What a year 2020 has been so far!
We opened the year strong, kicking off with a trip to the dreamlike Emei Mountain, which looks completely different beneath the cloud cover vs. at the summit:
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| The base of Mount Emei is home to many large monkeys |
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| Once you break the cloud cover, it's like going into heaven! |
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| Having a snack at the summit |
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| The famous Golden Summit |
Next, we had the usual gauntlet of Chinese New Year parties (I went to three of them this year!)
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| The whole company participated in performances! |
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| Of course I contributed my signature performances! |
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| A side trip to our cousin company in Xi'an |
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| Formal Night in Shanghai! |
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| Handing out lucky draws to some of our lucky colleagues! |
Indeed, it looked very much like an exciting new year in Chengdu!
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| Boston Lobster Dinner for Chinese New Year! |
But then, it finally struck:
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| The Clan is ready... |
The Coronavirus outbreak started to escalate in Wuhan in mid-January. At the time, there were very few case in Chengdu, but we prepared to ride it out in self-isolation in our apartment. In retrospect, Chengdu (and most of China) quickly geared up to support self-isolation and quarantine at a scale never seen before. Temperature checkpoints all over town, even going into a parking garage! Hand sanitizers everywhere, FREE produce delivered to your apartment each morning since you weren't allowed to just wander out and about.
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| Facemasks required if you went out shopping |
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| Temperature checkpoint at the controlled entrypoint into the hypermarket |
Funny,
non-racist internet memes started popping up all over, with common themes being: "How to spend your day in self-isolation by playing with your phone", "The day has finally come for us to contribute to our country by being lazy couch potatoes!", and "Our government asks us to stay in bed!"
In general, I felt like the situation was pretty secure, if not particularly convenient.
However, a few days later, I was contacted by the security officer of my parent company, who advised that all China based expats relocate immediately to the U.S. After a bit of weighing our options, we ended up booking the last direct flight from Chengdu to Chicago. Getting to the plane was an interesting affair in its own right - they had already begun limiting domestic and international travel, so they set up a traffic block right before you pulled into the airport to get your temperature checked before you could even approach the terminal!
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| Boarding the last direct flight to Chicago on a Hainan Airlines 787 |
Our flight was on a very new 787 operated by Hainan airlines, an up and coming airline in China which had made the SkyTrax top ten list for the past several years, especially for its superb business class service. However, on this red-eye flight, the masked flight attendants made it very clear that service would not be up to par today, as they were not allowed to serve on reusable dinnerware, or issue the nice blankets, due to the virus. First world problems for sure! The flight itself was thankfully non-eventful - we had to get our temperature taken once on the flight to forward the information to the authorities in America. As an aside, we'd later find out that as the outbreak got worse, Hainan airlines was hit hard and needed a government bailout...
When we arrived at O'Hare, we noticed the first major contrast. While restrictions were ramping up in China, even before you could enter the airport, there did not seem to be any measures on the other end. Security was a breeze, and they only asked a few questions at Customs which seemed relatively easy to fake out... (Were you in the area affected by the virus?). Regardless, we spent the night in Chicago without further interruption.
On day 2, we drove to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, my intended destination for the time being. Upon arrival, I was very surprised to find that my boss left two large bags of snacks, toys, and games to help keep us from going stir crazy! Furthermore, one of my other coworkers made several runs the next day to give us our "starter pack" of groceries! It felt really great this kind of personal support!
We hung back for the first few weeks, as we were supposed to. In fact I was not permitted to enter the office for the first 14 days. But once our period was up, we decided to have a little fun - by going skiing! We ended up going twice, once on Lukas' birthday in nearby Dubuque at the very first ski resort we'd ever gone to (a few years ago):
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| Some Pokemon Birthday Cupcakes! |
And the second time slightly further east in Galena, which also is the location of one of the historic residences of President Ulysses S. Grant!
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| About to hit the jump hills! |
Finally, the fun days were coming to an end as the kids' international school started to implement online teaching (which really meant giving the parents a ton of homework to do for... I mean with! the kids):
In all seriousness, the kids really got pretty good at doing the work they are supposed to do! But it's really quite a lot of work, especially for Mommy, because I also started going into the office after we celebrated the end of our two week self-isolation with a "Corona Party" at Doug's house!
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| Playing in Doug's basement! |
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| We had to do this since we were all evacuating from a Corona situation... |
As we started to trickle back into a work mode, the office in China needed to start up as well. So I got to work with my other executive staff putting together a work-from-home plan, and working with our American parent company's security and sourcing team to provide much-needed face masks, hand sanitizers, and thermometers to the JV in Chengdu. Working from home did not work as well as we'd hoped, however. You see, our digital working environment is implemented using the Google Apps suite of tools, which is usually blocked by China's Great Firewall. So, without being in the office (where we have a dedicated internet connection to Hong Kong), most of our employees were not even able to access their e-mails during the work from home period!
Fortunately, we got everyone back into the office on February 24th, but it was certainly far from "business as usual". All employees were required to have been in self-isolation in Chengdu for at least 14 symptom-free days - not everyone made it back in time... And even though employees were able to come to the office, everyone still had to maintain 2-meter distancing, face masks in the office at all times, temperatures taken once before entering the office and twice in the office during the work day. The cafeteria was cooking, but lunch was delivered and distributed to each employee to reduce contact with others. In other words, it was still very much a highly monitored and regulated work day...
So such was the first six weeks of our Coronavirus Adventure...
