It was supposed to be a whirlwind tour of China for Jiang Lanyi’s boyfriend: classical gardens in Suzhou, modern art in Shanghai and ice skating in central Beijing.
Instead, the 24-year-old and her Ukrainian partner have spent more than two weeks holed up in her parents’ house in northeast Liaoning Province to avoid COVID-19.
Couples around China settled for a quiet Valentine’s Day this year, with COVID-19 intruding as an unwelcome third-wheel in romantic celebrations.
Photo: Reuters
The COVID-19 outbreak in China has triggered transport restrictions, restaurant shutdowns and the closure of major tourist sites. Businesses around the country, from florists to concert halls, closed shop and axed events, leaving couples with no choice but to spend the night in.
For Jiang and her boyfriend, that meant a lot of mahjong.
“We play two to three hours every day,” said Jiang, who met her partner, a tech entrepreneur, while studying in London. “Having started learning from zero, he’s now very skilled.”
In Beijing, Valentine’s Day specials aimed at couples — from a My Heart Will Go On concert to a 1,688 yuan (US$242) lobster dinner for two — were canceled.
Valentine’s Day this year “won’t be that different from daily life under quarantine,” said Tyra Li, who lives in Beijing with her boyfriend of nearly three years.
Since the Lunar New Year holiday, aside from a trip to see family, the couple has only left the house to buy groceries — they do not even order food delivery for fear of infection, she said.
“There definitely won’t be any flowers,” the 33-year-old said. “I don’t dare to receive them and he doesn’t dare to buy them.”
The risk of infection, which has left most lovers housebound, has battered Valentine’s Day sales for businesses hoping to cash in on love.
Flower shop Xian Hua Ge in Beijing said that sales plunged by up to 70 percent from last year — partly because many have not returned to the city to work.
The “return rate” of workers for China’s four Tier-1 cities was only 19.4 percent as of Monday, far below the 66.7 percent of last year, Nomura China economist Lu Ting (陸挺) said in a report on Tuesday.
A worker at Romanti Fresh Flowers said that sales have dropped up to 50 percent, in part because customers are fearful of virus transmission via delivery staff, while another shop said that they had “no stock.”
China’s wedding industry has also taken a hit, with Beijing earlier this month urging couples to delay their nuptials.
Zhu He, 25, who last month downsized her wedding due to virus fears, said that she and her fiance had originally planned to pick up their marriage license on Valentine’s Day.
That has been delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, said Zhu, who lives in southern Guangzhou.
“We had planned to go together [with my parents],” she said. “Now, they won’t come, even though we all live in Guangzhou.”
“Neither of them can drive and I don’t really trust public transport,” Zhu said, worried about the risk of infection.
The outbreak has also complicated romantic trysts, with many cities closing off neighborhoods to outside visitors in a bid to contain COVID-19.
Miao Jing, a university student in northern Tianjin, said that her girlfriend had to sneak into her hotel through the parking garage for a three-hour rendezvous earlier this month.
The trip was supposed to last three days, said the 23-year-old, who took a five-hour train to northern Zhangjiakou to see her partner, but on the second day, the district where Miao was staying reported a confirmed case of the virus.
“She was really worried,” Miao said. “In the end, I only saw her on the first day.”
For Shaw Wan, 28, who works on short documentaries in Beijing, the epidemic has separated her and her boyfriend — who is in Taiwan — indefinitely.
“I don’t really want him to return either — what if he gets infected on the way back?” she said.
However, there are some bright sides to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Beijing’s Li said that staying cooped up at home has meant more time with her boyfriend — in the past, their busy schedules meant that they only saw each other after 10pm on weekdays.
For Miao and her girlfriend, who are in a long-distance relationship, volunteering in outbreak relief work has brought them closer together.
The two students help residents and communities in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, with remote tasks such as calling to arrange vehicle transport.
“There is a feeling of working together,” she said. “Even if we cannot be together physically, in some sense we are.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in