发烧 = fever

For a few weeks I've been hearing about the quarantines in China, and I've been trying to pay close attention to who they are quarantining and why. For a while the rule of thumb was if you were sitting within 3 rows, front or back, of someone on the plane going into China that had a fever you were automatically quarantined for 7 days in a government hotel. Now it's everyone on the plane is quarantined if anyone on the plane has a fever - they recently quarantined 296 people from one flight because one person had a fever! Only after closed monitorization for 7 days with no signs of flu symptoms will they release you from quarantine. Oh, and you have to pay to stay in quarantine, too. WTF?! They're locking us in there against our will and making us fork up the money for it. No fair.

We heard from a group from Mercer that just got back from China. They said their hotel checked their temperature every day before they left in the morning and wouldn't let anyone leave their room if they had a temperature. We're expecting them to do the same for us, at least while we're staying in Shanghai.

Our professor bought a ton of thermometers and face masks for us. One of them leaves this Saturday to do some last minute planning before we all meet her over there in a few weeks. She said she's going to scope things out and see if we should wear the face masks when we're on the plane/getting off the plane - whether it would be a good thing, making us look like considerate Americans, or if it would be a bad thing, drawing negative attention to a big group of Americans.

I'm really concerned about all this - especially because all of our fun, touristy stuff we're doing is in the first 7 days. I don't want to miss that stuff! And a few of the companies we were going to visit/tour have canceled on us, saying they aren't accepting any foreign delegation at this time. A few have told us they will let us know one week prior to our scheduled visit. So there is a chance we will have a lot more free time that we thought... which is cool because we can do more exploring, but at the same time we'll be missing the opportunity to meet some really big and important people and see some big companies.

Keep your fingers crossed for no quarantines!!