One Friday in mid-May, Times gig over, I decided to rebel against the consensus of atypicality that had us all but locked in Beijing. At the urging of a Shanghai-based Duke classmate about to make his SARS-motivated departure, I caught a cab for the airport with my laptop and a toothbrush. I cleared medical security, which consisted of three infrared temperature-taking checkpoints and two forms listing my name and address. I bought a discounted ticket to Shanghai and hopped on an Air China 737—all in blatant disregard of the folk wisdom that I would be quarantined for fourteen days upon arrival. The departure gates at Beijing Capital Airport were as empty as everyone had said they would be: Rows of pink upholstery sat unoccupied and the lone, state-run cafeteria had just one customer. My cell phone was out of minutes, and the pinstriped vendors of refill cards were gone, their blue pressboard counters tucked into alcoves among the newsstands and gift shops.

Onboard I sank, unmasked, into the back issues of The New Yorker and Shucheng (its Mandarin imitator) that are my standard Chinese reading fare. A team of flight attendants in silk scarves and facemasks came by just before descent, asking apologetically to stick a thermometer in my ear. Slightly skeptical of sanitation standards, I asked if the ear-touching attachment was disposable. They replied that only the cellophane coating was and met my skepticism by adding a second layer before measuring my body temperature. As they retreated down the aisle, I heard one chuckle to the other: “We wrapped it twice and look how low it came out—just 34 degrees centigrade!” They scribbled down my 93.2-degree temperature; I deplaned and spent a weekend, fei-feidian, in Shanghai.

Philip Tinari ’01

A wonder of the SARS scare was that Shanghai, with its close ties to Hong Kong and Beijing, reported only a few dozen cases. Officials trumpeted the city’s ironclad disinfection regimen. The mood there was a happy counterpoint to the desolation of the capital. Yuppies crowded mega-malls and ate Sichuan hot-pot in droves. The sun shone over traffic snarls, and neon gave light to hordes of midnight bar-goers. SARS was bad, but it would be over. This society, though fundamentally shaken, was not fundamentally altered. And regardless, despite two years of study and work in its midst, it was not mine. A few weeks would go by, and things would be largely back to normal. Another few weeks would go by, and I would get on a plane and go home, for good.

Tinari ’01, a former Duke Magazine intern who is just back from two years living and working in Beijing, is a graduate student in East Asian studies at Harvard University.