There is another storm that won’t just wash away. People are scared, anxious; their lives have been suspended. The storm is called SARS. The Chinese in my community are fighting it, mainly, by staying indoors.
At school I am handed a leaflet: “Prevention - the core procedures against infectious respiratory diseases”. It tells me to open windows and keep the fresh air well circulated. I must maintain personal hygienic habits (which I’ve always felt were necessary to uphold anyway). In the wake of SARS it would not be exaggerating to say everything has changed. Roads that were once busy all day and night have been left empty. I can wander around the city without feeling beady, curious stares of onlookers – an unprecented experience in my time here. Furthermore, the street outside the school that leads to another village has closed, with a sign forbidding anyone to venture further. If I talk to strangers, we speak about SARS – not the usual curious questions as to what a foreigner might be doing here. A spirit of excited anxiety spreads amongst us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution are waived.
My superiors at the school have made the pragmatic decision of not allowing me to travel further than two miles away, but at least I can leave the school complex. The 1500 students I teach cannot. The headmaster gave this news to them in April. They board at the school, so you would think this wouldn’t affect them too much – however, this in not the case. It has pointedly heightened the students’ concerns for their families, especially when the only source of information they receive is from the national news that they must watch on television every night. They had to stay at school during China’s May Day holiday when they would usually go home for a week. There are rumours that they might not even be permitted home for the summer vacation because of the threat of SARS. The school, as the students know full well, is right to be careful. If SARS came here it would spread quickly because of the sheer number of people who are in contact with each other daily.
A two-metre fence has been specially erected at the school gate. Security guards have been instructed to let nobody in, except for teachers and cleaners. The students are miffed that teachers are free to go out yet they can’t. This is understandable, though such unfair contradictions are common here. Everyday scores of parents meet their children at this gate. They attempt to pass through food parcels and money. The guards, burdened by a new role of responsibility, intercept the packages and store them for 6 hours as a further precaution. Because of the fence’s height, the frustrated families cannot physically hug. Gestures of love are left as kisses in the empty air.
In China, it has been a case of attempting to find as much information and truth as possible. Because of its initial chronic under-reporting, now people are angry with their government for not supplying them with timely or satisfactory information. This is a change in a country whose peoples’ feelings about politics and politicians are usually kept firmly to themselves. Thousands in Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, went on a rampage earlier this month, in protest at the Chinese government’s inability to control the spread of SARS. At my school, the students and teachers talk freely with me about the resentment they feel towards politicians who waited too long to free up the media. People don’t know what to believe anymore, as gossip and gross statistical exaggerations of cases are rife. If convictions, as Nietzsche once said, “are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies,” then so be it, as people cling on to whatever information they can get.
What of China’s imminent and realistic economic boom that was keeping optimistic smiles on its citizens’ faces? Well, masks have covered the smiles. The area where I live – which three months ago was thriving with new money and business’ pouring in – has been hit hard. Quite simply, the shops have either shortened their opening hours or closed altogether. If I enter one not wearing a mask, the shopkeeper will invariably frown and usher me away. A friend of mine who runs a cotton factory, and to whom I have paid frequent visits in the past, tells me that SARS has affected her long term business hopes. She cannot find international contacts now, because they are frightened of trade links with China. She doesn’t allow me to see her in person anymore, preferring the telephone. Her heart, post SARS, has become embittered against the world. Rather fancifully perhaps, she believes that SARS is an American chemical weapon released on China to cut short its impeding economic growth.
At the time of writing, the city of Nanjing (two hours away by train from here) has placed 10 000 people in quarantine. The city has reported 4 confirmed cases of SARS. It is only a matter of time before it reaches the city in which I live because it lies on the popular train route between Beijing and Shanghai.
In my classroom I sneezed; my hay fever is potent at this time of year. My students’ eyes widened with terror, as though I might infect them with the deadly disease. On leaving the classroom my nostrils are filled with the odour of disinfectant that the cleaners spray every few hours; yet another precaution.
I walk past the flagpole in the main courtyard of the school. The Chinese flag flutters sharply, as if taking a large breath. Under the national flag there are five teachers chatting. They talk about the students’ exams, the tedium of marking and other general teachery things.
Soon the inevitable conversation about SARS begins. This time, it’s about whether the warmer weather in June will flush away the disease, or merely make it worse. Then there are no more words left to say.


Philip Parkinson is a teacher in Changzhou, China.