Where do I even start?
So much has happened in the last few weeks, that it feels more like two months have passed. Or two years. Sprung from quarantine on the 31st of March, I emerged from the 12 square metre room that had been the extent of my world for the previous 14 days, blinking and pallid, like Rip van Winkle awaking after a hundred year sleep. For you see, unlike ‘lockdown’ elsewhere in the world, quarantine in China means that you do not leave your room. At all. Not for a walk. Not for ‘essentials’. Not for anything. You can imagine then, that to finally be able to step into the hotel corridor, and then (gasp) to make my way downstairs and outside, well, it felt like I was being born again.
Hallelujah.
From the tender confines of the Huiqiao Hotel, I was whisked away in the back of a cab to my new hotel, the 5L, opposite the China World Mall, in the heart of Beijing’s skyscraper district and a hop and a skip from my new office at the Esheresque CCTV Building.
As with the bus to the Huiqiao from the Airport, the cab driver was separated from me by a thick sheet of plastic, and as I sat in the back – fully-masked naturellement – goggling out of the window at my new home as our America friends might say, like a hick in from the haystacks, I had a brief 70s flashback, and for just a moment, I imagined I had traded places with The Boy in the Bubble.
Deposited at the 5L and after having presented my quarantine certificate and had my temperature taken, I found myself in another hotel room, this one much larger, with a double bed, a view of glass towers, and best of all, a door I could open and close at will.
The sun was shining, the air was crisp and I had the freedom to wander. So I did. That first day, I mostly wandered around what’s referred to as the CBD, the Central Business District, which is every bit as vertical, thrusting and glassy as its name suggests.
There were relatively few people on the streets, and even fewer cars. Shops were open, though no one was shopping, and when I stopped at a café for lunch, I had to rouse the sleeping staff, and was the only one to eat. I did briefly wonder how long it had been since they’d seen another customer.
The office was still out of bounds. Though my official quarantine was over, CGTN had decided I should spend another two weeks (and in the end, almost three) self-isolating, before being allowed in to work.
And so, as I had been doing at the Huiqiao, I worked from the hotel room, battling abysmally slow Internet when I used the VPN for anything. It was this, more than anything that spurred me to find a place to rent, and so after a couple of false starts, I did and just over a week after moving into the hotel, I moved into my new home.
I now live in what is known locally as a ‘loft’ apartment, which means that my bedroom, a second toilet (yes, I am spoilt) and a rather peculiar three-quarter height room where the wardrobe is locate and which I use to store suitcases, an ironing board and other bits a pieces, are up a short flight of stairs. The building was originally supposed to have a Japanese design, with sliding screens, a wooden staircase and tatami matting in the spare room. At some point, the complex changed hands and was taken over by MGM (yes, THAT one), and so it now has a slightly more Vegas feel, with a fair amount of marble and lots of smoked mirrors. It’s minimal, open-plan (including the spaces upstairs) and just this side of good taste.
I love it. It’s a bit further from the bustle of central Beijing, out in the Southern District, or Fengtai, an area that was all rice paddies and little farms not that long ago. Now, it’s all superhighways, wide avenues and towers. I’m a 25-minute journey from the office by subway (no changes needed) and because I’ve chosen to be a bit further out, I’ve managed to get a bigger space for less money.
Since I left quarantine, Beijing has slowly come back to life. As the trees blossomed, mostly cherry and almond (shades of Japan and Lebanon) and flowers began to appear, the scattering of people on the streets turned into a trickle, the trickle turned into a flow and finally, just last week, the flow turned into a stream. Today it was announced that Beijing’s strict quarantine measures have been lifted. Outside of Wuhan, nowhere had tighter regulations than the capital. Indeed until this morning, had I strayed beyond city limits, I would have had to go back into a two-week quarantine to get back in again.
Masks, I’m told, are no longer required to be worn by law, by so far, most people still seem to have them on. It will probably take a few days for people to get used to not having to go out with one on, certainly it’s become second nature for me already, though I am can’t say I was looking forward to having to wear a mask now the weather is heating up.
And how summer has come upon us. Ten days ago, I was still comfortable in a light sweater, and needed a jacket at night. But this week, temperatures have soared, we should hit 37/38C over the weekend, though it’s expected to be much cooler next week.
Apparently Spring has not just sprung, it’s over, and though Beijing’s location on the edge of a desert, as well as in the path of cold winds straight out of Siberia means that large temperature fluctuations are normal, from here on in, it should be hothothot.
With the exception of a few tourist sights, museums, cinemas and parks, Beijing is open. The Forbidden City, which was closed in February, reopens tomorrow for May Day, though visitor numbers are being restricted for now, and with restrictions on travel within Hebei Province now relaxed, it will be possible to escape on day-trips and weekends to Tianjin, the wilder sections of the Great Wall and the canyons and temples of Cangyan.
It’s been easy enough to get around fro the last few weeks, though going out isn’t hassle-free. While social distancing is not always observed on public transport, you were required by law to be masked at all times outdoors until today. So on the subway, for example, there are (or were, I’ll find out tomorrow) monitors whose job it is to ensure that everyone’s mask is properly fitted and to mildly chastise those who aren’t.
While people don’t appear to be worried about infection – with a few exceptions, Beijing quickly became one of the safest places in the country thanks to draconian controls - I’ve noticed that people tend to keep their hands in their pockets and no one holds the handrail on the escalators. I also noticed that when someone on a subway carriage sneezes or coughs, a discrete but definite space forms around them. In any case, should you have had to touch something during your travels, most cafes, restaurants and offices have bottles of hand sanitizer at the door.
For the most part, Beijing seems to be divided into residential compounds, and getting into those compounds is still not possible unless one is a resident. Why does this matter? Simply because many shops, restaurants and other services are inside the confines of those compounds. Thus my very first attempt to visit a supermarket resulted in being firmly, but very politely told that no, I could not go in to buy a couple of bottles of water, because I wasn’t a resident.
“Try their website,” the helpful guardian told me in impeccably-clipped English, “they probably deliver.”
Most entrances and exits to compounds, malls and shops have been closed – again, it will be interesting to see whether in the coming days, these barriers are removed, or whether they will stay in place for a while longer - forcing visitors to funnel through a single entrance where at a bare minimum, your temperature is taken and recorded.
Some places also require that you leave your name, ID/passport number and phone number along with your temperature, so that you can be traced, should an outbreak happen in a place you have visited. Others also require that you produce electronic proof that you have not left Beijing in the last 14 days. Usually, this is done by scanning a QR code and entering your details, in exchange for which you are sent confirmation that you are safe. Or not. As there are several such systems, one of which is targeted at recent arrivals, as was the case when I tried to enter a hutong district last weekend with a Singaporean friend for Chinese afternoon tea in an old Beijing alley house, you are required to scan all of the appropriate QR codes before being allowed in.
In a fun twist, one of the most widely used QR codes, the Travel Pass, comes in both a Chinese and an English-language version. This is obviously immensely helpful for people like me, who don’t then have to navigate in Mandarin, except for the fact that the Chinese version does not recognise non-Chinese names, and so at places that only have the Mandarin version of the code displayed – and this has happened to me on more than one occasion, including at said hutong - you are then unable to scan the code to confirm your status.
Needless to say, this makes going out a little less than optimal. We only got past the two smiling but redoubtable neighbourhood Aunties who had been drafted in to monitor arrivals, and who viewed the arrival of not one, but two foreigners, one of whom was especially suspicious because he DIDN’T speak Mandarin, at the gates of their traditional neighbourhood of tile-roofed homes and narrow alleys because we called the tea house and the owners came out to escort us in.
Thanks entirely to my Mandarin-speaking companion and the timely intercession of the tea house owners, who pointed out that while the suspicious foreigner was not able to get his Travel Pass to work – the Aunties seemed surprised to learn of the language issue – he did have two other passes that indicated he was approved as virus-free, and besides, they said, they were vouching for him as local residents, and so wouldn’t that do?
Thankfully, it seemed it would. Mollified, but still not entirely convinced they liked the cut of my jib, the Aunties permitted us passage and so, a lovely, traditional afternoon tea was finally had by all.
