BOULDER — University of Colorado student Thomas Spradling was lounging in the lobby of his classy hotel in the center of Beijing on Monday — just two days into his Asian summer vacation — when men in white hazmat suits came for him and his mother.
The men spoke no English. Spradling and his mother spoke no Chinese, but the hotel manager tried to be reassuring, telling his guests that they would be taken to a four-star hotel where someone would surely speak English.
The pair was forced to put on masks, herded into the back of an ambulance and driven to a rundown hotel on the outskirts of Beijing. Spradling and his mother, Barbara, had sat within three rows of someone with swine-flu-like symptoms on their flight to Beijing. And those unfortunate seat assignments had just landed the pair in Chinese quarantine.
“We were pretty freaked out,” Spradling said today from Beijing, where he isn’t scheduled to be released from quarantine until Saturday. “The doctors in the hazmat suits had bags of medical supplies that looked like syringes. It was especially freaky because no one spoke English.”
Spradling and his mother were greeted at the end of their ambulance ride by a half-dozen doctors wearing surgical masks and lab coats, but none spoke English. In the days since, they’ve had their temperatures taken twice daily, but the only thing so far that’s made them feel ill is the food.
