Returning to Hong Kong from Shenzhen, yoyowong usually takes only 15 minutes, "as simple as crossing a subway station." She is from Hong Kong and her husband is from the mainland, and the two have settled in Shenzhen. Yoyowong often travels back and forth to visit his parents.
I just didn't expect that the sudden new crown epidemic made the port suspend customs clearance for three whole years. For many families in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, the distance between this river is the saddest "pass" - there are children who have not returned home for three years, lovers who have not seen each other for three years, and cross-border students who have not seen their classmates for three years.
Before the outbreak, Yoyowong's son was born. In the past three years, she has brought her son back to Hong Kong once. More often than not, the child's impression of his grandparents is only in the video call, and he is unfamiliar with everything on the other side of the Shenzhen River, and he can't even speak Cantonese.
Finally, the Shenzhen and Hong Kong families are waiting for the day when the "barrier" disappears. At the end of last year, the mainland's epidemic prevention and control measures were optimized and adjusted; Immediately after that, starting from 8 January this year, Hong Kong and the mainland implemented the first phase of customs clearance; On 6 February, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong land port fully resumed normal personnel exchanges between the Mainland and Hong Kong.
"I didn't expect it to be able to pass in a few minutes, but this time it took three years." Crossing the Shenzhen River again and hugging his parents who he had not seen for a long time, the tears in Yoyowong's eyes swirled, and his parents hugged their grandson tightly and cried into tears. "That moment was really hard-won, and it was finally convenient to go back and forth."
Shenzhen-Hong Kong family
Yoyowong was born in Hong Kong and lives in the North District. As the northernmost area of Hong Kong's 18th district, the North District is home to Sheung Shui Shek Wu Market, one of the oldest markets in Hong Kong, with a variety of old shops that still stuck in the old days: herbal tea shops, barber shops, used book stalls, and snack restaurants.
As it is only one stop away from the Lo Wu Port, the North District has also become the "first stop" for mainland tourists entering Hong Kong. Before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the retail industry in Sheung Shui in the North District was booming, and grocery stores, drugstores, jewelry stores, etc. continued to "pop up", once flourishing in Mong Kok.
However, due to the active activity of "parallel cargo passengers", Sheung Shui is also regarded as a "parallel cargo center", and the pedestrian bridge deck connecting Sheung Watercolor Park Plaza and MTR Sheung Shui Station can often see people pulling goods by carts, the bridge deck is narrow, and pedestrians are often hit by boxes when encountering dense crowds.
Sheung Shui, a town that blends old and new, retains half of its Hong Kong flavor: small shop areas, huge signboards thrown out, and brightly colored facades of buildings; Half of it is deeply integrated with the mainland: the number of mainland tourists affects the rise and fall of economic activity here, with groups of cross-border students living in Shenzhen and attending school in Hong Kong, and many people speaking fluent Mandarin on the streets.
Yoyowong began to "return" from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in 2000, and she went to boarding schools in Shenzhen to attend elementary school, junior high school, high school and university, and studied for more than ten years. At that time, Shenzhen was not as prosperous as it is now, and it was still expanding its land area, she said with a smile: "Shenzhen watched me grow up, and I watched Shenzhen grow."
The number of families combining the mainland and Hong Kong is also slowly increasing. "People get along with each other, you don't have to look at the region." Yoyowong's husband is a native of Guangxi and lives in Shenzhen, she works in Hong Kong, commuting between Shenzhen and Hong Kong every day, and can pass the customs in as fast as 15 minutes, "even in Shenzhen, the commute time of ordinary office workers is tens of minutes or more than one hour." Sometimes when she was tired, she stayed at her parents' house in Hong Kong for one night, and then returned to Shenzhen the next day after work.
"Many people don't understand how to pass the border, don't understand life in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and think it's a difficult and tiring thing. In fact, it is not, it was originally very simple, but because the epidemic complicated it, in essence, the epidemic made life more complicated. Yoyowong said.
Surviving the "difficulty"
Yoyowong's son was born in July 2019, and after giving birth and taking maternity leave, she worked for a month or two, and the coronavirus outbreak hit in early 2020.
On February 3, 2020, the Hong Kong SAR Government announced that from 0:00 on February 4, except for the normal customs clearance at Shenzhen Bay and Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge ports, other land and railway ports adjacent to the mainland will be temporarily suspended.
At that time, Yoyowong heard that the people around her were saying that "SARS (SARS) is coming again" and "about to be 'closed'", she got off work, rushed to the store, stocked up on a lot of usual goods in just a few hours, and finally rushed before the "closure", there was no danger to pass the pass, her husband picked her up at the port, and returned home in Shenzhen with a large bag and a small bag.
Unexpectedly, one letter was far away, she could not go back to Hong Kong, the company leaders helped her keep her position for a year, without pay, and the MPF was also cut off. But a year later, she still didn't expect to clear the customs, and she had no choice but to resign.
After the birth of his son, he has been living in the mainland, unable to return to Hong Kong, and has not seen his relatives there. To relieve the pain of missing him, YoyoWONG video calls his parents almost every day to let them see his grandson who has learned to climb to learn to walk.
When his son was more than a year old, YoyoWONG wondered that just "meeting" across the screen was not the way, or let parents meet their children. Let the son feel that this family is not only parents, but also many relatives.
Her husband couldn't get away because of work, and in March 2021, she passed the customs alone with her children. I don't know where the strength came from, almost all over the body, carrying the child in front, dragging two boxes in his hands, and two bags hanging on the boxes, "Maybe this is the mother's rule."
At that time, the people around her were waiting for the new crown virus, and almost no one passed the border at the port, and she nervously carried her son to re-walk this way home, which required a complex inspection process, which took more time than before. Along the way, they all wore masks, repeatedly disinfected, and did not dare to relax for a moment.
Back at home at this end of Hong Kong, the tense nerves relaxed slightly. This is the longest time since she got married, and her parents finally see their grandson. I don't know when the next meeting will be, Yoyowong took his son to stay in Hong Kong for a month before returning to Shenzhen.
Due to the government's humanistic care regulations, she only needs to quarantine her young children in a hotel for 2 days and then at home for 12 days. Many people need to quarantine in hotels for 14 days because they do not have young children or do not have the conditions to isolate at home, which is a big expense.
Looking forward to coming to clear customs
After waiting for three years, I finally looked forward to the news of customs clearance - on January 8, Hong Kong and the mainland cleared customs for the first stage. On the same day, Yoyowong, her husband and son passed through the customs from Futian Port to Hong Kong, "There are many people at the port, and everyone is celebrating the arrival of this day."
At that time, customs clearance also required to present a 48-hour nucleic acid test report, and if you stayed in Hong Kong for more than 48 hours, you needed to take a nucleic acid test in the community before returning to the mainland, and each person tested 150 Hong Kong dollars per test. Compared to before, the process has been simplified a lot and there is no need for isolation.
His son is more than three years old, and the coronavirus pandemic has occupied most of his life. When Yoyowong told her son that he was going to play at her grandparents' house, his son's reaction surprised her and he said a non-standard Cantonese, "Okay, go to Hong Kong, I'm from Hong Kong."
The son was born in Hong Kong and naturalized with his mother. But she and her husband had never talked to their son about the subject, and she was surprised to find that his son had a preliminary understanding of identity.
On January 8, Yoyowong and her husband returned to Hong Kong with their son to visit relatives. Images in this article were provided by interviewees
When I arrived in Hong Kong, everything seemed so new and interesting, with double-decker buses with eye-catching colors, retro red, green and blue taxis, and street food everywhere, and my son was so excited that he thought of returning home as a tour.
The "trauma" of the epidemic on Hong Kong still leaves traces. Many stores in Shangshui in the North District closed their doors, and compared with the crowded situation before the epidemic, the streets seemed a little deserted. "It may take a time buffer," Yoyowong knows, and the excitement that belongs here will return.
On January 17, Yoyowong returned to Hong Kong after cleaning his home in Shenzhen. She made up her mind to accompany her parents to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong this year. My son celebrated the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong for the first time, met relatives he had never met, made new friends, watched the lantern show of the garden party, and ate a lot of Hong Kong-style snacks.
Yoyowong and her husband took their son to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.
On the third day of the Lunar New Year, Yoyowong and her husband temporarily decided to return from Hong Kong to Guangxi to visit relatives, so that the elderly in both places could meet their children and celebrate a reunion year. After the optimization and adjustment of epidemic prevention and control measures in the mainland, many townships have passed the peak period of infection visits before the Spring Festival, and the epidemic has not rebounded significantly during the Spring Festival holiday.
A family of three traveled between Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Guangxi, and after a busy Spring Festival, the families who were once temporarily interrupted due to the epidemic were like "islands", but now they are reconnected. YoyoWONG hopes that home can give everyone warmth, and it is enough for the family to be happy and happy.
Study across borders
On February 6, the mainland and Hong Kong fully cleared customs, and the daily quota and pre-travel nucleic acid testing requirements were abolished. Before they could wait for full customs clearance, the Yoyowong family returned to Hong Kong on January 28. The kindergarten that the children attend in Hong Kong starts on January 30, and they come early to adjust to the start of school.
Before customs clearance, cross-border students face difficulties in attending classes. Kindergarten enrollment in Hong Kong requires a year early to sign up for the queue, and as early as 2021, YoyoWONG helped his son sign up. But until school started last year, the children still could not go back to Hong Kong.
It happened that a new public kindergarten had opened near their home in Shenzhen, and Yoyowong assessed that the comprehensive conditions were more suitable, so he let his son take classes offline in Shenzhen first.
Hong Kong and Macao students can attend public kindergartens in Shenzhen, which also stems from the implementation of a policy: in 2017, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Education issued an annual school enrollment notice, and the city's compulsory education enrollment policy was updated and adjusted, and Hong Kong and Macao students can enter public schools in Shenzhen according to the point system like non-Shenzhen household registration students.
Yoyowong explained that the admission points of kindergarten enrollment depend on the individual's household registration type, housing type, etc., "Since the nearby public kindergarten was newly established and enrolled according to ranking, my son is lucky to be a part." ”
In order to keep up with the teaching progress of Hong Kong kindergarten, every afternoon after the son returns home from the kindergarten in Shenzhen, he will continue to attend the online classes of the Hong Kong kindergarten, the teacher will assign homework, parents will print it out for the child to do, and then take photos and upload.
In the kindergarten in Shenzhen, the teacher communicates with the child in Mandarin, and when she returns home, her son only speaks Mandarin to her. For Cantonese, he understands but does not like to speak it. Yoyowong worries that when his son returns to Hong Kong, he will feel special if no one around him speaks Mandarin.
After his son took online classes for a semester, Shenzhen and Hong Kong finally ushered in customs clearance. Returning from online to offline classes, Yoyowong is even more nervous than her son, and even can't sleep well the night before school starts, she is afraid that his son will not be able to adapt to the new environment. Early that morning, she and her husband took their son to kindergarten to watch his every move. The kindergarten specially arranged a Mandarin teacher to dock, and the son heard the familiar language, felt safe, and greeted the teacher excitedly. Her hanging heart finally relaxed, "It turns out that children are not as fragile as adults imagine."
Yoyowong noticed that the Hong Kong and Shenzhen kindergartens that his son studied had subtle differences in teaching modes: Shenzhen kindergartens did not encourage children to learn too much in the preschool education stage, and teachers would post in the WeChat group every week what the children did this week, usually singing children's songs, outdoor activities, etc., focusing on play; In Hong Kong, the pace of teaching is a little faster, schools are issuing literacy manuals, and English has already been learned.
Considering that her children are still young, she accompanies her in Hong Kong, staying at her parents' house from Monday to Thursday, returning to Shenzhen to meet her husband on Friday, and returning to Hong Kong next Monday. She thinks that after her children accept life in Hong Kong, they will shorten the time between them and travel back and forth between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in two or three days.
Until her son was fully adapted, she began to let go, sending her son to the gate every day, letting him line up with his schoolbag with other cross-border students under the supervision of the staff, pass through the special passage, and then take the school bus to and fro.
Yoyowong and her husband send their son to school
Seeing children rushing on the road, Yoyowong sometimes thinks: In the future, it would be better if the clearance procedures for cross-border students could be simplified, for example, after unified registration, children can pass customs directly on the school bus without getting off the bus.
Is it worth it to study across borders? Yoyowong said that allowing children to study across borders is not to pursue a better education, but to hope that he will not lose some basic skills, "He may often live and even work in Hong Kong in the future, learn to read traditional characters, know how to speak Cantonese, is our tradition, to pass on." ”
When the child reaches high school, he can choose whether to continue his education in Hong Kong, the mainland or elsewhere if he wishes. "Whichever path the child chooses, we will respect and accept it." Yoyowong thought so.