Run run run run... To run away from you... Run run run run...

Continued from the last post here.

So I arrived very relaxed at the Victorian era Astor Hotel in Tianjin around 7pm for what I was hoping would be a quiet weekend to get used to seeing normal people up close without face masks agains, and to get to experience crowded streets and shops without keeping distances for fear of covid-19.

But there seemed to be a problem with my quarantine exit certificate. The hotel staff pointed to me that my certificate stated that I had just finished my 14 days of quarantine but also that I was invited to go home and stay there without coming out for another seven days! Having connected to the hotel free wifi, I could now register into the Tianjin healt kit app which gives green or red QR codes according to one's health status. Mine was green: I should normally be able to roam free around town. I also tried to point out that I had no home in China and that I did not know anybody in Tianjin. The hotel staff would not check me in. They called the booking agent who called me to say that the situation had changed since I had made the booking two weeks before and that they would cancel the hotel reservation with no penalty. However, I now knew for certain that no other Tianjin hotel would check me in for the weekend. I had to leave Tianjin.

Indeed, what had happened while I was obliviously confined in my quarantine room was the discovery of 4 covid-19 cases in Tianjin three days before I came out of my safe bubble. The situation in Tianjin had changed dramatically with everybody wearing face masks and travel restrictions for people entering and leaving the municipality. I signalled my predicament to my embassy colleagues in Beijing by instant messaging on WeChat. They immediately set into action to talk to the local Tianjin government and ask them to allow me to stay thanks to my diplomatic status. The reply was straightforwardly undiplomatic: the French government should make all efforts to get me out of Tianjin as quickly as possible. I had to leave Tianjin. 

My embassy colleagues told me to go to the train station, catch a fast train to Beijing and try to get a room at the hotel I had planned to check into after the weekend. I sent an Airbnb message to my Beijing host but there was no instant reply. Checking out the Airbnb website, I could see they had no room available for the night. So I asked my embassy colleagues to find a room for me in a Beijing hotel that would accept guests just coming out of quarantine with an official certificate stating they had to quarantine for seven more days at home. Luckily, they already had to deal with a similar case and immediately booked nights for the weekend at the Kempinski Hotel close to the embassy. I was to send an update when at the train station.

So I took a taxi with my two enormous and heavy suitcases for the train station. Dropped off in the underground car park of the station, I found my way to the front door using several escalators. There was a queue of people in front of the train station, all fidgeting with their mobile phones. Guards wanted to the see the Tianjin health code status of all people entering the station. There was no free wifi network around so I switched on my data roaming and managed to download a green health status QR code and got into the train station with my two enormous and heavey suitcases. The result was that my French phone operator texted me indicating that I had used up all my prepaid talk time with that one quick data sharing.

I then had to pass through my luggage and myself through X-ray scans. I found the ticket booth and purchased a ticket for Beijing using cash after one unsuccessful try using my French credit card. My train would leave in 40 minutes. I managed to pass a second security check and moved up a floor to the departure hall. By that time, it was already 9.10pm and I had last eaten lunch at 11.30am. I found a small shop selling Chinese fast food and gulped a hot bowl of beef noodle soup in just 10 minutes, thinking to myself that my original plan had been a leisurely Western dinner with meat roast and potatoes doused in gravy, a glass of imported red wine...

I then proceded up another flight of escalators to the main departure hall. It was huge and very crowded. My train platform was at the other end so I had to zig-zag between people and suitcases to reach my platform. Being a foreigner, I could not check myself in using the automatic check-in doors but had to show my ticket and passport to an attendant. She was busy explaining to another harried traveller that he could not get in. All the while, I was waiting to proceed while my departure time was approaching and I didn't know how far still I had to pull and push my two enormous and heavy suitcases before finding the door to my train coach. Luckily, finding my train seat was very easy once I cleared this third security check.

But I still had not managed to send my update to Beijing colleagues who were probably getting worried by now. Once in the train, I managed to get onto the free wifi network. I could then communicate with my Beijing colleagues to confirm I was on the train and give them the expected arrival time. One of them confirmed that my room at the Kempinski was booked and that he would be waiting for me in the hotel lobby. I should take a taxi from the Beijing train station and make sure I had a green health status on the Beijing health kit app. I tried accessing the Beijing health kit app but the system would always tell me there were too many people trying to access the app and that I should try again later. 

I decided to wait a while. The fast train to Beijing is very fast. I had hardly found the time to relieve myself in the toilet, have a sip of water and rest for five minutes than the conductor announced that we would shortly be arriving in Beijing South station. Even the train ride had been stressful and I still had no green QR code to enter Beijing.

Luckily, there were no health safety checks when leaving the train station. After queuing in a very long line with other travellers, I boarded my taxi which wheezed me to the hotel. I only had the time to top up my prepaid mobile phone and decided I would stop stressing with technology and have the hotel staff help me to get the right QR code.

Indeed, the porter was reassuringly proficient with both English and WeChat, even though I was using the French language version. He deleted the Beijing health kit app that wasn't working, downloaded a new version and helped me get the text message code that would allow me to unlock my WeChat app, and then take a digital picture of my passport with my mobile phone finally to get the indispensable Beijing health kit green QR code that would allow me into the hotel. 

My embassy colleague found me; I checked into my room. By the time I had calmed down, showered and enjoyed a cup of hot peppermint tea, I went to bed close to 1am. 

From cloistered autarcy to 24/7-expected hyperconnectivity and Big Brother supervision in just a few hours... Welcome to modern China!

Thorn in my side

Eurythmics, Revenge, RCA

Get them while they're hot - buns buns buns

I have just come out of 14 days' quarantine after having managed to get onto one of the last flights from France into China!

To protect the covid-free health status of the capital city, international flights bound for Beijing all land in Tianjin, around 110 km farther away to the East. And all travellers have to go through 14 days of quarantine in a hotel room assigned by the local government. We do not get to choose the hotel, nor the room, nor the view, nor the food. And of course, we are not allowed out of our bedroom and there is no room service.

I think I can consider myself lucky to have had pretty good quarantine conditions at the Society Hill Hotel. My hotel room was suitably spacious at around 25m²; it was comfortable; I had a view on the sister conference hotel across the avenue, a large wooded park and the high speed railway with trains zooming past every 15 minutes.

The room was equiped with essentials to last the 14 days alone: soap, shampoo, conditioner, toilet paper, tea bags, kettle, 8 litres of drinking water, a bar of soap to wash clothes, broom and dustpan, even a mop and bucket. I was lucky to be alone in a twin-bed room. I was therefore able to switch beds and towels half way through the quarantine.

The Internet connection was rather patchy but good enough to be able to telework on my new job. I am now one of the three counselors for agricultural affairs at the French embassy in Beijing, to cover China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mongolia. It is likely that I will not be able to blog about my work because of its classified nature. However, I will keep posting blogs on my travels, musical and culinary adventures.

So back to my quarantine: the few people I crossed during 14 days starting from the airplane door until I got out of quarantine were all clad in full protective equipment, masks, goggles and extra transparent face screen. Outside in the streets, people were strolling together unmasked, at least during the first week. The feeling was quite surreal.

 Thanks to my teleworking during the day, I did not get bored. I had a Kindle stocked full of books for the evening and the weekends and could also download and listen to radio podcasts. The past 14 days have been like a restful moment to get over jet lag, observe the people on the streets outside, listen carefully and intently to the radio broadcast.  

My food was served at set hours: 7.30am breakfast, 11.30am lunch and 5.30pm dinner. Somebody would deposit my food box on the console outside my bedroom and knock on the door. When I opened the door, the long corridor was already empty...

The food was of good quality and varied. Always Chinese food; there were no other options. Other quarantined guests were complaining bitterly on the chat group we were all on, or requesting exotic items like lemon or even croissants. I was quite content with the food served. We had our five fruits or - especially - vegetables per day, some meat or fish, rice or dumplings, soup or porridge. After insisting over two days, I was given a large box of chili preserve to spice up the food.

The only meal that was rather boring was breakfast. It invariably consisted of millet or rice porridge, some kind of raw vegetable salad, preserved turnip or carrot, slices of ham, a hard-boiled egg, and buns. The only variety came with: 

1) the vegetables, which changed every day;

2) the preserved turnip, which was either just salted or spiced;

3) the buns.

I was actually quite surprised by the variety of colour and form of the buns that appeared each morning in my breakfast box: steamed buns coming in all sorts of colourful patterns and shapes, oven-baked buns, plain or filled with red bean, coconut or other sweet paste.  

On the morning of day 13, when I opened the breakfast tray to find a pack of warm sterilised milk, 4 slices of very plain white bread, a cold fried egg, two slices of ham, a bunch of sliced iceberg lettuce and a tablespoon of mayonnaise, I even came to regret the Chinese breafast.

My quarantine ended on a high note of beautiful sunny weather and the expected thrill of visiting the old city centre of Tianjin where I had booked a colonial style bedroom at the upmarket Astor Hotel, to celebrate my renewed freedom with style.

The taxi ride from the quarantine hotel to the city centre was slow through the evening traffic jam. I was definitely very relaxed upon arriving at the Astor. And that is when the reality of modern China suddenly struck me a very hard blow.

To be continued... here.

Hot cross buns, hot cross buns

Traditional nursery rhyme, The tick tock boys, The children's favourites collection - the teddy bear's picnic and many others