This story is part of a special series taking a look at people caught up in the biggest events of 2020.

Ask Matt Raw what the most interesting thing to happen to him this year was and escaping the epicentre of a global pandemic on one of the last flights out is unlikely to feature very highly. 

’I find it rather amusing that people are still so interested in what happened,’ he said. 

‘On the face of it, it’s a story about a man who flew half way around the world, stayed inside for two weeks, didn’t get sick and then got on with his life. It’s not that exciting.’

The former Wuhan resident had been on holiday to Xianng – a town famous for its hot springs – when he first started hearing about a mystery new virus. 

It was almost exactly a year to the day that Matt, 39, had moved to the Chinese city with mum Hazel, 76, and wife Ying, 38.

‘A couple of days after we got home, the Government started telling us we should stay indoors,’ he said. ‘After that, each day it seemed like there were more and more restrictions put in place, to the point that the airport was closed and we weren’t allowed to leave the city. 

‘One day we weren’t allowed to leave our home and only one person was allowed to go to the shop. The next day, we were restricted to staying within our gated community. They were so so quick to implement restrictions.’

Despite the precariousness of the situation, Matt, originally from Cheshire, hadn’t really considered leaving his adoptive home until the UK Government started actively telling them to leave. 

‘It’s very rare for your Government to tell you to “get out if you can”’, he said. ‘They don’t do that unless they know something serious is happening. 

‘We’d put up our house in England for sale, we were close to completing and if that had happened then we would have stayed in Wuhan. It was only because we had the house here that we thought we would come back. 

‘You have to trust the Government when it comes to healthcare. When they start saying “get out, get out”, they have to know something that you don’t. That was the driving force behind us leaving.’

But getting out of a city that has locked down and closed all the airports is about as hard as it sounds. 

Matt, a foreign currency trader, was eventually offered a seat on a plane back to the UK but was told Ying couldn’t come, so the family decided to stay. 

They went to bed on January 31 believing they would be in China long term. Matt had decided to volunteer on one of the giant hospital projects that were going up (his wife jokes it would have taken them six years, not six days if he’d been involved). 

Then at 4.30am, they got a call from the Foreign Office saying Ying could come too. 

‘We were given ten minutes to decide but he called back two minutes later and said we had to decide now so we decided to go,’ Matt remembers.

The family lived on the other side of the city from the airport and it was an hour and a half’s drive away. They threw clothes in a suitcase and Matt packed wire strippers and an electric screwdriver – thinking if they were to end up in a tent on Salisbury Plain, he could at least make it habitable. 

The trio drove through the night, passing various government road blocks before arriving at the airport where they abandoned their new car and prepared to get on the plane. 

Matt says his last action in Wuhan was to buy beer from a shop at the airport. It was the only one open and a woman stood at the door with one light on. He ‘emptied her fridge’ – something he was all the more grateful for when the only refreshment they got on the plane was the ‘worst curry’ he’d ever eaten. 

The plane landed at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire in the full glare of the media spotlight and the evacuees were taken to Arrow Park in the Wirral to spend two weeks in quarantine. 

As the buses rolled out of the base, the country watched the newcomers’ return with a sense of trepidation and fear. Matt was sat a few rows back from the driver, looking out at the photographers jostling for the best angle. 

Once at Arrow Park, he became the group’s unofficial media spokesman and bounced from interview to interview, sharing his experiences.

The group were staying in the halls of residence for trainee doctors and nurses. They were able to make requests for every day items like food and drinks and staff would bring them anything suitable to make life as comfortable as possible.

Doctors moved in alongside them and worked 100-hour weeks to keep checking they were all ok. Not a single person on Matt’s plane tested positive for the virus and he says he can’t fault the response of the authorities. 

But when they were discharged Matt says the family felt like it was going ‘out of the pot and into the fire.’ Having left a country that had got its firm grip on the virus, he’d entered one in a state of panic and disorder. 

Looking back, he wonders if he’d have been better off staying in Wuhan – a city that has now returned to relative normality as the UK battles Covid for the tenth straight month. 

‘Do I regret it? I think I do but we have made the decision and we live with it’, he said. ‘China has gone back to normal. We would have been uncomfortable there for a few months but we would have been ok thereafter. People ask if I wished we stayed and I have to say I do.’

Hazel’s worsening dementia means the family are confined to England for now. They catch up with friends over WhatsApp and hope to be able to go back to visit China as soon as things calm down. 

Coming out of Arrow Park, Matt says he did get recognised for a while. He’d be in PC World and people would come up to him but that gradually faded and now he’s enjoying the obscurity again. 

Most people don’t know the story and he says when it does come up, the most common response he gets is still ‘where’s Wuhan?’ 

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article