“Life under a pandemic” is a series of Q+A’s with people who are living in China and have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. For our first interview we talked to Matt, a South African/Australian teacher living in Shanghai. He took the pictures featured in this article in the city of Shijiazhuang, about 190 miles south of Beijing, where he was visiting his brother.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity

When did you first get a sense of how serious the pandemic was getting?

At the beginning of the outbreak, the embassy in Canberra phoned me and said, “we are asking all Australians to leave China.” And the person was quite serious about it and I was like, “Ok, it’s actually not that severe, dude.”

But then Chinese New Year happened which is when China usually shuts down, all the shops close and everybody goes back home. After that, the country usually goes back to its normal state… but that didn’t happen [this time]. All of a sudden, the death rate went through the roof and people were trying to figure out just how serious this all was. 

Before this, I had this whole grand holiday planned, [my brother and I] were going to go to Guilin but then everything started slowly shutting down out of nowhere. So I was staying in a basic hotel and suddenly we couldn’t do anything. We had warnings that said, “don’t go outside” so our holiday just consisted of us getting drunk in the hotel everyday because we had nothing else to do. So then I decided I was going to go back to Shijiazhuang, where we mostly just stayed inside.

How did quarantine start and how has that been for you?

On our way back to the apartment in Shijiazhuang, someone asked us for our ticket before we entered. And I thought “what do you mean our tickets?” So they took us to a place and they asked for all of our details such as where we had been and which trains we had taken. There’s an app now where you can see if you were on a train with a sick person on it and they checked that app before they gave us a ticket. We found out that the tickets meant that only one person could leave the house per day to go shopping and stuff. One lady who was also getting her ticket at the same time asked, “but what happens if somebody else wants to come with me?” The guy who gave her the ticket turned around and said “I’ve got six people living in my house. What am I supposed to do? Those are the rules. One person can leave per day.”

After that, I bought the earliest train out that I could, and got back to Shanghai on February 14th. That’s when my two-week quarantine in Shanghai started. They put me in a hotel and I’ve been inside since I arrived. But it’s been a lot easier to cope with. I just drink water and do exercises everyday to help with the cabin fever.

Wait, so you’re not allowed to leave the hotel at all?

No leaving. I open the door four times a day. At 8 o’clock, the door gets knocked on and somebody drops off food outside my door and then they vanish. At 9 o’clock, someone comes to my door again wearing a full hazmat suit with a temperature gun and I open my door and then they check my temperature. And then I close the door again. At 11:45 am, I get a knock at my door as well again and that’s lunch. I close my door and then at 2 o’clock, they come again to check my temperature. Two people, hazmat suits, not playing games.

Have you seen people’s behavior in public change since this all started?

You may have seen them already, but I’ve seen pictures of people wearing plastic bags from their heads to just above their ankles. And this isn’t even just photos, I’ve seen it in real life. When I got on the train to come back here to Shanghai, a woman covered her chair completely in plastic. She disinfected the whole place, she took disinfectant wipes and scrapped everything and then covered the chair in plastic. And then she just slept on the chair the whole time. If you’re out in public and you cough or you sneeze, everyone’s heads snap onto you and they look at you like you could be infected. It’s really, really insane.

When I ordered Burger King, I ate it and then I looked at the bottom of the bag and there was a little slip of paper with the temperature checks of the chef, the person who packed my food and the driver. What they do is next level. I saw some people running around in the supermarket with goggles and something covering their ears and medical gloves.

How about the people closest to you? How have they reacted to the pandemic?

People my age generally feel that it’s not that bad. If you get it, you’ll probably be fine, it’s no different than the flu. The only thing is that it can’t be contained, so the thing that you worry about is that if you got it, then you give it to ten people then you feel like you’re killing somebody because you could give it to someone who is old or you could give it to somebody’s child or somebody like that, especially because of our professions as teachers.

But you don’t personally worry that you could die from the virus?

No, no, no, no. My only concern with having gotten the virus would be that Chinese hospitals aren’t pleasant on good days, they’re not very hygienic. So it makes me feel, like the way they treat me, will it make things better or worse? 

What are you looking forward to most once your quarantine ends?

Just being able to walk outside. It’s actually been weird because all the factories are shut, there’s no pollution in the air and I’ve seen Shanghai at its cleanest and I’ve seen beautiful, sunny days pretty much everyday but I only get to witness them from my window at the moment.