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Kuei-Mao's Swine Flu Quarantine

August 14, 2009
By: Kuei-Mao Johnson Huang

Over the July vac, some of our Chinese Studies 1 students went on a tour of China. This is one of the stories of the many exciting experiences that the students had there. -- Kelly

Swine flu quarantine story - featuring myself, KUEI-MAO HUANG, and SITHULISIWE WABATAGORE.

Sithulisiwe and Kuei-Mao in quarantine

It all happened when we landed in Beijing Airport from a transfer flight from Hong Kong from SA. Once we departed from the plane and into the airport, the tour group had to walk through a temperture control point which consisted of a line of thermal camera posts manned by masked health and security personel. As we approached the line of sight of these thermal cameras, we triggered the alarm: clearly someone's temperature was too high for an average person. Soon a group of masked men came running towards our tour group. Not knowing it could be one of us we tried to get out of their way, only to have them snatch Sithulisiwe and I.

Once they grabbed us we were rushed into a quarantine area where they snapped masks onto us and pulled out thermometers. Curious where they would put them, they told us to put them under our armpits (fortunately) and told us to wait for 5 minutes. During that time we were both distressed as we were feeling hot and bothered which was due to dehydration on the plane and the China summer. I quickly told Sithulisiwe to take off her winter cardigan which she still had on from the South African winter. Once the 5 minutes was up the masked nurse checked our thermometers, which fortunately read 36.7 degrees Celcius. If it were above 37.5, we would have been in trouble. So fortunately they let us go and we quickly happily rejoined our group, still sweating from panic.

Thus Sithulisiwe's and my claim to fame during this trip was that we were quarantined for swine flu for 10 nerve wrecking minutes!

Attached is a photo of us in the quarantine area which was taken by one of tour group members who were all laughing at us!

• For Kuei-Mao's photos, click here.