lørdag 18. april 2020

‘They are still kissing and greeting’: Chinese workers in Russia flee as coronavirus crisis escalates

As the coronavirus spread in Russia, a group of 500 Chinese residents of Khabarovsk city in the Far East decided to lock themselves inside an apartment block, imposing a regime of self-isolation that has been in place since April 1. “Of course we are dying to go home,” said Liu Haijun, 50, a native of the northeastern Chinese border city of Suifenhe, by telephone from the building called the Tianyu Guesthouse. “But with the border closed and flights cancelled, and rumours of people getting infected on the journey back, and because my business is here, we just have to stay put in Russia and keep ourselves safe,” he said.

The worsening coronavirus outbreak in Russia has forced the roughly 150,000 Chinese citizens living there to decide between sheltering in place or trying to cross back into China, where the coronavirus has been curtailed by drastic containment measures.