Brazilians in Limbo Both Here and in China Due to Coronavirus

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The thirty-four Brazilians, whom the government sent two air force planes to pick up in Wuhan, China, landed in Anapolis, Goias on Sunday and will spend eighteen days in quarantine to make sure they have not been infected with the coronavirus which has spread throughout China and other parts of the world.

These Brazilians are only part of the dozens still in living in China and waiting for a solution to the virus epidemic that has contaminated thousands and killed hundreds. Many say they are going to wait it out, hope that the disease will dissipate in the near future and continue living and working in the Asian country.

Others left China for the end-of-year holidays only to find themselves stranded in Brazil, unable to go back to their homes and their work.

The Rio Times contacted Brazilians, both living in China and wanting to return to the Asian country, and spoke to them about the uncertainties of their current situation.

Bianca Ferreira da Silva, a 24-year-old dancer from São Paulo, has been in Shenzhen, less than a month.

“I came on a contract to stay a year. I’m here with a dance group; we came together to perform at the Oct East Knight Valley amusement park,” she tells The Rio Times through messages on her social media account.

“There are seven of us. I’m from São Paulo, but there are dancers from Rio and Recife as well,” she writes.

The city of Shenzhen links mainland China to Hong Kong, where authorities have started to impose limitation on the flow of people in and out of the island to combat further contamination of residents with the coronavirus.

Silva, however, says, with the exception of empty streets and the order to wear face masks whenever one goes out, everything is fine.

“We’re good,” she says.

“I live in the Futian neighborhood; the center is half an hour from here, so there is no agglomeration,” she explains.

“Everyone is staying home more. When I leave the apartment, there is almost nobody in the street, a lot of places are closed and everyone who is on the street wears a mask,” she says.

According to the dancer, the government has ordered the closing of the amusement park, but she is getting paid as if she was working. “I will only leave if they tell me to go back (to Brazil); if they decide that the park will not reopen,” she says.

The calmness displayed by Silva is not shared by Gisele Rosas, from Rio de Janeiro, who has been in Guangzhou city, in the Guangdong province for the past four months. The singer works with a band of around ten people, all of whom remain in Guangzhou with her.

“There are Brazilians from everywhere in China. All over. Some are living very difficult situations right now.

I am lucky. I have friends here in Guangzhou. I have support, so I’m ok for now,” she tells The Rio Times.

According to Rosas, a WeChat group has been set up among Brazilians living all around China.

“We use WeChat because here in China they (government) block Facebook, YouTube, Google, WhatsApp. Since only some of us have VPN (connection system to open social media) to open these channels, we use WeChat.”

According to Rosas there are currently around eighty Brazilians in the group and many of them have expressed that they would like to leave the Asian country.

She says her bosses have asked her group to wait until this week to see how the situation unfolds. “I’ll wait (this week) and depending on the situation I’ll make my decision whether or not to try to go back to Brazil.”

Rosas admits, however, that there are people who are desperately trying to find a way back to Brazil. “The planes (Brazilian government’s) only picked up people in Wuhan. China is not only Wuhan. We have Brazilians all over China.”

Although her city has not been put under a quarantine, Rosas says residents have ‘instructions not to leave home, not go to crowded places, not eat on the street. “The city is deserted. Banks, shopping centers, restaurants, schools – everything is closed,” she says.

“We are not quarantined like those in Wuhan but it is as if we were,” she says. “We are now living a type of ‘false freedom’. They say that if we want to leave we can buy a ticket and leave the country, but that is not true,” she explains.

According to Rosas, some people in the WeChat group went on-line, purchased tickets leaving China, packed and headed to the airport, only to find out that the flights had been cancelled. “So, it’s false to say that we are free to go if we want. There are no flights,” she argues.

“It is frustrating because I came here with a contract to work for two years as a singer. Now my brother is creating a virtual crowdfunding account on the Internet to collect money in case I decide to go back,” she says.

Frustration is also what Patricia Ferraz Pacheco’s family is feeling. Pacheco is currently with her family in Santa Catarina state, living with relatives until they can go home, to Yiwu, China. The family went to China in 2016 to run the Chinese office of a trading company.

“We’ve lived in Yiwu for the past three years. We love it! We came to Brazil on December 23rd to spend Christmas with family and we were supposed to go back home this past weekend,” she says.

Pacheco is now in Brazil with her husband, Jonas and her eight-year-old son, Benjamin.

“My son has no real idea of how this situation can affect our lives, he knows about the virus and deaths because he reads about it on the internet, but he is happy to see his friends here, stay with his grandparents,” she says.

Benjamin studies in a Canadian school in China, which has already postponed the start of classes from February 17th to March 2nd. Pacheco has enrolled him in a Brazilian school until she and her husband decide what to do.

“We are now waiting here until the situation in China improves,” she explains.

Although Yiwu is far from Wuhan, Pacheco says authorities in Yiwu, have already reported fourteen suspected and two confirmed cases of coronavirus. She says that most of the shops are closed, everyone is advised to stay indoors,

Pacheco says her family today lives in limbo. “This feeling is very bad, we do not know when we will return or how this semester will be in relation to business; we cannot plan anything, we just have to monitor the situation and ask God to make everything better quickly,” she concludes.