Even more infectious than the SARS virus, is the Fear of SARS, reports Patrick Smyth on the tourist trail in China
Mr Liu got the call as we sat over noodles and black bean sauce in the small street restaurant just north of the Forbidden City. Our guide's wife had heard that a local hotel had six cases of SARS. And she was clearly most insistent. The Beijing rumour mill had finally got us in its grip on day three of our visit to the city. It would be masks from now on, and no question of visiting the crowded Pearl Market.
When we arrived in the city airport three days earlier, and two days after the WHO advisory recommended only "necessary travel", perhaps one in five was wearing a face mask. When we left the airport for Shanghai next day - now two weeks ago - some 90 per cent were wearing masks and, in the city, public venues were closing down.
Tourism in a time of SARS may seem perverse, but the long-anticipated stay with family in "unaffected" Shanghai had been prebooked, and we weighed the risks of the side trip to Beijing carefully, consulting friends, media and diplomatic contacts.
SARS is not the plague, nor the Ebola virus. Life can and must go on.
China today is battling two contagions. There is SARS, in the history of lethal germs to date a relatively minor, though mysterious killer. And then, because the Communist Party mishandled the outbreak so badly, there is also Fear of SARS (FOSARS). A combination of FOSARS and the message that has gone out now to party cadres that no one will be sacked for over-reacting to SARS is bringing a creeping paralysis to this giant country of 1.3 billion people.
Travelling over the last three weeks to six major eastern cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, we have watched the ripple effect spreading out from the capital to provinces largely untouched by the disease itself, but now in the grip of an eradication campaign, which carries a subliminal, over-the-top message to the citizenry: "be very, very afraid".
For the traveller, particularly the foreigner, that means a constant self-consciousness that every cough or sneeze may be misinterpreted. Wearing a mask feels like one is shouting "unclean". One young Irish woman on the train to Shanghai last week tells of a fellow passenger denouncing her to the conductor after an innocuous coughing fit. The row that ensued was only defused when she was able to get her Nanjing employer on the phone to reassure the guard.
And yet in visiting Beijing's hutongs , the tiny ramshackle houses in the narrow back alleys that still house millions, it is possible to see the terrifying potential of any disease spread through close human contact. These one- and two-room homes, clustered around minute common courtyards, still depend on the communal street "facilities". Only blocks away from the first-world luxury of towering modern offices and hotels, it is shocking to see people carrying their chamber pots down the street.
Ultra-modern, ultra-capitalist Shanghai prides itself on being more savvy than Beijing, and the fear that has stalked the capital will not take root here. Masks are common but not prevalent. But guests arriving in their hotels now face white-suited health workers who press a thermometer into their ear. And access to the city by air, rail or road, is now being monitored.
Last week, we spent pleasant nights at the theatre and acrobats, but by the next day friends looking for tickets were told they, too, had closed. Business people and diplomats report meetings cancelled, visits delayed. Government advice against unnecessary intercity travel on public transport meant our visits to Hangzhou and Nanjing would have to be by private bus.
The Chinese say that "in Heaven there is paradise, while on earth there is Suzhou and Hangzhou", and the latter is at its most glorious in the balmy spring weather. Walking in its spectacular gardens and along the tree-lined causeway that bisects the West Lake beloved of Chinese poets and writers, one is vividly aware, however, of a city drained of its domestic and international tourist lifeblood. There is an edge of desperation to the street traders' pleas, and no customers turn up at all for the pleasure boats.
The city's most famous restaurant, Lou Wei Lou, where reservations are usually a must, is barely a quarter full.
A frustrated and angry Rowena Hanlon, owner of the Shamrock bar, says the city of six million has been gripped by panic.
Even local trade has collapsed. Bars, restaurants and theatres have closed voluntarily, while teachers have been warned that if they leave the city they will face 20 days quarantine before they are allowed back to work.
"The staff are all drinking vinegar by the gallon, and eating garlic," she says. There's no persuading them that they might as well drink water.
A locally-based Irish businessman had just returned in frustration from a visit to a major supplier in Wu Xi. The 10,000-strong workforce had been confined to the factory site, and he was turned away at the gate on orders from the Communist Party.
Our hotel has its own "SARS prevention leading group", according to a note from the manager that promises "lotion will be sprayed to sterilise rooms five times every day".
Even the etiquette of eating has been affected. Instead of each diner picking food with personal chopsticks from communal dishes, we are told "public chopsticks and public spoons will be used in hotel restaurants".
The ripple effect goes on. Our host informed us sadly over lunch at our next stop, Shaoxing - the home of China's famous "yellow wine" - that, because of travel restrictions, fish was off the menu as the market has closed.
Here, too, the marble halls of a near-deserted hotel echoed eerily. In the empty bar after dinner, a lone German drunken businessman tried in vain to persuade the barmaid to go to bed with him. His pleas seemed to add to the gloom.
In Nanjing, the former capital - its province Jiangsu has yet to see a single SARS case - we were almost alone as we climbed the steps of the great Sun Yat Sen mausoleum. Usually some 40,000 visit here every day.
China is hurting. Now, as we prepare to return home, our own fates seem uncertain. A nephew, who has not even been in a WHO listed area, will not be allowed back to school in Ireland for 10 days.
And, although it will be a full two weeks since we were in Beijing, individual workplace rules - significantly more stringent than WHO guidelines - mean my wife faces a further enforced holiday, and I a mandatory medical examination.
Ireland seems to have caught FOSARS big time.