Amoy Wanderings

So, our second school year at BASIS International School, Park Lane Harbour is wrapping up. Sandy and Emily are finishing up their college classes, with Sandy completing her BA and Emily her AA both in intercultural studies. We are all looking forward to summer vacation, though mine won't begin until June 30.  The long and wild ride which began in 2020 seems to be coming to and end, and it has been very heartening to hear how life is beginning to return to normal in the US and around the world. In China, though, prevention measures for COVID are still ever present. With the zero tolerance policy that China has implemented, BASIS Park Lane Harbour (being a boarding school) faced several challenges this winter and spring when new cases broke out in the nearby city of Shenzhen. Just prior to Chinese New Year vacation, we ran 15 days of school straight because students couldn't return home without undergoing schoolwide testing. Then after the holiday, more cases broke out, so, the ...

For the past month, I have remained silent for a couple of reasons. For one, there really has been little change to our situation, so there has been little to report. The other reason is that from all I could gather, the rest of the world is now experiencing various forms of quarantine and lock down, so that most of you have had your lives upended and need to focus on what you are experiencing. But after receiving some questions from friends, I thought I should give you a basic update. First off, we are doing very well, staying healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually. Yes, we are mainly in a self-imposed lock down, meaning we mainly stay at home, but we do get out almost every day and meet with friends a few times a week. Our compound has been opened back up (mainly); we are free to come and go, and Sandy even had a guest over the other day. We have also been meeting with a group of friends at the beach (which is a 15-minute drive from our house) on Sunday morning for ...

Girl flying a kite at the beach. It has been four weeks since the shut down began here in Xiamen, and we are healthy and doing well though we are in the dark as much as ever. We are still encouraged to stay at home, cannot have visitors into the compound, and need to wear a mask whenever we go out and will be in close contact with people. However, businesses are slowly re-opening and some restaurants and coffee/tea shops are allowing people to sit together (although even then they prefer people to sit in pairs at most). Schools in our area still have no projected start date. Here is a recent article that shows China’s current plan for re-opening schools . At this rate, I’m guessing our schools at the earliest will open in mid-April.  Sandy flying a kite. With the closing of all public meetings, people have been using alternatives to maintain contact. Our foreign fellowship has been posting weekly messages and songs so that people still can have connection. Sandy,...

"Wuhan jiayou! Zhongguo jiayou!" A commonly heard refrain of encouragement for Wuhand and China in the fight against COVID-19. Life has settled in to the new normal for us now. We basically are housebound, going out for walks usually in the evening (always with our masks on) but generally feeling like we are on a staycation without the fun aspect of a vacation. We are able to get the food we need and have stocked up a bit just in case food gets scarce, but for now it doesn’t look like we will be facing any shortages. The real challenge right now comes with the future. How bad is the virus really? How long will this last? When will school begin again? When will life return to normal? What will that normal look like? And this provides us a look into the cultural window of living in China.  So, as it stands, all schools are shut down by order of the government, and schools will reopen when the government deems it safe. Then, they will give us a one-week notice...