Foreigners laud the Chinese for discipline amid epidemic

Steven Forster, a German teacher, felt that he had walked into the set of a disaster movie when returning to north China's Shanxi Province from his motherland in early February.

Shanxi's capital city Taiyuan is like a second home to Forster as he has taught there for more than 10 years. He also lived there through the SARS epidemic in 2003, but said he was in awe of how disciplined everyone was as there were hardly any people on the streets when he returned from his recent trip.

After the novel coronavirus struck, Shanxi launched its top-level public health emergency response to the epidemic on Jan 25.

Forster was required to undergo home quarantine for 14 days from his arrival date. His colleague in the English training institution helped him order groceries online and he got clear guidelines from the Shanxi Provincial Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. After the quarantine, he could go out shopping with his gate pass.

As the epidemic is gradually brought under control in China, life is getting back to normal. Shanxi downgraded its emergency response from level two to level three on March 10.

"Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to guarantee our safety," he said.

He added that self-discipline played a vital role not only in quarantine but also in ubiquitous inspections before entering apartments, supermarkets, shopping centres and other places, which were useful to track people if Covid-19 cases were found.

"My Chinese friends' capability of stepping up, making sacrifices and following rules strictly in crises has been confirmed during this difficult period," he said.

Matthew Thomas, a 25-year-old teacher from Britain, agreed on this point.

"China has set an example on how to stay at home. I'm very happy that everyone did well at the most difficult moment in the fight against the outbreak, that's why it's getting better here," he said.

During his stay at home, Thomas began to learn cooking, gave his students online lessons, studied Chinese and played online games. The days passed with relish.

"China is quite different from other countries. Chinese people are disciplined," said Natalia Kuranova from Russia, who has been in China for just five months.

In her eyes, staying at home is very useful for epidemic prevention, but also easily ignored by people in other countries. Thus, she talked to her relatives and friends in Russia every day and urged them to stay at home, wear masks and wash hands.

She said her parents would follow the advice, but some of her friends still wanted to get together, which made her feel helpless.

"At the very beginning, they worried about me, but now I'm worrying about them," she said.