Current quarantine measures in China include placing arriving passengers who exhibit fever or [swine] flu-like symptoms into seven-day quarantine.
- The U.S. State Department's June 19 alert about travel to China.

Dan and Carmela Brown of Ann Arbor saw that alert but decided to push forward with their June 20 trip to Shanghai, China, anyway. What are the odds, they figured, that we'll be be quarantined in a country that accommodates millions of travelers every day?

The selection process [for H1N1 related quarantines] focuses on those sitting in close proximity to another traveler exhibiting fever or flu-like symptoms...In some instances, children have been separated from their parents because either the parent or the child tested positive for 2009-H1N1 and was placed in quarantine for treatment.

The Browns say they were excited to begin their travels after they landed until Chinese customs officials entered the plane and took everyone's temperature. A boy sitting near Dan was diagnosed with swine flu and sent to the hospital; the boy's mother had insisted he only had a head cold.

Because Dan was sitting nearby, he was quarantined, too.

Dan's wife, Carmela, and their daughter, Ellie, 12, weren't in the vicinity and could have continued their travels. But Dan was the only Brown who'd been to China, the only one who knew the terrain. The Browns quickly decided if anyone from the family would be quarantined for a week, they all would be quarantined for the week.

That's exactly what happened.

Although the proportion of arriving Americans being quarantined remains low, the random nature of the selection process increases the uncertainty surrounding travel to China.

For Dan, a professor with the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and the Environment whose work often takes him abroad, the trip to China was just one of many.

But for Carmela and Ellie, opportunities to travel to China don't come around often. 

"When you're traveling outside this country, you're a guest," Dan said. "You can't take things personally."

That doesn't mean it can't be hard. The week-long quarantine was enough to bring young Ellie to tears and Carmela to the brink. In their inaugural trip to China, Carmela and Ellie didn't even get to see the inside of the Shanghai Pudong International Airport before boarding a musty bus and being shuttled to the hotel where they'd spend the next week. 

The Browns say their quarantine would have been unbearable but for their connections to the outside world - a partial Internet connection that blocked Wikipedia, but allowed Internet phone provider Skype.

One fellow passenger, a native to Shanghai, was allowed to serve his quarantine at home. The man instructed his driver to leave a DVD player and dozens of family-friendly movies for the Browns at the hotel. Carmela rationed the DVD collection so it would last the full week.

The Browns consider themselves active travelers and succumbed to some cabin fever after spending a week holed up, unable to even go to the hotel's lobby without being shooed back to their rooms.

"By the time the quarantine was over," Carmela said, "I wanted to get right into a plane and head back home." 

Carmela credits Ellie's determination to see the sights as the main reason she didn't hop on the first plane headed back to Detroit.

Even after the family was released, the Browns couldn't escape the constant reminders of the experience.

Carmela admitted to feeling "anxious" when the family boarded planes or trains. "The hotel we stayed at in Beijing had [Chinese officials] standing in the lobby, taking temperatures as we came back," she recalled. The threat of being re-quarantined was never far removed.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states the incubation period for swine flu - the period between contracting and exhibiting symptoms - is unknown, but estimates it as anywhere between one and seven days.

So the fact that Dan didn't show symptoms of swine flu at the time of his quarantine was no assurance he wouldn't show symptoms later. By then, he'd be exposing others to it.

The U.S. Embassy will be unable to influence the duration of stay in quarantine for affected travelers.

The Browns' scheduled 10-day trip stretched to 14 days, and the Chinese government bore the cost of the quarantine. All told, Dan estimates the week-long detention only cost the family $85, for train tickets that conflicted with their detention.

Still, the experience made for a tough first impression for Carmela and Ellie. Carmela said she'd only consider returning to China when there are no active State Department travel alerts and no possibility of being detained without having broken a law.

As they were leaving the hotel at the end of the quarantine, the Browns were handed the guest book and asked to leave their impressions.

Carmela's entry: "Interesting week."

Photo: Dan and Carmela Brown and their daughter, Ellie, 12, are shown in front of their home in Ann Arbor. (Mark Bialek for AnnArbor.com)

James David Dickson reports on human interest stories for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at JamesDickson@annarbor.com, or (734) 623-2532.