Hotel Beijing

When I was taken into quarantine it was impossible to estimate the extent of the government’s commitment to the exercise.  Doctors and their questionnaires appeared official, but random implementation and chaotic execution of the process suggested opportunity for the reassuring degree of negotiation typical of grass roots enforced, Chinese bureaucracy.

Beijing’s social policies are extensive but selectively enforced according to the practicality of the endeavor, attitudes of the citizenry, and the benefits to the nations’ image, affect and leaders. No one expects perfect legislation on the first or second attempt.  Unfortunately, it is natural to pontificate on the contradictions and insecurities of situation-orientated, jurisdictional practice.   This tends to reset at least two of the aforementioned conditions for harmonious application, and is no wiser than waking a lonely, old dog from a shaking, snarling dream.  Barring the folly of open criticism, however, most people are perfectly welcome to navigate around the inaccuracies and misjudgments of The Party with discretion.

I was to remain in quarantine a week.  A trivial amount of time if it were not for the fact I was collected by ambulance from outside my office without spare socks or underwear.

Soapettes were invented for this kind of work, but I prefer washing machines.

I’ve lasted as long on a single change in more ambivalent periods.  Most Chinese would simply wash these articles in the sink with hotel soapettes and hang them by the window every evening; but this is not my common practice, and unmentionables were very low on my initial list of worries.  I like to think I would have realized the potential of my bathroom sink before developing a rash, but I was looking forward to a chance to regress and relax.  There is very little point in being quarantined if clothing is not optional.

Wearing clean underwear has a lot of supporters as a policy.  People have bought into it and many have shaped their lives around it.  For better or worse, the woman I love is one of these people. Her parents were landing the following morning at Capital Airport in Beijing for their first visit since the Year of the Sheep.  Meanwhile, half my students and colleagues were under house arrest, guarded by astronauts in ET safari garb because they had come into my general proximity in the half-day before the government picked me up.  My girlfriend and I live together, and judging by the fate of my other associates, we decided to operate as if she were on the run.  She is an intrepid woman with a knowledge and network in the city that could prolong a manhunt indefinitely; but her status as a fugitive could not usurp her principles or resolve.  For individuals of such character and loyalty there are things about the people you love that are simply too painful to accept or admit.  I would receive clean underwear.  It was only right.

The Chinese government’s tacit approval of linen smuggling under the pretext of international travel was clear from the lack of official policy on the matter, and the quarantine hotel’s proximity to the airport.  By the time the taxi driver realized he’d been directed to the gates of a biohazard lock down, it was too late to deny his own culpability in the shenanigans to inquiring authorities.  He agreed to wait.  Emerging from the cab upon two 17-year-old ‘guards’ in wood working headgear and their fathers’ police uniforms, my foxy foreign babe left my name on a bag in their arms.  There were stuttered noises of protest as she slid back into the taxi, dropping airy Chinese phrases of thanks and encouragement.  Then, the slamming of a door and a hasty three point turn as doctors emerged from the back of the hotel; drastic elbow movements propelling their quickening, grounded trajectory.  They made it three steps past the stairs, their hands beckoning impotently in gestures of authority before

"…dust from the getaway car clogged the woolen fibers in their masks. I do not imagine taxi drivers are paid while in quarantine."

People are fascinated by my quarantine experience.  I am still writing about it, which doesn’t bode well for the excitement in my life beyond being locked in a hotel room with cheap cable.  The funny thing about quarantine, it sounds risky and exotic.  People expect a story.  The most exciting part of my week was opening my drop bag.  Besides clean underwear I had chocolates, my ukulele, playing cards, a jump rope and a collection of books I’d intended to read for the last eighteen months.  There were no cigarettes.  There had been dignified negotiation and I was prepared for the absence of currency for a tobacco-based economy.  It is right that fantasies betray desire over expectations.  I had resolved myself to the manifest of my contraband before its arrival Tuesday at the hotel.  It was the closest thing I’ve had to a Childhood Christmas in twenty years.

It was a duffel bag of opportunities and resources for mostly positive change.  I talked my way into the hotel courtyard three times a day before meals to jump rope while doctors taunted my dedication by smoking, smiling and nodding their approval from a circle of chairs in the sun.  I got through a couple of books and was able to do a bit of writing.  I learned a Pixies song.  The daily fruit baskets were inspiring.  There were no inclinations toward revolution or suicide when we received mangos and a peeling knife in our Wednesday morning allowance.  I considered the possibility that we were being fattened for slaughter at a secret, seasonal, fertility festival, but that kind of ritual also involves visits from eager village maidens, and there was a reassuring lack of those in the hotel.  Quarantine moral was never higher.  We were working together, and sacrificing for common good.  The first glorious days were Maoist-utopian to those of us who weren’t doctors, frightened concierges or rubber-clad cleaning ladies.

"…doctors taunted my dedication by smoking, smiling and nodding their approval from a circle of chairs in the sun."

My jump rope eventually made me popular with The Duty Free Pushers from Northwest 029.  Half the hotel had a window facing the courtyard so anyone could look out and see new bus loads of germs arrive while I jumped up and down in a shaded corner counting to five hundred.  The Pushers eventually came down to introduce themselves and ask to use the jump rope.  They were a friendly group, enthusiastic about speaking English and upright in their interest.  My every utterance –Chinese or otherwise –  was simultaneously approved with light applause and bouncing at the knee from one leg to the other.  Permitted to walk around the courtyard together provided everyone wore wood working masks, and went back inside when new germ busses arrived, we agreed to meet in the mornings before breakfast.  By this point I had received little information on the extent of the quarantine or proposed completion dates.  I asked the ladies to find out what the Chinese news had to say about our situation.

Beijing TV reported that people in the primary quarantine hotel had morning tai chi classes and received Starbucks coffee three times a day.  My overflow hotel, morning constitution, courtyard marching club became wrathfully indignant at our unequal treatment and set to belligerently bullying me to use my exotic foreign powers to demand Starbucks coffee.  Purgatory is probably far more excruciating than confinement to a fifteen by twenty foot hotel room for days on espresso, but that’s the closest thing I can imagine in the shallow mind of my physical world.   I received no applause or bouncing for sharing this opinion.

The Chinese tend to believe that Caucasian, foreign guests have a direct line to a red phone at the UN.  Our connections make us valuable contacts, and my courtyard gang of caffeine junkies obviously began to consider me their opportunity for a loud, slippery slope ticket to the good stuff.  I was resolute about not wasting my personal favor from the Clinton family demanding daily Grande Mochas, but flight attendants can be passionate about stimulants.  As a final compromise I agreed to inform the group if I changed my mind about demanding Starbucks, and, on principle, to at least order extra Coke from the hotel every day.  In an effort to keep us comfortable, there seemed to be no limit on our Coke allowance.

The Duty Free Pushers began ordering Coke from room service regularly and vindictively, hording and stashing it around their rooms.  It was difficult to tell if they were hiding it from inspecting hotel officials or from each other.  Perhaps they were tired of being the ones pandering to the stagnant and entitled.  Their intense interest in my own supply became uncomfortable.  I was informed daily of the afternoon re-up schedule.  In an effort to maintain the relationship, and inspired by the efficiency of simultaneous delivery, I acquiesced occasionally but never got the goods.  Small orders were delivered with the larger ones to the same room and never made it across the hall.  It was impossible to get bent out of shape about the missing Coke.  The flight attendants clearly valued it more.  Besides, it’s terrible for you and I was working toward positive change.

On Thursday morning I returned from jumping rope to find rubber clad cleaning ladies going through my fruit stash.  It was necessary to remove old produce before it went bad.  Clearly a reasonable new policy amendment passed down from the Ministry of Health.  The fruit had been in the room two days, tops.  My Chinese is not developed to the point where I can rant coherently about whimsical, haphazardly enforced policy amendments, but I was able to shoo everyone out with chicken scattering gestures.

Doctors barged through the door about twenty minutes after my cleaning lady rebuke.  Deep concern for the rotting of The Peoples’ Fruit seemed more directly related to a need to reinforce institutional roles of dominance.  I think they were counting on the element of surprise to frighten me into submission, but when it became clear that I had an irrational association with The Peoples Fruit and my self-respect, we tactfully began to negotiate for a happy, face saving medium.

Forced to surrender apples and pears in exchange for the mangos and lychee I became fixated on revenge.  It was violating to have foreigners and their thermometers invade my ukulele space and make demands.  I developed several punitive plans over the next twelve, solitary hours.  Some involved the mango knife; the most plausible involved jumping rope in my room before temperature check.  Transfer to a quarantine hospital seemed more counter productive than vengeful, but I liked fantasizing about the ensuing panic.

Yeah, no apples today, thank you.

The ultimate inability to adequately avenge my abducted apples propagated into exacting despondency.  I could not dress myself; and began greeting Doctors and Cleaning Staff alike in only my boxer shorts.  Ironically, the seeds of my broken spirit became the explicit debasement that had foiled my creative malice.  The nervous giggles and spasmodic anarchy nourished something twisted in my soul.  I accepted my thermometer slower from the outstretched hand of its barer.  Smiling and offering hardy thanks while parrying eye contact into averted peripheral glances to my own unbroken gaze.  Profiles of flashers include the desire to control others through their uncomfortable reactions to inappropriate behavior; and in the final stress, induced from the redistribution of a few pieced of fruit, that is what I regressed to:  A thirty three your old man in a diaper with an penchant for playing peek-a-boo with the duty bound.

I know it is wrong to answer the door in your skivvies.  Even if you are in a hotel and nobody knows your name.  I slid into the behavior when I should have realized I was hitting a rut. The same day of my fruit abduction my spine developed a numb, burning sensation where the neck meets the shoulders.  I spent hours in bed.  It seems my large, juvenile head is too heavy for fifteen hundred high-impact jumps a day without prior conditioning.  I also discovered Facebook Mafia Wars and watched a National Geographic Documentary about a Japanese bull rider…twice…a day.  There was no more reading and a lot of solitaire and sleeping.  I tried Coke to help me stay awake, but that just made the highs and lows far more pronounced.  By the time I realized the Coke was counter-productive to my life I had already gone through the week’s supply that had accumulated in my hotel fridge.  I picked up the phone and ordered more from the hotel lobby.  I was polite, but did not put on clothes to answer the door.

Health and service professionals have excessive rates of vocational burnout.  Medical needs are psychologically traumatic by nature.  People are not pleasant when they panic, and patients eager to rush back into their lives rarely remember to say ‘thank you’ on their way out the door.  I do not believe the Doctors in quarantine were making policy decisions.  They were doing their best with the orders they received and the resources at their disposal.  Given the time, language and cross-cultural constraints muzzling operations from the onset, our care providers held their own admirably.  On Friday night around 8:30 pm I was told I would be permitted to leave quarantine at 1:00 am that evening.  A bus would take me the North East side of town where I could get the subway or a taxi.  I could be home by 3:00 am.  I laughed and asked if I could wait and leave in the morning.  Mr. Mercury Pacifier smiled and said that sounded reasonable.  Breakfast would be served at 8:00 am as usual.  The morning temperature check was no longer necessary.  The bus would leave at 9:00.  That sounded reasonable to me.

I was up early, showered, packed and dressed before breakfast arrived.  I watched a little more of The People’s English Television station and went down stairs at a quarter-to.  There was an official photographer and bouquets for everyone getting on the bus.  We signed out of the hotel and shook hands without rubber gloves.  I received a certificate confirming completion of duty in quarantine, and was instructed to show it to the HR department at work.  HR never asked for it.  Climbing onto the bus I reached down and helped one of the smaller flight attendants with her enormous suitcase.  It was incredibly heavy and sloshed around like a twenty-four-pack.  I pretended I was going to shake it and she sheepishly explained that she wanted to have her friends over for a party that evening.  Fair enough.

Temple of heaven is a great place to recuperate post any H1N1 trauma.

My girlfriend loved the flowers.  We spent the rest of the weekend strolling around the Temple of Heaven with her family, eating dumplings and immersed in history, culture, people, pollution and food.  Things you should enjoy when visiting China.  If H1N1 had been the plague of the twenty first century the world would be in a state of Armageddon at the moment.  All of Britain would be at the mercy of small roaming packs of desperate, frightened survivors, and I would not be singing Pixies songs on my ukulele.  I would be a quarantined pile of cremated ash.  Survivors would be left to decide how to define my luck based on their own personal experiences.  I don’t know if our golden age of medicine is on a gradual decline or if the next strain of livestock born flu will role through our human population and make us forget our trifles forever.  Perhaps my luck is such that I will never witness such an event.  The new policy in China at the moment is that people returning from international travel are required to self-quarantine for a week.  No more hotels and no more ambulance rides.  You simply work from home.  Despite the inconvenience, I am reassured that the Chinese government had the foresight to give their pandemic procedures and capabilities a test-run.  Like all other policy application it was approached as a deliberate work in progress and will continue to evolve.  The challenge of being a guest in these surroundings will always be to stay calm while the action unfolds, and to feel safe amongst uncertainty and inefficacy.