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After Ariel Lee (pictured with her son) returned to China from Hong Kong in spring 2020, she decided to help administer the Shanghai Arrivals and QuaranTeam groups on WeChat and look after SH Arrival Updates Japan to help others preparing for similar experiences. Photo: Courtesy of Ariel Lee

Stuck outside China? From quarantine hotel advice to visas and testing procedures, these WeChat groups are helping people stranded by coronavirus

  • Groups such as Shanghai Arrivals, QuaranTeam and Americans Waiting Outside China provide information and assurance for people looking to return to the country
  • Many were founded by people who went through the process themselves and wanted to help others

Lena Horlyk, who has called Beijing home for 12 years, is one of many returnees who have had to endure months of uncertainty, cancelled flights and separation from loved ones, friends or work while trying to get back into China during the coronavirus pandemic.

Horlyk was in her native Denmark when China closed its borders to all foreign citizens on March 28 last year. She immediately started looking for help online, but personal reasons and then a cancelled flight prevented her from returning to China until this year.

When we speak, Horlyk is on day 12 of her hotel quarantine in Shanghai (most returnees to Beijing have had to quarantine in other cities before travelling to the capital). She has rationed the treats she brought with her from home, enjoying a couple every afternoon. Books, work, knitting and yoga help her pass the time while woollen socks and electric candles provide for a homey atmosphere in her otherwise dull room.

Thanks to online help groups, “I got all the answers I needed about how to apply for re-entry [to China], the health code procedure, and especially what to bring to survive quarantine,” she says.

Lena Horlyk’s quarantine “kit” includes her book, knitting and slippers. Photo: Courtesy of Lena Horlyk

She was advised to bring cutlery, as most hotels provide only chopsticks, and one person suggested cleaning products and a cloth: “Remember, nobody will clean the room for two weeks”. Horlyk’s suitcase also contained a small Bluetooth speaker, for musical entertainment, and plenty of instant coffee.

When Richard Webb returned to China in March 2020, he was directed to two WeChat groups: Shanghai Arrivals and QuaranTeam. He has stayed active on social media to help others trying to return and says that a recurring topic in the QuaranTeam group is the concern over quarantine hotel room arrangements.

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“Families are being split up and it’s usually one adult and one child per room,” he says. Another issue concerns people who are starting a new posting in China and who may not be aware of restrictions related to the internet. “Many sites people plan to use during quarantine are inaccessible and life in China requires WeChat – so the groups can advise on signing up before travelling.”

The Shanghai Arrivals and QuaranTeam WeChat groups were co-founded by Beijing resident Nicole Malek. She and her family were on holiday in the United States in January 2020 and, after her husband returned to China in February, Malek took her two young children to see family in Lebanon.

Then, fearing the borders would close, Malek and her daughters arrived on what turned out to be the last flight from Lebanon to Shanghai (via Moscow) in late March 2020. Days later, regulations tightened and panic spread in the WeChat groups Malek was part of. She found herself in a two-week quarantine, with time on her hands, so, together with friend Janette Turek, who used to live in Shanghai, they created the QuaranTeam group.

Nicole Malek (pictured) created the QuaranTeam and Shanghai Arrivals WeChat groups with her friend Janette Turek. Photo: Courtesy of Nicole Malek

There was huge interest from people desperately looking for guidance and information, so the pair created a second group, for general queries about requirements regarding entry into Shanghai, the main hub for arrivals at the time.

“The Shanghai Arrivals group quickly filled up [WeChat groups are each limited to 500 participants] so we opened a second and third group,” Malek says. “Basically, it just exploded.”

Managing the WeChat groups is almost a full-time job. “We are all volunteers but we gladly dedicate time to helping others get back into China,” says Turek, adding that it wasn’t uncommon to be confronted by 1,000 new messages every day in the QuaranTeam group in the beginning (the figure has since fallen to between 200 and 300).

We do not tolerate speculation and fear-mongering – and we have had to remove people from the group
Nicole Malek

She would wake up in Britain, where she now lives, to catch up with the morning developments, add new members and reply to personal messages. “I would be online up to two hours before even getting out of bed,” she says.

“It’s also true that people have plenty of time to message while in quarantine,” adds Malek, smiling over our Zoom connection. 

The admin team has managed to optimise the information at their disposal with the help of FAQ documents.

When mum and travel blogger Ariel Lee was looking to get back to China from Hong Kong in the spring of 2020, she noticed that 80 to 90 per cent of the questions asked in the groups were repetitive and often concerned the visa, arrival and quarantine processes.

“I thought it would be much quicker to have things documented,” says Lee, who later became part of the team administrating the Shanghai Arrivals and QuaranTeam groups, as well as looking after a Japan-to-Shanghai group, SH Arrival Updates Japan.

Lee says the most requested information is for quarantine hotels and the arrival process in Shanghai. Photo: Courtesy of Ariel Lee

She drafted documents containing information for returnees, from boarding and transit procedures according to different airlines to the testing procedures at Shanghai Pudong airport and quarantine food choices. Lee says the most requested documents are the quarantine hotel list and one explaining the Shanghai arrival process.

Japanese national Chikae Yamatin specialises in departure, rather than arrival, procedures. She is involved mainly in the Americans Waiting Outside China WeChat group and SH Arrival Updates Japan. Her 31-page-long “FAQ on travel and testing requirements” covers everything from the health declaration code (HDC) needed to enter China to payment methods for tests at Helsinki Airport.

She keeps a constant eye on the chat and will update the FAQ document as people share new information or ask new types of questions.

“I also go through all of the US consulate sites weekly [in both English and Chinese], since sometimes they post announcements to one site and not to the other,” says Yamatin, who has lived on and off in Beijing for 10 years.

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“We share these documents in the groups, first thing every morning – and having them at our disposal allows admin to focus on other urgent but non-standard questions,” says Lee, who also helps with the translation of information from the government. “A lot of government announcements are rather vague and only available in Chinese, so my goal is to prevent incorrect interpretations and unnecessary panic since people are already stressed out.”

But weeding out information is not all that is needed to ensure the smooth running of WeChat groups with hundreds of members. “Strict group rules are key,” Malek says. “We do not tolerate speculation and fear-mongering – and we have had to remove people from the group, after due warning, of course.”

Group members are not allowed to post information if they have no official news source to back it up. Furthermore, no government-bashing is tolerated and members are expected to keep a friendly and supportive tone. 

Details of admins of local WeChat groups for returnees. Photo: Ariel Lee / Shanghai Arrivals

For life coach and journalist Crystyl Mo, a brief visit to see her parents in Boston with her seven-year-old daughter has turned into a 13-month stay, during which they have been separated from their husband and father, a Shanghai-based chef.

“First, foreigners were banned [from returning to China] outright unless you could get an invitation letter, which, in our case, was impossible,” Mo says. Then, her daughter’s travel document expired and they had to travel to New York to get it renewed.

By then, Mo wanted her daughter, who had started school in the US, to finish the semester. Little did Mo know that a new ban would be put on her own residence permit, making it impossible to enter China unless their travel was deemed essential. “And it is not essential that my daughter returns to school in China or that we’re reunited as a family,” Mo says.

“My mother is from Shanghai but immigrated to the US 50 years ago. It’s really difficult that as half-Chinese, married to a Chinese and with a China-born daughter, we have not been able to return,” she says. 

A busy Dashilan as mask-wearing people celebrate Lunar New Year, the Year of the Ox, on February 12, 2021 in Beijing. Photo: VCG via Getty Images

To help those who find themselves in a similar situation, Mo started Americans Waiting Outside China on Facebook and WeChat. The WeChat group is one of the current 35 country-specific “stranded outside China” groups.

Mo has been impressed by the thousands of people who have supported each other in the groups with invaluable information about the complex paperwork and processes of returning. “We also comfort each other when people get rejected for ‘green codes’ [HDCs] or when the separation from our families becomes too much,” she says. 

Even though their wait in limbo may yet be a lengthy one, all those scanning social media for a hint of an easing of restrictions will have welcomed the news from Beijing in March that foreigners wishing to return to China from certain countries could do so according to pre-Covid procedures as long as they had received a Chinese-made vaccine. The chat on many groups now is of how to get Sinovac jabs in order to get back into China. Some Americans are considering travelling to Mexico, where the Chinese vaccine is available, Malek says.

It’s hard to estimate how many foreign workers and their families are still waiting to return to China, but Mo puts the number stranded in the US alone in the thousands. New WeChat groups are still being created, the latest being for those stuck in Portugal or Cambodia.


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