Westborough High grad shares experience of being in China during coronavirus outbreak

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By Catherine Twing, Contributing Writer

Westborough High grad shares experience of being in China during coronavirus outbreak
Lydia O’Connell, with Sugar, the five-year-old she has been an au pair for in China for the past few months.
photo/Lydia O’Connell

Westborough – 2019 Westborough High School graduate Lydia O’Connell wanted to take a gap year in China to learn the language and experience Chinese culture. With the outbreak of COVID-19, her time abroad has turned out differently than she expected.

“I started looking at gap year programs in China, and then I saw being an au pair and I was like ‘Oh, that’s actually pretty interesting,’” she said. She had taken Chinese in high school and was interested in being able to learn more and teach English.

She flew to Xiamen, Fujian Province in mid- November to live with a family and watch after their five-year-old daughter whose English name is Sugar. Sugar learns English in Kindergarten and O’Connell has been helping her learn more. The parents know less English, but technology helps fill in the gaps.

“Chinese is a very very hard language, so they use the translation apps on their phones a lot to make sure that I can understand,” she said.

While living with the family in Xiamen, O’Connell was taking Mandarin Chinese classes. She had the chance to see many landmarks and experience Chinese culture in an immersive way. She would explore the city and try new foods, along with watching after Sugar.

In January, O’Connell went along with her host family to visit family in Quanzhou for Chinese New Year.  At the time there was not much concern about the novel coronavirus.

“I think I heard something briefly that there was a virus in Wuhan, but people didn’t really know much about it or how fast it was spreading,” she said. “It was really the week of Chinese New Year that it became a thing and then people started to worry.”

Chinese New Year was extended, schools were canceled and many people stayed home. At this point O’Connell needed to decide whether to stay in Quanzhou, head back to Xiamen or return home to the United States.

She opted to stay in Quanzhou, making what was planned as a one week trip much longer.

“I was told it would be a lot safer here and that Sugar was going to stay here. My Chinese classes in Xiamen had also been canceled, so there was no point for me to go back to Xiamen,” she said. “I felt a little bit bad for Sugar because if I went back to the United States then nobody would be around to play with her, and I still had like about a month and a half left that I had agreed to be there.”

She stayed with Sugar’s grandparents in Quanzhou from Chinese New Year to the end of February, even as Sugar’s parents returned to work. The area they live in hasn’t been very affected by COVID-19, and O’Connell doesn’t personally know anyone who has contracted the virus, but she has noticed several precautionary changes.

“In the beginning people were mostly staying in their homes and I stopped seeing people walking around on the street,” O’Connell explained. “I wasn’t allowed outside at all without a mask on, but recently things have sort of been going back to normal. Everybody still wears a mask whenever they go out, but almost everyone is back at work now and schools are starting again.”

On Sunday March 1 O’Connell returned to Xiamen where the city has implemented many precautions such as requiring an ID before returning to the city and including tissues in the elevators to push the buttons.

She originally planned to visit Japan before returning home, but will now be traveling directly back to the United States. She will be heading home in mid-March after her contract ends, as originally scheduled.

Once back in the United States she will be examined and either quarantined in New York or self-quarantined back home.

“If they think that I am sick I think I will have to be quarantined in New York somewhere, but if they think I’m not sick then I get to fly home to Boston,” she said. “But I’m supposed to be quarantined in my own home for two weeks which means no going out and seeing my friends which is a little bit sad.”

Her family is very excited to have her home finally.

“If she said she wanted to leave we would have figured out a way to do that, but she has been adamant the entire time that she wanted to stay to the end of her contract,” her mom Karen Yeowell said. “We respect that and in some ways we are proud of her for honoring her commitment, but of course we’ll be very happy to have her home.”

 

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