The plane, departing from central Vietnam's Da Nang, stopping over at Hanoi and arriving at the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, was one of the three special planes arranged to bring stranded Chinese residents back home with joint efforts of the two countries.
"We are really grateful that we have the tickets to go back home!" said Chi, whose husband works in Hanoi. She and her son came to Hanoi in January for a family reunion but were stranded by a suspension of flights that started on Feb. 1 in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China.
The other two of the three planes flew from Vietnam's southern Ho Chi Minh City and the central city of Nha Trang to Guangzhou and southwest China's Chengdu, taking about 400 stranded Chinese travelers like Chi back to their homeland.
"The difficulties facing Chinese citizens overseas are of great concern to the party and the Chinese government, and also a priority to the Chinese Embassy," said Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Xiong Bo, who went to the airport to see off the Chinese passengers.
China has made various efforts and coordinated with Vietnam to bring its citizens back home. With assistance from the Chinese Embassy in Vietnam, 131 residents from Hubei Province, the center of the virus outbreak, took a plane back home on Feb. 3, and a number of other Chinese travelers went back to China through land ports.
All the three flights were run by Vietnam Airlines, whose another plane on Feb. 9 carried donations of medical supplies worth nearly 520,000 U.S. dollars and 11 Chinese citizens from Hanoi to Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei.
"We empathize with the difficulties that the Chinese people, especially Wuhan people, are going through, and believe that China will win the fight against the epidemic," said Nguyen Manh Hung, a representative of Vietnam Airlines.
On Feb. 8, Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade also donated medical supplies worth 600 million Vietnam dong (about 25,845 dollars) to help China fight the epidemic.
As the rotating chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 2020, Vietnam has released a chairman's statement on ASEAN's collective response to the epidemic, expressing ASEAN's "heartfelt support" for China, as well as for all countries around the world in their "tremendous endeavors" to address the epidemic.