarantines are imposed and with the infamous cruise ship fiasco, one can’t escape a single day without hearing about the virus on the news. My parents had planned to flight to Beijing in April to visit me for a few weeks and their flights have already been cancelled. And that’s in April. This virus is a really big deal.

So, of course, I’m glad I’m home and out of the situation. I can go outside and breath in the fresh air (air quality sits nicely at 17 and I embrace it as much as I can); I can interact with people without a mask on; I can cough in the comfort of my own home without worrying a neighbour is going to call the police and tell them I’m infected and I’ll be dragged kicking and screaming into quarantine.

And, of course, as I hadn’t told my parents I was coming home, their reactions were worth every single second of the 23 hour commute home:

The first couple of weeks at home were great. Very relaxing and chilled. By the end of it, I was ready to go back. Ready to return to teaching, I’d even started thinking about my lessons for the next semester. But then the virus just seemed to get worse and worse. Instead of schools starting back at the start of February, it was pushed till the middle of February, then the start of March and now… who knows? My future in Beijing is looking sketchy right now because I simply don’t know when I’ll be allowed to go back. I want to go back, I want to finish the experience I started. My suitcase has been sitting packed for the last two weeks but the reality is: everyone keeps telling me not to come back yet but nobody knows how long ‘yet’ is. The virus is taking over everything.

Really, I enjoyed my experience there and I have every intention of going back but I feel every week that passes, I genuinely don’t know when this Corona virus ‘thing’ is going to end. I feel sad at the possibility that my experience could be cut short but it’s a catch 22. I could return to China and be quarantined for a few weeks, I could return to China and my school may not open for months (and I’m on skeleton pay) I could return to China and catch the Corona virus (very unlikely I know but let’s look at every possibility). Then on the other side, I could stay in Scotland and return to the status quo I was so desperate to get away from. I could stay in Scotland and aimlessly slither without any real direction until I took the first job I could find and be miserable for the rest of my life just because the pay was decent and it gave me a sense of purpose.

I’m, of course, not going to do that. I may be a little lost in the direction of my life right now but I’m refusing to let myself fall into a slump.

So I’m going to let fate decide. I will apply for jobs in Scotland (and other countries – Italia I’m looking at you) whilst I wait to hear back from my school. Whichever I hear from first will be the path that I will take. In the meantime, I am embracing this period of not working. I am desperate to get back to feeling productive but I keep reminding myself this is never going to happen again. I have had a job since I pretty much turned 16 (13 if you count my days doing the Avon haha) I have never went this long without working. I should embrace it, enjoy it. Many people would kill for this opportunity.

The direction of this blog is a bit muddled, a bit senseless and without real purpose and I suppose that represents me a little bit right now. I don’t really know what direction I’m going in and it makes me anxious that by the time I write my next blog, I will have decided my future about China. I took a huge risk moving to Beijing and it seems so sad that it could possibly be cut short due to something so outwith my control but I have some memories to keep me content. Celebrating Chinese New Year at school and getting my hair pinned up with ribbons whilst my colleagues and I danced around with a dragon is something that will always stay with me- whether or not I go back.