From college students to soccer teams: Chinese trapped abroad by Covid-19

Losing the quarterfinal match to Ulsan Hyundai FC on Dec. 10, 2020, the last Chinese soccer team Beijing Guoan FC finished its journey at the 2020 AFC Champions League. However, the team was unable to fly home due to China’s travel restriction.

Players of four Chinese soccer teams are stranded at a hotel in Doha, Qatar. | Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Also being trapped in Doha, Qatar are players of another three Chinese teams, Guangzhou Evergrande, Shanghai Shenhua, and Shanghai SIPG, who have been staying at the same Doha hotel.

Players feel homesick and desperate to return to home after being stuck in Qatar for weeks. According to the report from South China Morning Post, Players were “exhausted physically and mentally” having already spent several months separated from family during the domestic season. For example, Guangzhou Evergrande’s Midfielder Yan Dinghao wrote on the Twitter-like Weibo that he was on “the edge of collapse, really homesick”.

Soccer players are not alone. Amid a global pandemic and travel restrictions, hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese are unable to return home. International students stranded abroad are more vulnerable than professional soccer players, as the young students are frustrated by lack of financial and organizational support.

Jiaxuan Ji, a student from China who’s studying at Mount Holyoke College in…