Pandemic travel: 3 Taiwanese women’s globe-crossing journey to marry their partners
- Travel restrictions saw Olivia, Rong Jia and Ku stuck half a world away from their partners. Deciding they’d had enough, they packed their bags for France
Over the past seemingly countless months of the pandemic, people have lost their jobs, countries have closed their borders and partners have been separated from their loved ones. During that time, it has been interesting to note the doors and windows of luck opening and closing, ever changing the facts of who has had it worse, where, when, and for how long.
In September 2020, as France announced its highest count of Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, while Taiwan barely registered any, three Taiwanese women, Olivia, Rong Jia and Ku, met each other in an online group. They were three halves of millions of couples around the world to have been separated from their partners (at that time, for roughly a year each), and they bonded over a common desire: to cross the globe and reunite with their loved ones as soon as possible.
Rong Jia, 34, has been with her boyfriend for more than four years, and they have lived together in both Spain and France. Last year she returned to Taiwan to celebrate Lunar New Year with her family and was unable to get back to Europe.
Olivia, 23, who had spent three months with her partner in Europe before returning to Taiwan, was in constant contact with her fiancé via daily video calls. She decided to move to Belgium to marry him, pandemic or not.
Ku, 33, got engaged to her Paris-based fiancé in February 2020 and they had been separated ever since.