Beijing in the Time of SARS

By Charlie Davis- After paying taxes and looking after other general housekeeping in the States, I returned to China at the end of the first week of April, just as SARS seemed to arrive in Beijing. As we now know, the disease had actually been here for months.

I went back to Taipei Language Institute, my Chinese school, and began studying five hours of Chinese a day in one-on-one tutorial (slapping myself on the back, proud of my prodigious course load, trying out my new skills on unsuspecting taxi drivers and waitresses.) In my glee, I didn’t pay much attention to the escalation of worry around the city. Several international kindergartens and elementary schools closed down, those embassies which had not already done so sent their non-essential personnel home. Suddenly mask wearers went from a tiny minority to about 25 percent of pedestrians. Some people bought extra food.

But morale among the Chinese stayed high. Nervous expats sent spouses and children home, but none of my acquaintance considered leaving. The sense was that SARS infected only those in very close proximity (kissing, treating medically, etc.) and that fatal cases occurred in those already ill, old, or in otherwise weakened health. All the major functions of the city continued, many joked about the disease, though already suspicions about the government’s cover-up abounded.

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