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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Lunar New Year: the Chinese left ‘trapped and helpless’ overseas

  • Uncertainty and loss linger for mainland Chinese working abroad, as the annual ritual of returning home for the holidays has been put on hold yet again
  • Pricey airfares, mandatory quarantines and the risk of Covid-19 infection are the hurdles they face if they do make the trip

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You Feifei, who works at a kebab restaurant in Singapore, said she would be treating the Lunar New Year holiday as just another work week. Photo: Dewey Sin
Dewey Simin SingaporeandLuo Ruiyao
Yang, a Chinese national working in Singapore for more than a decade, usually flies back to her hometown of Wuhan in central China every year to celebrate the Lunar New Year with her family. But this is the second straight year she will give her annual pilgrimage a miss.

“It is a very sad feeling to not be able to ring in the new year with my family and friends back home,” said the 29-year-old, who works in the education industry. “And it’s worse not knowing when I can see them next.”

Last year, Yang, who only wanted to be identified by her surname, ditched her plans to return home after Chinese authorities imposed a strict lockdown in Hubei province, the initial epicentre of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. At that point, the virus had taken just a few dozen lives and infected about a thousand people, but it had thrown nationwide celebrations of China’s most important public holiday into disarray.
Gao Feng working in the field with a local worker in Beira, Mozambique. Photo: handout
Gao Feng working in the field with a local worker in Beira, Mozambique. Photo: handout

This time, with the coronavirus still raging around the world, a sense of uncertainty and loss lingers among Chinese nationals living abroad as a longer list of considerations keep them from home, among them the higher price of air tickets, the long quarantine period and the risk of getting infected on the way back.

Yang, who last saw her family in Wuhan in October 2019, said the cost of her plane ticket home had shot up dramatically because of the limited number of flights into the mainland – to as much as S$1,600 (US$1,200) for a round-trip ticket, from the S$600 she used to pay.

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