BEIJING — As she approached the immigration counter at Beijing's international airport at 7 a.m. Sunday, bleary-eyed after flying all night from Bali, Lucia Rocio heard the agitated whispering of the Chinese officials.
Mexican passport. Mexican passport.
Rocio was pulled out of line and taken to a small room where she was given a mask and a thermometer, which she dared not put in her mouth because it appeared to be unsterilized. After some negotiations, Rocio, who lives in Beijing and speaks some Chinese, convinced the authorities that she was not ill and in fact hadn't been back to Mexico in three years.
"It was scary. It caused us all much stress," said Rocio, 40, who was traveling with her husband and two children, French citizens, who were not tested.
Despite the lack of a single confirmed case of swine flu in mainland China -- and just one in Hong Kong -- the country is experiencing an epidemic of panic.
Chastened by the 2003 crisis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, known as SARS, the Chinese are taking no chances. Authorities in China and Hong Kong have enacted strict, some say draconian, measures to isolate people who might have been exposed to swine flu since the first cases were reported in Mexico weeks ago.
Hundreds of people have been quarantined here, among them 70 Mexican citizens.
The Mexican government has offered to fly home free of charge all Mexican citizens living in China. The flight to Mexico City today is scheduled to make stops in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities to pick up passengers.
China also organized an airlift to bring its citizens home from Mexico, but the flight Monday was canceled without explanation.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon in a TV interview Sunday night took a thinly disguised shot at China -- without mentioning it by name -- noting that Mexico had been open in its handling of the flu outbreak, unlike nations that concealed information during previous health crises.
He urged the world to show respect for Mexicans and said discriminatory practices by some nations stemmed from "ignorance and misinformation."
But the quarantine appears to be popular with the Chinese public, with fresh memories of 2003 when they were singled out for quarantines.
"China learned its lessons from SARS. The government knows it has to do everything as early as possible to keep the disease out of China. Later, the costs could be enormous," said Peng Zongchao, an expert in crisis management at Qinghua University in Beijing.
