Grapevine （小道消息）; noun 1. a vine native to both Eurasia and North America, especially one bearing grapes used for eating or winemaking 2. used to refer to the circulation of rumours and unofficial information.
24 February
The COVID-19 grapevine was alive and well after a community-wide quarantine was ordered in Beijing. When a woman released from prison in Wuhan returned to our neighborhood and tested positive for COVID, we heard it through the grapevine first. From the WeChat group, we learned that she left by ambulance late in the night. It was 3AM in Beijing, 3PM in New York. As an international student living in Harlem, I was the only outsider on the chat. “How did she get into Beijing as a new released prisoner when Wuhan experienced lockdowns?” one person asked. “Must be a bribe!” said a woman on the 9th floor. “I heard she might be the wife of a leading officer.”
My mother told me privately that she could hear the wife on the 9th floor arguing a lot lately with her husband about COVID. When she saw the woman in the elevator of their building recently she looked like an alien in an old Hollywood movie. She was wearing a green insulation garment she received from ‘a relative who was a doctor in Wuhan,’ rubber gloves, a pair of blue swimming goggles—she probably could not find the medical use one—and of course, an N-95 face mask which essentially covered her whole face. In the elevator, my mother and the woman did not share so much as a hello. But on neighborhood WeChat, the woman on the 9th floor asked my mother whether I got back from “America” or not. That would be the question framed by most on the grapevine over the course of the next three months as the COVID19 count rose sharply in New York and China limited its flights into the country to one per day.
8 March
Parents with students abroad were on WeChat. According to the grapevine, there was a Columbia student diagnosed with COVID. The name of the student was unknown. My parents decided that it was no longer safe for me to be in New York City.
My mother wanted me to return to Beijing immediately during spring break. We lived in the Dong Cheng district, 2 km from Tiananmen square. A lot of my fellow students had already returned to Beijing and Europe. But I resisted all efforts to return home. Even though my father purchased a direct flight on the 17th for me back to Beijing at the price of 4285 dollar, he refunded the ticket on the same date he bought it. They reasoned that my visa status would be affected and my access to online courses would be impacted due to Chinese regulations on the Internet and time differences. I was glad that they came to these conclusions so naturally that I did not need to make up excuses for why I did not want to go back. To be honest, I simply didn’t want to be on lockdown with my parents, no matter the cost.”
My father weighed in. “NYC is not livable anymore,” he said. “You should go to Uncle Xu’s house in LA. Your visa and study won’t be affected.”
I refused. Staying with an uncle from the southern part of China, Chaoshan for three months, was disturbing enough to overpower my fear of infection. Uncle Xu was extremely talkative, and spoke in a strong accent I could never understand.
“The airport is not safe.” I said. I immediately supported my argument with the logical reasons they expected and spoke out every sentence after typing, as my mother always did, “Many AMERICANS are now trying to go on a spring break. They do not care about the virus . . . and . . .”
Unfortunately, my father was as good at psychoanalyzing me as I was with them. He ended his conversation with me after one voice message in an irritated voice. “You simply do not want to stay with adults, not us, not Uncle Xu.”
My father knows. My father always knows.
I walked to H-mart, the only Asian market near Columbia university, with my friend to store groceries. I shopped for pancakes, both taro and sweet potato flavors, frozen dumplings, a box of Shin Ramen and two grapefruit for my Vitamin C. I never understood why many Americans joked about bulking up on paper towels, which they believed will be the currency on judgement day. In Beijing, my mother bought more meat and vegetables, just as she did in the midst of SARS in 2003. I was only three years old then and the only image I can recall is the bags of Chinese cabbage my mother held in her hands. Fresh food was prioritized over paper towels.
For a moment, my eyes filled and I thought the salt would run down and touch my lips until I tasted ocean.
16 March
Five years ago, I was sent to Madeira, an all girl private boarding school in Virginia. I was 14 years old. In high school, due to the different time zones, I could never get immediate feedback from my parents whenever I had an issue, and so I was pushed to problem solve on my own. When we communicated once a month, we avoided discussing my emotions or relationships with friends. My mother tried to learn about me by using a distorted lens: namely “the rumors from other moms.” That only served to distance us further apart. After she learned from a mother that I had a boyfriend in my junior year at Madeira, she expressed her frustration: “Hou Xinle, I don’t believe you have a boyfriend. I mean, who would choose you?”
From the window near my desk, I calculated the potential danger of leaving my dorm and going outside again. It was raining. On Amsterdam Avenue, a homeless man sat on the pavement next to the bus stop signs mumbling the same curses about the president to everyone who passed by. “Trump!” For the past five months since I moved into the dorm, he has held Donald Trump’s name to his tongue. “No one knows what’s going to happen and Trump did nothing.” People paused for a second, then quickly walked away from the one who spoke everyone’s anxiety out loud. “America is failing and we all gonna die!” They quickened their pace.
To pass the time, I read strangers’ posts on Weibo.
“The United States started to fall! All Universities cancelled their classes.”
“Those who study abroad now have to suffer. They were not in China with us when we underwent quarantine.”
Rumors about a New York lockdown and the school’s latest policy updates, came from my mother who was a member of the Barnard/Columbia Chinese Parent’s group chat, as well as five group chats I joined on my own: the New York Chinese student group chat, the Columbia student group chat, the Comparative Literature major group chat, the Plimpton dorm group chat and the New York Sunday Brunch group chat.
The misinformation coming from mothers on the group chat had many of us students upset.
“An undergrad boy in the dorm on 113 Street got infected, and he just went to a party yesterday!”
“Use garlic to boil water, and drink. It will do good to your immune system.”
“You should buy four plane tickets to guarantee no one sit around your child on a flight.”
My mother insisted on the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine—eleven packs herb mix of Ma huang, raw almond, Poria, and at least twenty seven other herbs with names I didn’t recognize. They were mailed to me.
My mother also insisted that I leave New York City.
It was agreed. I would be staying at a high school friend’s relatively “safe” townhouse in Herndon, Virginia. My mother contacted a driver via WeChat and asked him to purchase his protective gear from Walmart—the only “American” supermarket she knew of. She promised to cover the costs for the surgical mask and gloves. From our family home in Beijing, my mother sent the driver three separate messages over the course of two days.
“Thank you so much. Please wear a face mask for the entire drive. Thank you so much.”
“I understand you cannot have your window fully open on the highway, but if it is possible, please open a fraction for air circulation. Thank you so much.”
I will not share the third message.
17 March
My driver waved at me from the curbside and with his rubber gloved hand and surgical mask, took my luggage without touching my fingers and without saying a muffled word, while the homeless man screamed “Trump failed! America is failing!” His beard trembled as each curled hair shook like a tiny tadpole with every syllable he pronounced.
The driver stared at the homeless man and then tightened his mask.
30 March
Thirteen days after I arrived in Virginia, a Chinese student who studied in the States posted on Weibo for help. She claimed that she and 200 other Chinese citizens had been stuck in the airport for 16 hours in Ethiopia because their connecting flight to China got cancelled. They now requested the Chinese government to arrange a flight. I started reading the flood of comments under the posts from the stranded Chinese students.
“Where were you when China suffered from the outbreak of Covid as a Chinese citizen? Now our country has recovered, you hoped to be back?”
“You are such a refined egoist! You must learn it from your American Education!”
“Are you trying to play victim? If you buy the tickets, you should know the risk of being stuck in Ethiopia, a developing country with terrible medical treatments!”
It was 1 p.m. in Virginia, 8 p.m. in Ethiopia and 1 a.m. in Beijing. With a national reopening in China, restaurants, shops and the neighborhood’s park were filled with people, wearing a thin layer of blue surgical mask instead of the white thick N95 medical mask. My mother, like all the other parents of students who study abroad, failed to embrace the freedom of the reopening as the majority did. She hid in the grapevine and joined multiple group chats where mothers tried to buy tickets from the U.S. back to China.
“But it is not even possible to buy a direct flight! The price was raised to ten thousand dollar per ticket and it was a connecting flight. You need to first fly to Mexico City, then Poland…”
Their anxiety fluctuated along with the price of the tickets.
4 April
“Citizens will eventually be tired of being tired.” I texted my mother right after China announced the Five-One Policy---One Flight, One Airline, One Place, One Route, One Week---to limit the number of flights flowing in China.
12 April
At 11:22 p.m Beijing time, my mother wrote a 670 word post on her social media. She included a picture she took of me at the beach in Hainan, China, where we went to visit my grandmother four months ago. In the post she officially announced that she “gave up on buying tickets for my daughter. It was the sixth ticket I bought and it was the sixth time the ticket got cancelled. I have been tired of researching if the place to transit permits Chinese citizens to stay. I could no longer stay up late and discuss potential plans with mothers in the group chat, overhear kinds of reliable and unreliable flights. Yes, I quit the group chat, but many mothers like me still kept fighting. I hope that every kid could find his or her way home.”
She tagged me in the post and the minute after she posted, texted me and asked for a “Like” on the post from her only child, her “unprotected daughter.”
22 April
My college classmate Lucia introduced me to Alin, a ticket agent. “Xinle, I bought a ticket from her. Maybe you should try.” Lucia had returned to Hong Kong on March 26th.
Alin is definitely not her real name, at least, not her legal name. With a profile picture of a slim woman wearing a grey coat, she operated her business on WeChat, with posts from 9 a.m. to midnight China time. She posted fifteen posts on average every day, announcing the available tickets she had to China with the detail of the flight number, transit stops and date, and updates to policy the government issued. Two days later, one transfers a deposit to her, which typically was one third of the full price. She would then send the customer an electronic itinerary. Ten days before the actual flight, she would create a group chat of people who were on the same flight, and guide them on seat selection and later on the boarding process.
I successfully managed to purchase a transit flight back to Beijing on June 1st. I need to fly from Newark airport, land in Paris, wait for five hours, and transit back to a southern city in China, Guangzhou.
When I asked Alin how she managed to purchase the available tickets, she did not answer my question. Instead, she shared a simple reminder: “Please stay safe in the States.” If I got a temperature “higher than 37.2 celsius” or tested positive for Covid-19, I wouldn’t be permitted on the flight back to China according to the policy.
The herb mix of Ma huang, raw almond, Poria, and at least twenty seven other herbs with names I didn’t recognize, served me well.
Contributor Notes
Xinle Hou is a junior at Barnard College in the Comparative literature department. She is an aspiring journalist interested in both the political and familial impact of the East-West dichotomy.
