A college teacher and his wife were trapped in Shanghai for 48 days during the city’s lockdown, and worried about their 12-year-old boy who was at home by himself. In despair, they decided to leave and get back to their home.
They went to Shanghai on March 3 for a business trip and ended up stuck there, 100 miles northeast of their hometown of Hangzhou, when the city lockdown began on March 13.
Stiff Regulations
Sun Sixian (pseudonym) and his wife are both faculty members of a college in Hangzhou.On May 2, Sun told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that starting on March 13, he had tried at least 10 times to get the city’s approval for he and his wife to return to their home town and quarantine there instead of in Shanghai.
Finally, the city agreed to let them leave, but only if Sun wrote a letter guaranteeing that he and his wife would not return to Shanghai until the pandemic was over, and the officials in their hometown agreed to accept their return.
At the end of April, with proof of his hometown acceptance and his own letter guaranteeing the couple would not return to Shanghai, they still couldn’t leave the city because the public transportation was either suspended or fully booked.
Finally, hiring a rental car and a driver, at a cost of $907, and with the agreement of his hometown pandemic prevention office, they managed to start the trip home on April 30.
The Hangzhou office staff promised to pick the couple up at the highway exit and transfer them to a local quarantine hotel. The driver would go back to Shanghai.
However, things changed when they arrived at the pandemic prevention office at the highway exit to Hangzhou.
The office staff said, “You have two choices. One is to have your community pick you up and transfer you to the quarantine hotel and the other is to return to where you just came from.”
Their letter guaranteeing they would not return to Shanghai meant they couldn’t go back, so Sun contacted his residential community to ask if someone would pick them up.
Half of an hour later, the community returned the call and said, “It’s not part of our service. We are only responsible for the isolation. You’ll figure it out for yourself.”
Sun asked, “Can I have a friend come and pick me up?” The answer was no, because the couple had come from an epicenter and they must keep a distance from others, “You are on your own,” the community staff said.
Sun immediately engaged in frantic calls to various departments to help him out, but none of his calls were answered.
It was already 10:30 p.m., and the couple were hungry and were left outside the office while it was raining.
The Path of a Fugitive
In despair, Sun decided he would sneak away from the pandemic prevention office and its guards.Sun observed the surroundings of the off ramp and found there was a guardrail in the middle of the highway exit. He could see gaps under the guardrail. He said, “I had no choice but to sneak through the gap. I took a risk. I crawled to the other side of the guardrail, but found the office was also on the other side.”
Sun said that he was too frightened to walk. He fell every time he tried to stand up.
He continued crawling to the other side of the highway until he fell down a slope to a large orchard off the highway. There was a high metal fence surrounding the orchard. “I didn’t care much, I just climbed over the metal fence. It was so high and I my body was injured all over. I rolled directly onto the muddy ground on the opposite side, and then stood up and ran for about a kilometer, until I felt it was safe,” he said.
He obtained an e-taxi and then called his wife and told her to wait, “Don’t worry, I will come back for you,” he said.
When the e-taxi arrived, he got in, and didn’t talk during the ride so he wouldn’t cause trouble for the driver.
When he finally got to his apartment complex, he called the community office, “I am back. You’ve got to help to get my wife back here so we can isolate.” But, the staff said, “Go to the quarantine site yourself, we can’t do anything about your wife.”
Sun was furious, and said, “If you don’t pick up my wife, I won’t accept the quarantine.” The person said to him, “You know you are violating the law. Do you know the consequences?” Sun answered, “I don’t care. There’s no quarantine if you don’t pick up my wife.”
The person continued to threaten him. Sun called the police to explain his situation. Finally, four people from the police station and the pandemic prevention apartment came and negotiated with him.
To Save His Wife, Sun Begged on His Knees
“You know what? They refused to pick her up. It was already past 11 p.m., she was out there alone in the rain, with so much luggage. I had to kowtow to them,” Sun said to the Chinese Epoch Times.He knelt down.
Sun said, “I am a teacher, I have my dignity, but I had to bear such humiliation.”
Half an hour later, they finally agreed to pick up his wife.
Sun insisted on going with them. The couple arrived at the isolation hotel at 2 a.m. on May 1.
He couldn’t sleep the whole night in the quarantine hotel. He said, “People’s lives are so wronged by this society. I felt that I had to speak up.”
He made an online video recounting his experiences, and his pain and sorrow. His video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times and received tens of thousands of comments and likes, but it was quickly blocked by the censors.
His relatives and friends disagreed with his posting his story online. On May 2, the police called and told him a warning letter had been issued because he posted the video.
The letter said that he was alleged to be spreading disinformation. Sun refused to sign the letter. The police warned that he would be arrested soon.
Sun told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times, “If I endure it—because the Chinese have learned to swallow their own sorrows—if everyone is to endure like this, what will happen to our next generation? We people will never be able to stand up straight. It’s terrible.”
He believes that this incident helped him to better interpret the current phenomena in China today.
He said, “We are sometimes the accomplices of the tyrant, with our prudent acts out of selfishness. No one agreed with me when I defended my rights. The ones who are closer to me disagreed the most. They knew I wouldn’t be able to win in defending my rights against the authorities. Our entire nation is like this. We can only sing the [regimes’s] praises. Only one voice is allowed in the nation.”
Sun indicated that the disaster of what people inflict on each other is far worse than the actual pandemic.
