After a 19-hour flight from San Francisco to Shanghai, plus a four-hour wait in the airport, followed by another hour of traveling, and then another two hours of waiting at the quarantine hotel to be registered, our family made it to the room where we would exist for the next ten days. Why ten and not seven? I’ll explain later.
As you go on to read my true quarantine story, do keep in mind how everyone’s quarantine experience can vary a lot. This is due to an odd top-down administrative choice to randomly assign quarantine hotels to travelers flying into China, which applies to both locals and foreigners from what I’ve seen. This air of mystery is probably what confounds the entire experience and makes it so frustrating, especially for families.
Seven days before even setting foot in China, we were told to opt for self-quarantine in the city of our departing flight. Full disclosure: We didn’t. We didn’t go partying around town, but we certainly made the most of our remaining days of freedom. And then 48 hours before our flight, we proceeded to a designated facility to perform a NAT or PCR test. *Warning: This is a nose swab variety and deeply unpleasant. This test was repeated at the same facility 24 hours later, and the results were sent to our email later that day. We printed this out, as well as our vaccination certificates (from China) and Health Declaration and Travel Declaration Forms detailing every city we visited while on vacation.
As Linkin Park put it so eloquently, in the end, it doesn’t even matter.
After we arrived in Shanghai, we scanned at least three QR codes, which led to a different form each time that we had to fill out to generate yet another QR code, which was required to pass each checkpoint in the airport. No one asked to see our small mountain of paperwork at all. What a waste of trees.
We did a NAT (Nucleic Acid Test) on-site at the airport. This was of the throat swab variety, which I had always preferred, until this deep-throat version that made all of us gag. Later, we would do another NAT on-site at the designated quarantine hotel. And then every other day during quarantine.
I had over three hours for Dr. Seuss’ words to echo in my head as we stood in line that night. One of the longer waits was the usual airport customs clearance line. Fun discovery: As we stood in the line for foreign passports, a customs officer tempted me with a shorter queue when he found out that I bore a non-US foreign passport (Singapore).
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READ: Quarantine Times Reduced from 14 + 7 to 7 + 3 for All of China
A summary of my experience of getting from England to Guangzhou.
4th Jan – Get visa in London.
26th Jan – To North London for Day 1 NAT and blood test.
1st Feb – To North London Day 7 NAT and blood test.
2nd Feb – To Heathrow for late evening flight to Helsinki.
3rd Feb - Arrived early morning Helsinki. PCR test. Overnight on bench in Helsinki airport. Late afternoon flight to Shanghai.
4th Feb – Arrived 8:15 a.m. Shanghai Pudong. Three hours of queueing for testing and quarantine hotel. One hour’s travel to Home Inn quarantine hotel. Another hour to get to room.
18th Feb – Early morning bus from hotel to Shanghai Hongqiao airport. Depart late afternoon to GuangZhou (CAN). Arrived and taken to quarantine centre. Waited for 3.5 hours for transport to our apartment
25th Feb – Home quarantine ends, various forms signed, Guangzhou health code turns green. Register at local police station in the afternoon.
Not bad, but we need you to dwell on your 'trauma,' how you were victimized, and the healing journey this led to. Also, could you please swap out the photo for something less pale and testosterone-based?
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
A summary of my experience of getting from England to Guangzhou.
4th Jan – Get visa in London.
26th Jan – To North London for Day 1 NAT and blood test.
1st Feb – To North London Day 7 NAT and blood test.
2nd Feb – To Heathrow for late evening flight to Helsinki.
3rd Feb - Arrived early morning Helsinki. PCR test. Overnight on bench in Helsinki airport. Late afternoon flight to Shanghai.
4th Feb – Arrived 8:15 a.m. Shanghai Pudong. Three hours of queueing for testing and quarantine hotel. One hour’s travel to Home Inn quarantine hotel. Another hour to get to room.
18th Feb – Early morning bus from hotel to Shanghai Hongqiao airport. Depart late afternoon to GuangZhou (CAN). Arrived and taken to quarantine centre. Waited for 3.5 hours for transport to our apartment
25th Feb – Home quarantine ends, various forms signed, Guangzhou health code turns green. Register at local police station in the afternoon.
"What did you do in the Great Patriotic COVID Cower, Grampa?"
"Waaaal, young'un there I was see? They was thermometers to the left of me, 核酸 to the right, 核酸 to the rear. The Lieutenant, him what was afterwards quarantined taking out an anti-vaxer emplacement, had just got the word: Division G-4 had plum run out of face-maske. I dinnt hesitate, no siree! I tolt the boys to fix tonsil-swabbers and charge like we was Fauci forty-thousand times over! And----hey! Hey! What you doin' sleeping through my Jenn-you-wine war-story?! Them days was history!"
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.