16 March, 2020.
New regulations regarding foreign arrivals have just gone into effect, and so it is somewhat chaotic at Beijing Capital Airport. We land at around 1:30 pm, and sit on the tarmac for 30, maybe 40 minutes, before being let off the plane in rows of three. We are to undergo an initial temperature test in the aerobridge, and the ground staff are trying to avoid creating a bottleneck. This isn’t the first such test, mind you, the cabin crew have taken our temperatures three times during the flight from London, already.
Of course, we have all flown masked, and quite a few of the other passengers are more comprehensively kitted out. Many are wearing rubber gloves, and a number are also in goggles and disposable protective overalls. A few even wear see-through hoods over their masks.
The airport has been temporarily rearranged to funnel arriving passengers through a corridor of orange-clad hoardings. We trek past health advisory notices and bottles of hand sanitizer conveniently located on desks along the way, passing airport staff or medical teams, it’s hard to tell who is what, as everyone is masked and wearing white protective coveralls and goggles, and have plastic bags taped around their shoes.
My temperature is taken again and I hand in my health declaration, filled out on the flight. We pass a bank of devices that I suppose must be temperature detectors, manned by a white-suited trio with full-on gas masks and clipboards. It could almost be a scene out of 28 Days Later, or The Andromeda Strain.
Following a winding route up and down a couple of escalators to get to Immigration, we’re divided into two groups - those that have baggage, those that don’t. I’m a bit surprised but later, I discover the logic.
I have bags, so I join that queue. When I get to the counter, I’m told I need an Arrival form. That’s obvious enough, but I seem to have missed them on the way. The female guard says something to me in Mandarin and waves vaguely towards the other side of the room. I don’t understand more than a handful of phrases yet - learning to speak properly is one of my side goals in coming here - and I can’t see where she means for me to go, but she looks so hot and tired behind her goggles that I don’t ask again. Luckily, another passenger steps in and translates.
I return with the card. There are constant announcements, but they are all in Chinese, so I only understand the ‘xie xies’ and a few numbers. I get to the counter, take off my mask for the photo and wait while the officer fiddles with my passport. It takes a while and he asks me a few questions. I strain to hear. He’s masked, behind a glass screen, speaking into a crackling microphone, and my ear hasn’t yet accustomed to the cadence of Chinese English, so we need a few tries to understand each other. Thankfully, he’s calm, polite and helpful. There’s no screaming at hapless passengers who obviously can’t understand, something quite a few Homeland Security officers I’ve had the displeasure of encountering over the years would do well to emulate.
Then, it’s another, long, circuitous route up escalators, along corridors, down escalators, and around corners, following signs that often point in opposite directions, to reach Baggage Claim. We pass the hand luggage scanner on the way. The woman at the machine waves me through with a smile. Well, I think she’s smiling. Her eyes crinkle, but of course, I can’t tell because of her mask and hooded suit. How easily and quickly our world is dehumanised. I offer her my first ‘xie xie ni’.
The signs lead me to a scrum of people. They’re waiting to descend yet another escalator to an area that has been repurposed for baggage claim, but the way forward is roped off, guarded by a poor, harried China Air representative, suited and booted like everyone else. Here, traces of irritation erupt, as passengers start clamouring to be let through. Slight but fierce, the Rep holds them back. I discover from another helpful traveller who translates for me, that we are going to be called plane by plane, to claim our bags. There are a lot of planes to be called.
“Find somewhere and sit,” she advises me, “it will be a long time.”
Her friend who landed yesterday apparently waited 5 hours for her bag.
It’s now just after 3:15. My stomach rumbles ominously. The Air China meal was basic and none of the kiosks in the airport are open, and I don’t have coins for the vending machines. I’m beginning to regret not packing a meal.
Repeated messages over the tannoy helpfully remind us that we must all wear masks, and stand a metre apart, but good luck doing that in the baggage claim scrum. I hold my ground for the next hour and half, as there are no empty seats anyway, and I worry that I might miss the announcement for my flight - gio san ba in Mandarin - but by 4:30, I’m tired of standing, and go off in search of a seat.
I’d had to queue for two and a half hours at Heathrow to check in - the ticketing system in T3 was seized up, and so it had been chaos there, too – so I decide that however much longer I have to wait today, I’ll do it as comfortably as possible. I fish a chocolate bar out of my bag and lifting my mask, I nibble. I’m briefly reminded of women in the Gulf lifting their niqabs to do much the same.
Victory finally comes at quarter to six and we are allowed into what turns out to be a transit lounge, where our luggage has been laid out. I pick mine up and then one of the overall-clad helpers points me towards another queue. We are to wait for a bus, which will take us to Beijing Expo, where we will be screened and, should we pass, be assigned hotels. Existing hotel reservations are no longer valid, as under the new regulations, only designated hotels are permitted to host arriving passengers during the mandatory 14-day quarantine we must all undergo.
When we do eventually drive off, it is painfully slowly. It’s almost 6:30 and I’m desperate to leave the confines of Beijing Capital Airport behind. Plus, the facemask is beginning to feel suffocating. I miss the feeling of fresh air on my face.
We exit via a security gate and outside, a police car, lights flashing, awaits. It will be our escort to the Expo. At another time, you’d be forgiven for thinking our bus contained an important international delegation, or a bunch of notorious criminals. Not that the one necessarily cancels out the other.
We drive slowly, oh so very slowly, through the deserted streets. As a final goodbye, our bus is sprayed with disinfectant before we leave the airport grounds. It is now 18:34 and I am officially starving.
There isn’t much to see out of the windows. It’s quite dark and the trees are still bare, though as we landed, I did notice that some were covered in the first delicate flush of spring buds. But all I can see now is a wintery landscape of leafless trees, large buildings lining even larger boulevards, and the occasional bright flash of passing trains from the elevated subway tracks overhead. No one is talking but after the incessant announcements at the airport, the silence is welcome.
There is a small gobbet of mucus on the window ledge just in front of to me. Someone has sneezed and it has been missed in the clean-up. I noticed at the airport that every surface was constantly being disinfected and on the plane, the woman next to me, who was completely enshrouded in protective gear, wiped the armrests with alcohol rub before sitting down. Now, we’re sat in a bus without ventilation, slowly heating the interior with our bodies and (masked) exhalations. Could there be a more ideal environment for a virus to spread? I begin to appreciate why some people are wearing gloves. The driver is safe, as he’s been screened off behind a plastic sheet.
There are few cars, and even fewer people on Beijing’s streets tonight, though I do spot one man queuing for food at what looks like a roast chicken takeaway. I’m mostly vegetarian (with occasional lapses) but my stomach rumbles ominously in response.
The only reason I know that this bus is taking me to Beijing Expo to be sorted, and not off to somewhere else, is thanks to a steady stream of updates from the HR people at CGTN, the company I’ve come here to work for. Without them, I would have little idea what's happening, as I don’t yet speak enough Mandarin, and no one really speaks enough English. Consequently, one of the more common sights at Beijing Capital is of bewildered foreigners wandering around looking lost. And dazed. Thankfully, all the ground staff are as helpful as they can be, under what must be extremely trying circumstances.
Few cities should be arrived in by night. Streets empty and illuminated in the harsh glare of sodium bulbs - a lighting solution that can only have been thought up by someone who hated architecture and people - even the most beautiful tend to look desolate, especially on the way in from the airport.
Twenty minutes later, we reach the Expo. Things here are under better control and it has been transformed into a model of (noisy) efficiency. We’re briskly separated into the cities and districts we live in, for processing. I don’t yet have a home, but as it will likely be in the (massive) Chaoyang District, for that’s where the office is, I pick there.
Forms have to be filled out but thankfully, they’re easy enough and I quickly get assigned a hotel, the Huiquiao, the only hotel in Chaoyang now allowed to accept foreigners for quarantine.
I had thought I might be given more thorough testing here, but as I’ve passed the temperature test on numerous occasions – despite my hot head, I apparently run slightly cold, at 35.7C – all I have to do now is wait for the bus to the hotel.
My group is mostly Chinese, though I notice someone of South Asian origin, possibly Pakistani. He looks a bit sweaty, and eyes me warily, so I leave him alone. There’s also the Peruvian woman I bumped into at the airport who flew in on Aeromexico, an airline none of the baggage control people seemed to have heard of before. When I last saw her, she was panicking over her bags, so I’m glad to see she has been reunited with them.
It’s clocking on for 9pm and it’s been a long day for everyone. Some of the passengers are not taking things calmly. I hear shouting in Chinese a few times, and once in Russian, outbursts presumably from people unhappy they will not be allowed to self-quarantine at home, or at the hotel they had originally booked.
When our bus is called, our little group tramps across the disinfectant-slicked floor, then along a stretch of red carpet, where we do not experience an Oscar moment, and past blue and white banners emblazoned with stirring slogans of togetherness and determination.
“We are always with you, as long as you need us”, one reads, while others exhort us all to fight as one, to never forget love and finally, over the exit, another reminds us reassuringly that “Spring always puts Winter to an end”.
At just after nine, the bus pulls out from the Expo. As we drive off – thankfully without a police escort, so we can travel at normal speed – I see throngs of people still being processed inside. I do not envy the medical teams their job, and can only imagine the incredible strain they are, and have been under, since this outbreak began. They have truly done their utmost to make this new, and very difficult situation as smooth as possible.
There are stops at other hotels along the way, so it is almost 11 by the time I finally get the key to my room. I’m too tired to eat, so I polish off a bottle of water, strip and collapse into bed. And so, my quarantine begins.