Miriam “Mira” and Lou Stant live more than 7,000 miles away from their oldest child, Zachary “Zack” Stant, and his wife, Cindy. They’ve never met their grandson, 6-month-old Thomas.
It’s already difficult having family and a new grandbaby thousands of miles away. But it becomes more difficult when travel restrictions prevent a visit.
For the past month or so, the young family has been confined to the city of Dongguan, China, as the country has been taking measures to try to control the spread of the coronavirus.
The Brown County Stants have been trying not to think about the virus, which has infected tens of thousands of people in China and is now spreading elsewhere in Asia and Europe. But stories about deaths and the new cases constantly remind them of the danger their loved ones are in.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“We’ve never seen our grandchild, Thomas, in person, never held him or pinched his chubby cheeks. That is hard,” Mira said.
She said she’s struggled with fear and anxiety over Zack, Cindy and little Thomas catching the virus.
“I am completely powerless. The anxiety was with me every minute of every day. But I realized that I really had to take care of myself daily to keep the anxiety at bay,” she said.
“I know a lot of people are praying for them, even strangers,” Mira said.
“I allow myself to read about the virus no more than once every day. Reading about it helps me to keep grounded in facts. For example, it is mostly people over 40 who contract the virus. But it also increases my anxiety to read about it.”
The virus is spreading from person-to-person in parts of China. Most of cases are associated with travel from Wuhan, which is about 600 miles from where Zack, Cindy and Thomas live.
Cases are also being reported in other countries, including the United States, according to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention. On Jan. 30, the U.S. reported its first confirmed instance of the virus that was spread person-to-person.
‘An epidemic on our hands’
Zack, 30, moved to China in 2017 to teach. He is on contract there until at least June 2021.
The Stant family moved to Brown County when Zack was 7. “I’ve considered it my home ever since,” he said.
He graduated from Brown County High School in 2008. Lou and Mira live right outside Nashville.
“As an adult, I’ve been all over the world, but I always come home to BC,” he said. “I’m hoping to move my family to Brown County or Bloomington in a few years once Thomas is ready to start school. Brown County will always be my home.”
The move to China was spontaneous for Zack. He had earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Indiana University and had a teaching job lined up in Florida the summer of 2017. After discovering an problem with the contract for that job, Zack applied for a teaching job in Eastern Europe.
That job ended up getting filled, but a representative from the overseas teaching company told Zack there was a job available in China.
“I was like, ‘No thank you, sir.’ But he convinced me to meet him in Indy for an interview, and when he showed me the salary and benefit package, I just couldn’t turn it down,” he said.
He was given 24 hours to make a decision. “But honestly, when I walked out of the interview, my mind was already made up,” he said.
He began teaching fifth grade at Quality Schools International. Cindy was a teacher assistant at the school and had taught herself English. They met in staff training.
“I was head over heels almost immediately,” he said.
They married in late 2018, and a baby was on the way a month later. The Stant family, including siblings Marina and Gabriel, traveled to China for their wedding.
“We loved Cindy as soon as we met her. She is part of our family,” Mira said.
The couple lives in Dongguan, which is in southern China about an hour from the Hong Kong border. Zack describes it as a “big industrial city.”
“Where they make a lot of shoes, clothes, and furniture. No question, you’ve owned a pair of shoes that was made in Dongguan at some point in your life,” he said.
Zack said he first heard about the coronavirus in the middle of January, “but I wasn’t too concerned about it initially.”
He soon realized the situation was serious. On Jan. 24, he flew to Cindy’s hometown in rural Sichuan for the Chinese New Year.
Everyone he encountered had masks on: The taxi driver who drove him to the bus station, the bus station staff, the bus driver, and everyone on the bus and at the airport, including flight attendants.
“It was surreal. You’d see a few people without masks, maybe one in 100, and they looked nervous. That’s when it hit me that I was living through something pretty crazy,” he said.
It become a whole lot crazier after a few days in rural Sichuan, he said.
“It was becoming more and more evident that we had an epidemic on our hands.”
‘Together as a family’
The couple decided they would try to beat the crowds to get back home to Dongguan.
“We booked a flight for the next day out of the closest major city. We also booked a private driver to take us to the airport in the morning,” he said.
That evening, the driver sent Cindy a message saying he would not be able to drive them because all of the roads had been closed in and out of the town. The couple cancelled their flight and stayed with Cindy’s parents for a few more days until they were able to make it to a smaller city nearby.
On the way, officials stopped all of the cars on the highway for health screenings.
The night before the couple left, local officials showed up at Cindy’s parents’ house to do a health check on her cousin because he had recently purchased a car in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus outbreak. One of the men was in a hazmat suit.
One of the officials was also a cousin of Cindy’s, so the officials stayed to have food and drinks with the family.
“I sat around the table with these guys, one of whom was still wearing a hazmat suit, and we polished off a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black Label that I had given to my father-in-law as a Chinese New Year gift,” Zack said.
“Then I got a selfie with the guy in the hazmat suit and they took off, possibly to make some more house calls. It was one of those things that could only happen in rural China.”
Zack’s parents first heard of the virus in late January while listening to NPR, and they soon heard from Zack, who had gone to visit Cindy’s parents on their farm in the rural village of Fubao in China’s Sichuan Province near Tibet.
“The first thing that went through my mind was the implications inherent in being in a rural area with no nearby hospitals, unable to get out due to travel restrictions imposed by the local and national governments,” Lou said.
“Once they got back, we kept hearing more news stories about the rapid spread of the virus and found ourselves getting paranoid, feeling that our son and his family were ‘sitting ducks’ in Dongguan with the epidemic swirling around them. One’s imagination can be a detriment in such situations.”
Lou said that his family has to trust that somehow, Zack and his young family will get through it.
“More than anything, we wish to meet our new, and first, grandson,” Lou said.
Travel restrictions
The Stants had been planning to go to China in early April to help care for Thomas after Cindy returns to work, then fly everyone to Brown County during Zack’s summer break. Those plans are now in limbo.
“At this point, it doesn’t seem likely that we will be going,” Lou said.
The U.S. Consulate denied Cindy’s tourist visa to come home with him two years ago.
“We had hopes that, now that they are married, she would be granted a visa for this summer. However, before she could apply, the coronavirus broke out,” Mira said.
“It doesn’t look likely that her application will be granted, unless the virus outbreak turns around miraculously.”
The U.S. government has taken “unprecedented steps related to travel in response to the growing public health threat posed by this new coronavirus,” the CDC states.
This includes suspending entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals who have visited China in the last 14 days, and monitoring the health of those people who allowed to enter the country who have been in China within 14 days.
Zack and little Thomas could come back to the U.S. since they are citizens, but Cindy would not be allowed into the country since she is Chinese.
“We talked about it quite a bit, but decided it is better to stick together as a family,” Zack said last week.
“Honestly, I’m angry about it. A lot of countries have allowed their citizens to evacuate with their non-citizen spouses, which seems like the right thing to me, but the United States, a country founded by immigrants, has put my family and countless others in this horrible situation where we have to choose between living in a country experiencing a deadly epidemic or splitting up the family. That’s just not right.”
Lou and Mira are able to video chat with Zack, Cindy and Thomas two to three times a week, and they receive photos often, which helps to calm worries, Lou and Mira both said.
“Generally, they are in good spirits during these chats, although they confess often how bored they get spending most of their time in their high-rise apartment,” Lou said.
‘Get back to normal life’
Zack and family are riding out the outbreak at home. Supermarkets and produce markets have food on the shelves, so food shortage is not a worry, he said.
All schools have been closed until at least March 2, so Zack is teaching classes online until everyone is allowed to return to the classroom. However, that date could be extended, since the original return date was Feb. 17.
About 80 percent of his colleagues have left China already, but Zack has one colleague he continues to go on bike rides with to get out of his apartment.
The couple also goes grocery shopping every other day. Last week, Zack said the couple was planning on getting Thomas out of the apartment for the first time in more than two weeks.
“It’s a beautiful day here, and I feel bad for keeping him cooped up inside all the time,” he said.
“Honestly, I think everyone here is just ready to get back to normal life.”
Everyone in Zack’s city is wearing masks if they leave their apartment, which “most people avoid doing as much as possible,” he said.
Side streets and apartment complex entrances have all been barricaded to allow for officials to funnel traffic trough a single entrance. At that entrance, everyone has their temperature checked before being allowed to enter the city.
“But honestly, they’re using cheap thermometers that aren’t very accurate,” Zack said.
“A friend of mine said that he saw one of the health check guys hitting his thermometer, trying to get it to read properly. Then he scanned him and it flashed red, indicating that my friend had a fever, but the guy just shook his head and waved him through.”
Food delivery is very popular where Zack lives. Typically, drivers come into apartment complexes to deliver to the door, but now they are not allowed inside and have to meet customers at the entrance.
“I had one guy set the food down on his moped and step back three feet as I grabbed it, instead of just handing it to me,” Zack said.
Most restaurants and all of the bars are closed.
“It’s like a ghost town right now. I live in a high-rise apartment next to a major six-lane road, and I’ll be sitting out on my balcony, and minutes will go by without a car passing. It’s eerie,” he said.
“You can’t anticipate something like this. I never would have guessed I would live through something like this. There are moments when you think, ‘My God, I’m living in the apocalypse.’ But, like everything, it has just become normal and we’re just living our lives.”
The most difficult part is the boredom.
“Normally I’m out and about, playing sports, coaching basketball, socializing with friends, going to events, but none of that stuff is going on right now, so I spend 90 percent of my time in my apartment,” he said.
“We’re not too worried about getting sick. There are 91 people that have gotten the virus in Dongguan so far. So, at 91 out of 8 million, we like our odds.”
But having a baby still makes the couple nervous.
“Anytime one of us goes out, we wear a mask, and always sanitize and wash our hands and change clothes as soon as we get home,” he said.
‘A perfect storm’
Worldwide news coverage of the virus offers a “pretty accurate” depiction of what’s happening in China, Zack said.
“A lot of that news is coming out of Hubei province, which is the epicenter. We’re 600 miles away from there, so things aren’t quite so dramatic here,” he said.
“But this is definitely a crisis of epic proportions, and I think it’s going to be a few more weeks before they get this thing contained and you start to see the numbers go down.”
Earlier this year was a “perfect storm” of time for an epidemic because it began happening right before the Chinese New Year, Zack said. “These train stations and trains are just packed with people. It’s standing room only, so you’ve got people breathing on you and touching you. There’s no way around it.”
He added that China also does not educate its citizens about hand washing. “There isn’t soap in any public restrooms. Even in hospitals and government health centers, there is no soap in the bathrooms. People just don’t wash their hands here,” he said.
The Chinese are also family oriented, which can be a challenge when dealing with a virus outbreak, he said. When everyone returned home for the New Year, there were large family gatherings. They all eat communal meals for those three weeks. Family members gather around a table and dip their chopsticks in each lukewarm dish on the table for a bite, Zack said.
“By the time you’ve finished dinner, you’ve dipped your chopsticks into six or seven dishes about 10 times each that the other eight or nine people around the table have also dipped their chopsticks in over and over again,” he said.
“It’s honestly a beautiful thing that I’ve been blessed to be a part of. I’ve never been around such close, loving families before. We really seem to have lost this in the States. But as beautiful as it is, it’s also the perfect environment for a virus to spread.”
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