Canadian man publishes book on COVID-19 experience in Chongqing

The launch of Kai's Diary, a book about a Canadian's COVID-19 experience in Southwest China's Chongqing, is held at Zhongshuge Bookstore, Chongqing, on Dec 27, 2020. [Photo by Wang Yiling/for chinadaily.com.cn]

On Sunday, a book telling the stories of a Canadian's COVID-19 days in Southwest China's Chongqing was launched.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Canadian writer and teacher Jorah Kai Wood had been keeping notes – journals of his 60 days of quarantine in Chongqing, where he has lived since 2014.

Wood works as a teacher at Chongqing Foreign Language School. He married a Chongqing woman, Wang Xiaolin, in 2016.

He spent about 10 hours a day learning about the virus and making journal entries at night. The diary about his daily life in quarantine has been published on several social media platforms, where it attracted a lot of interest abroad.

Impressed by the strong requirements the local government imposed to control the epidemic - face masks, social distancing, blocking vehicles coming from the east and mandatory 14 day quarantines for all new arrivals - he passed the information to his family and friends in Canada, which helped them prepare for the day the pandemic jumped global borders.