Locked out of China by its zero-COVID policy, their lives changed course
Locked out of China by its zero-COVID policy, their lives changed course
Since the start of the pandemic in January 2020, I have been in quarantine and lockdown for 108 days. But I feel lucky compared to people who cannot return to China.
Comedian Jesse Appell does stand-up in Mandarin Chinese. Just before the pandemic hit, the Boston native felt he was on the cusp of a big break in China’s comedy scene by filming “Top Funny Comedian.”
“It was like the Chinese version of ‘Last Comic Standing,'” he said. “I made the top eight.”
Production in Beijing took a break for nine days, which gave Appell time to go back to the U.S. for a visit — or so he thought.
“When I left, there was no COVID-19. It was on the internet as a rumor,” Appell said. “When I landed, it was: The rumor was real. There is COVID, Wuhan is shut down, your flight back is canceled.”
Appell has not been able to return to China since.
China’s borders have been effectively shut since March 2020 due to the country’s zero-tolerance for COVID. It has caused families to separate and knocked people off their career paths.
In 2019, before COVID-19, 670 million people entered and left the country, according to China’s national immigration authority. That figure dropped by 80% to 128 million in 2021.
While the Chinese government is allowing reentry of people with valid business visas and recently signaled foreign students and possibly tourists will be accepted again, the measures have come too late for those like Appell.
Visas and flights to China remain big obstacles, and the rules are constantly changing.
Mayura Jain is among those who resisted leaving Shanghai until late last year.
By then, the Los Angeles native, who writes romance scripts for video games, had not seen her family for two years.
“I was really missing them,” Jain said. Her boss let her go back to LA for a month.
However, China operates a circuit-breaker policy, where a flight that carries a certain number of passengers who test positive after arrival gets suspended for weeks.
The U.S. has said the circuit-breaker policy places an undue burden on airlines and has retaliated against Chinese carriers. The number of flights seemed to shrink further in the spring.
“Omicron cases were going up in the U.S. and the Olympics were starting to happen,” Jain said. “So, suddenly, all these flights were getting canceled. I had two separate flights canceled.”
Both she and Appell have not been able to return to China despite their best efforts. Appell tried to secure a new Chinese visa, because his existing one was canceled when the borders shut.
At one point, having the Chinese vaccine would make it easier to obtain the visa. Appell considered flying to the United Arab Emirates or Thailand to get a Chinese vaccine, which was not available in the United States.
He also tried to find friends and big companies to sponsor his visa in exchange for free work. Appell even looked into getting visas from smaller Chinese cities that have reopened from lockdown.
Appell did find an agent who offered an invitation letter, the first step to getting a visa, but it came without guarantees that would get him back to Beijing. The letter would’ve cost $12,000.
“I did not do that. Although, I went a whole year and a half basically without work [while the U.S. was in lockdown]. It would have made economic sense to pay the $12,000 and go back and tour in China,” Appell said.
China was among the first countries to resume work after the pandemic emerged, but that didn’t last. The country, in pursuit of zero COVID, has been in and out of lockdown ever since.
The next LA to Shanghai flight Jain found cost $6,000, with no guarantees she would be able to renew her visa in time after mandatory quarantine.
“It was honestly like a fraction of the price to just get my stuff shipped and my cat flown to [Canada] for me to pick him up than it was to just fly back one-way to China,” she said.
Jain went with the cheaper option.
After spending a good chunk of their adulthood in China, Jain and Appell had to leave the country without proper goodbyes.
The same thing happened to longtime Beijing resident and Australian national Tanya Crossman. She was locked out of China while on a three-week business trip in March 2020. Then she was stuck in Australia when that country closed its borders to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“We had a friend who handed our keys back to the landlord [in Beijing], and she took her phone, and she just walked around the place letting me look at the empty apartment with everything gone,” Crossman said. “I just cried.”
Appell gave up on returning to China after 15 months. It took him longer to let go of what might have happened had he been allowed back to Beijing to finish the standup competition.
“I don’t think I would have won that show, but if I had gotten another couple episodes on, I really could have established myself as one of the best comedians in the country — not just a foreigner comedian, but really had a breakthrough,” Appell said.
He is still performing stand-up, but this time in the United States. Appell moved to LA and was able to use his social media skills acquired in China to sell Chinese tea on TikTok.
Jain and Crossman have also landed on their feet. Jain is still in the video gaming sector, though instead of writing romance fiction, she is editing scripts.
Crossman and her husband used up their savings to move out of China, and careerwise, she is able to focus on her passion, research. She describes what they’ve been through as trauma and now runs support groups for people who have been forced out of China.
“I have friends with kids who’ve been separated. One of our close families … had dad and one daughter in one country, mom and two daughters in a different country,” Crossman said.
Crossman is in the same bind — stuck in Australia — while her husband is in the U.S.
“We’d only been married two years when this happened. So we’ve spent most of our marriage in different countries,” Crossman said.
She has applied for a U.S. green card and hopes her application will be approved so she can reunite with her husband soon.
Additional research by Charles Zhang.
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