OPINION: My OE to China was meant to be full of fun. I set out to conquer the world, but China had other plans. What I expected to be the university holiday of a lifetime ended up being more of a character building experience when coronavirus began taking over.

My adventure began in November, 2019 when I arrived wide-eyed and alone in the capital, ready to take on my three month adventure as an au pair for a wealthy Chinese family whom I had met on the internet.

The first two months were a dream - the perfect balance of adventure, adrenaline and work for a 19-year-old Kiwi boy. The family I was with was delightful, the locals were helpful, and the other au pairs in my agency were friendly: plenty of them were fellow Kiwis and we all got along like a house on fire. My duties were a sweet 30 hours a week of reading English texts, and my free time was split between Mandarin lessons and travel.

Naturally there were restrictions in China that were strange to me coming from New Zealand and being accustomed to certain freedoms, notably the internet and politics. Nevertheless I steered clear of any political discussion with locals and I was careful whenever I did anything which might be considered subversive. 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do', as they say. I didn’t want to become a cautionary tale for future travellers in China to lament on. My family had warned me about the perils of a Chinese prison.

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Beijing turned out to be a fascinating city, which as a Civil Engineering student I began to appreciate a lot the more I experienced it.I eventually got used to my new surroundings after I had overcome the initial culture shock. Finally I could get around the place on the subway, I had a good group of friends, and I spoke enough Mandarin to order a plate of dumplings.

Things started going sour two months in when I caught influenza and found myself in a Chinese hospital in mid January, just as coronavirus was becoming known. I don’t know how I managed to catch it, perhaps a combination of cold weather, a foreign country, and working with children had worn me out. After a confusing experience at the hospital and a quick discharge, I was lucky to be back with the family in time for the largest annual migration in the world: Spring Festival.

For the Spring Festival I went with the family to their hometown in nearby Hebei province for the New Year's celebrations. It was a curious affair in a tiny village which was somewhat subdued due to the rising fears and risks associated with the outbreak. However, trepidation at this stage was still relatively low key. Coronavirus had only infected a couple of hundred people and the outlook for most was still optimistic.

As the new year approached, coronavirus was now ubiquitous and day-to-day life was beginning to change in China. For us foreigners it was not taken seriously to begin with. As long as we could order a pint at a rooftop bar, or see the local temple and be a tourist it wasn’t a big deal. But as we soon learnt, our ephemeral calm was not shared by the Chinese. Distant echoes of the SARS virus were still resonating their way through Chinese society. The people had learnt the hard way to take these things seriously.Life in China had changed its rhythm; from convivial to cautious. My travel plans to the cities of Xi’an and Tianjin were already dashed by the virus.

Waiting out while the number of cases increased was hard. The situation was changing every day, leaving me as a sitting duck on the front row bleachers to a major news event. Being the middle class white boy I am, I have become accustomed to watching many of the tragic events from around the world with a sense of apathy. Most catastrophes feel as distant and impalpable as a ghoul. This epiphany was experienced when the roads surrounding the village where I was were blocked off by a digger on January 27, creating a waist-high wall of soil stopping cars getting in or out of the place.

I decided I needed to leave later that day, about the same time as my colleagues and foreign friends realised that it would be inauspicious for them to stay. Organising the transfer of my tickets was fairly easily done through the New Zealand Qantas hotline and they were very good at understanding the situation, acknowledging that a lot of people wanted to get out.

I got the earliest ticket I could get: February 1, nine days earlier than my initial plans to head home. Because of my early departure, or, well more to do with the coronavirus, I couldn’t retrieve the majority of my luggage since it was in the family's Beijing mansion and I had no access to it. I was going to leave the country with just my carry on. Now I just had to wait it out.

The journey on the fast train back to Beijing was uneventful. Fellow tentative travellers kept their distance while transport staff handed out leaflets for us to fill out with our identification and travel details, as well as notes about our current health status. In every major public area from then on I was greeted by temperature guns and hazmat suits.

The streets of Beijing were unrecognisably empty. An ominous whisper of how much coronavirus had changed daily life in the city. I had my temperature measured four times during my journey to the airport. I arrived some 12 hours before my flight to be greeted with the greatest blow in my journey so far: Australia had announced its policy rejecting foreign nationals coming into the country. Unsure about the ramifications of this news on Kiwis as it was not specifically mentioned in the Prime Minister's letter, I frantically waited for the airline's desk to open to see whether or not I would be let on my flight. My family back home was doing everything they could to find out whether I would be allowed to board, however the people working for the Qantas hotline had no information about the ramifications of the policy to New Zealanders.

Lining up to get our tickets, my Malaysian friend was not given a boarding pass due to her being a foreign national. Yet they happily took my bag and gave me my tickets since I was a Kiwi transitting through Sydney to my country (she was trying to do the same thing). Shocked but relieved that I had a ticket, I waited sympathetically with my friend while she called her family to tell them the bad news. It was bittersweet. As I waited, a Qantas staff member approached me, desperately asking to see my passport while simultaneously dialling Australian immigration. He checked my passport before revoking my boarding pass and announcing that after all, I was not allowed into the country. I had to consider another way to get home, but Qantas had no direct flights to New Zealand to get me out. Suddenly the blood in my legs seemed to rush to my head as it slowly sunk in that I was stranded.

GETTY IMAGES "The streets of Beijing were unrecognisably empty. An ominous whisper of how much coronavirus had changed daily life."

The number of cases at this point had skyrocketed to a reported 14,552 people and the embassy in Beijing gave no indication of what action NZ would take to limit travellers into the country. They told me they would not be able to help me catch the Qantas flight though due to the extremely short notice, so I was essentially on my own. Talk was still going on about the Air New Zealand charter flight from Wuhan, although there was not yet any news about what would be the fate of the rest of us Kiwis if we couldn’t get out.

I spent the next couple of hours attempting to buy any ticket I could that would take me directly from China to home. Stop overs had become impossible as many other countries also began to close off their borders to foreigners. The flight I eventually found was to Christchurch via Guangzhou and it set me back a whopping $4500!

Earlier at the airport I converted all of my Chinese Yuan to NZ dollars expecting to get out safely. The Chinese are very much a cashless society and use of cash or cards is quite uncommon, most often cellphones are used to complete transactions on apps such as Alipay or WeChat. When my debit mastercard didn’t cooperate with the card reader, my solution was to use the ATM. After several large and frantic withdrawals I managed to get the majority of the sum to the counter, although I was still some ¥8000 short, but I had reached the overseas limit. Thankfully I had maintained a good relationship with my Chinese teacher and luckily she was willing to loan me the Chinese money I needed to get my ticket home.

Tensions were still high, none of us au pairs were certain of what would happen next. At one point one of my friends in China told me the army was on their way to the airport. The previous events had been so crazy that I believed him. The next morning we went to the airport extra early, anxious to see whether we would make it out or not. So far my flight hadn’t been cancelled and no new laws were announced, yet I still didn’t feel as though I would safely make it out.

Back to the bookings desk I found a marginally cheaper flight going out of Hong Kong, which happened to be the flight that my mates were getting (it was also a cheeky upgrade to business class). Frantically I booked it and got my refund just in time to check in, get through security and arrive at my gate with my friends. This should be where my adventure ends.

Upon arriving at the gate, seconds from boarding we were informed by a fellow Kiwi in the line that NZ had changed its policy and "banned anyone coming from China". I was crestfallen. This is not the way I had envisioned things going. After all of our trials and tribulations there was always one more hurdle to overcome, each one could have been catastrophic if we failed to overcome it. This was not to be the one. It couldn’t be. If New Zealand wouldn’t have me, Hong Kong had better because I did not feel safe as a foreigner in China anymore.

A few minutes of frantic fact-checking and news reading later we discovered that the ban thankfully did not extend to NZ passport holders! We were on our way, tentative as ever. Me in my business class seat, and my friends in economy.

GETTY IMAGES "Suddenly the blood in my legs seemed to rush to my head as it slowly sunk in that I was stranded."

Arriving in Hong Kong we had to fill out yet another form before rushing off to our next flight. Along the way, in security, there was another health check point, although this time my travel companion Luiz was pulled to the side for having a temperature 0.6 degrees Celcius above normal. One more hurdle to overcome. After five anxious minutes waiting at the end of security he came free after being scanned again to ensure he didn’t have a severe fever. Phew.

I boarded my flight much less unsettled after a brief delay and enjoyed the on-flight champagne a little too much as we took to the skies, heading home at last!

Back in NZ, there were no silly health checks for me to do. Worryingly no forms to fill out, the only question they asked me was, "Have you got any plants or fruit in your luggage today?" It was bizarre. After coming from a place where citizens were wearing at least two surgical masks to brave the streets, a place where I wouldn’t touch my phone without sanitising it for fear of the virus, arriving in NZ was like being an alien in my own country.

Even going through immigration was surprisingly breezy. I wasn’t asked where I had been, and the only person of authority I saw kindly let me use the eGates, despite a law being passed hours earlier and an "Important Announcement" on the giant blue screen behind her detailing that "All travellers entering New Zealand are now required to be individually and manually processed". Shocking.

Nine days on it feels good to be back in a place where I can freely breathe the fresh air and use the internet as I please within my self-enforced quarantine. I want to tell my story not due to a lust for fresh pathos, but as a cautionary tale towards NZ. If we refuse to acknowledge the importance of actually taking action in these situations and instead simply relay information to the public about what actions are taking place, we run the risk of creating a facade analogous to the one created by the Communist Party of China.