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Xu Xiaoyue was married to Zhou Sifan in November last year. The couple went to Europe for their honeymoon during the Spring Festival holiday in January. They never expected that their honeymoon would be so special and unforgettable.
Xu and Zhou are natives of central China's Hubei Province, the hardest-hit region by the novel coronavirus. They departed for their honeymoon from the neighboring Chongqing Municipality on Jan. 18.
"At that time, there was little information about the novel coronavirus, and our colleagues and friends rarely talked about the disease as well," said Xu, adding that people were busy preparing for the Chinese Lunar New Year, or the Spring Festival.
"The trip to Europe was as beautiful as I had imagined. We did window shopping around the Champs-Elysees in Paris, had dark beers in Germany and also visited Switzerland and Italy," Xu recalled.
"However, the epidemic in our country started to grab headlines, and people began to feel anxious. Our tour guide started to check our temperature every day," Xu added.
On Jan. 24, the eve of the Lunar New Year, both Xu and Zhou, who are grassroots workers in rural Hubei, received notices from their units, requiring all workers to stop their vacations and return to their posts immediately to cope with the epidemic.
"I was worried about our journey back to China since the tour agency refused to stop the trip in advance. We were in no mood to continue the honeymoon," Xu said.
Xu said they finally returned to Chongqing on Jan. 29, but understood the epidemic situation was more severe than they thought.
"Our flight landed at 4:50 a.m. An attendant on the flight broadcasted a name list, which included us, requiring those on the list to get off the plane first. We later learned we were all from Hubei," Xu said.
A total of six Wuhan residents accepted blood tests and had their body temperatures taken, none of which were found infected with the deadly virus.
"We rushed to a train station and tried to get back to our home in Hubei, but all railway services linking Hubei had been suspended. We could not go back," Xu said.
The young couple were sent to a makeshift resettlement site for people from Hubei, who had been stranded in Chongqing, and they were under quarantine in a three-star hotel for more than two weeks.
A total of 63 people including Xu and Zhou from Hubei were put under quarantine in the hotel, and more than 100 workers including medical workers, policemen and community workers took care of them.
Xu and Zhou ought to pay 430 yuan (about 62 U.S. dollars) for their accommodation and meals every day, however, the local government provided them a subsidy of 350 yuan, covering over 81 percent of the cost of living in the hotel. Meanwhile, workers also help them buy daily necessities, such as prescription medicine for the elderly and textbooks for the youth.
"We chatted a lot for relaxation in a group chat and talked about local delicacies in Chongqing, especially hotpot. Chongqing is famous for hotpot, and we wanted to try it," Xu said.
Wang Yafei, who was in charge of the site, promised people in the hotel the delicacy. Wang contacted the Chongqing Hotpot Association and told them of the special "mission."
"They brought us free hotpot and sent it to our rooms. Everybody was deeply touched," Xu said.
Xu asked a worker to buy pregnancy test strips for her as well.
"It was Valentine's Day, and Chongqing often has cloudy and rainy weather, but it was a sunny day. The test gave a positive result," Xu said.
"I feel more peaceful now and often talk to my baby. I was thinking that I will tell the baby about the unique experience that we had gone through after he or she grows up," Xu added.
Since the newlyweds ended the quarantine and cannot go back to Hubei, they volunteered to help others in the hotel. Putting on masks, protective clothing and goggles, the couple started to deliver meals to rooms of people under quarantine there on Feb. 15.
(By Xinhua writers Chen Guozhou and Xia Xiao)
