SAIS students leave China to escape SARS

With classes ending early due to fears of SARS, American co-Director Robert Daly found the cloud's sliver lining two days before students left John Hopkins University's Nanjing Center.

"As our students prepared to leave the Center at the end of their shortened semester, they gave their unused foodstuffs to us. It turned out that they had been hording dark chocolate, imported coffee, American breakfast cereal (at $7 a box, it's a delicacy in Nanjing), cookies and Nutella spread," Daly wrote in the Hopkins-Nanjing Center's weekly report.

After an early graduation, the last students left the center Tuesday.

Nanjing lies halfway between Beijing and the southern provinces, two areas in China that have been the most heavily hit by the virus.

However, mounting concern was affecting students' studies.

"Students had more trouble concentrating on their studies after rumors spread about a possible early departure," Rob Anderson, a student at the center, said by e-mail.

Anderson spent three years in China, the last of which was at the center.

"This will probably be my last time in China for a long while," said Anderson, who will be attending law school at Harvard this fall.

Students and their parents have been understanding, Dan Wright, the Nanjing center's director in Washington, said.

"Some think we ended the semester a little late, and a roughly equal number think we are overreacting and shouldn't curtail at all, but most Center residents understand the decision and have accepted the inconvenience of early withdrawal," Wright wrote in a document provided by the Center.

Students returning home are already facing difficulties, Daly said.

"The three-hour bus ride to Shanghai now takes seven hours due to SARS check-points. Students traveling to Taiwan face a 10-day quarantine. All travelers face temperature-taking and other procedures at the Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai airports. Chinese students returning to their home campuses also face 10-day quarantines," he wrote.

A cooperative between JHU's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Nanjing University, the Hopkins-Nanjing center had about 50 Chinese and 50 international students this year. Forty were American.