From zero covid to freedom, a personal account from China

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  Sjoerd den Daas

  correspondent China

Chinese people with covid, for a long time I only knew them from Wuhan. For example, a man we interviewed in the last days of the lockdown, early 2020. He felt fine, but was still not allowed to work three months after his infection. He had to get enough rest first, was the story.

Whoever had covid was persona non grata, and for a long time covid was a rarity in China. You mainly wore face masks because people expected that of you. Not so much to protect yourself or others, because for the bulk of the nation, covid was a distant thing.

You didn’t know people with covid, you knew people in quarantine hotels. I myself was tucked away there several times after returning from abroad. And you had friends and acquaintances being escorted to covid camps, the centers where people ended up who had been labeled as ‘close contact’ of someone with covid. The threshold for this was not very high in ‘zero-covid China’.

Sjoerd den Daas reported on his ‘journey’ to a quarantine hotel in September 2021, after arriving in China:

The threat was always there. It is impossible to describe what it feels like, almost three years after the introduction of China’s quarantine regime, to cross the Chinese border from Hong Kong with your suitcase to Shenzhen. As a journalist, it usually takes a little longer at customs, but I was lucky: within fifteen, twenty minutes I’m on the other side, and no one is chasing me.

Until now, everyone coming from outside China had to hand in their passport almost immediately upon arrival. You were taken to the bus like cattle and it was guesswork where you would be obliged to spend the next few weeks. Hours later, in your room, just before the door closed, you got your passport back. To make sure you wouldn’t escape.

Also in the hotel where I am now, just next to the border crossing, the luggage tags are studied with interest. “Where are you from?” Normally that was the time to bring out the corona tests and the quarantine certificate. It made little difference how long you had been in China.

“Welcome, you are our first guest since the borders have reopened!” The contrast cannot be much greater. Last spring I was also in Shenzhen. The fencing and blue screens were still there from the lockdown that had just ended. They could be used again for a possible next lockdown. At the time, I was traveling from Shenzhen to Hong Kong with a colleague.

We came from Beijing, where there were several dozen corona cases at the time. We spent the night in a rental car to limit the risks. Not infrequently, if your district had risk areas, extra measures followed, such as quarantine and, in the worst case, confinement. Not checking into a hotel and staying under the radar seemed the safest option. When a neighborhood committee in Shenzhen tracked me down, I was already safe in Hong Kong.

In the early stages of zero covid, after Wuhan, life was relatively normal for most people. Time was being bought, was the thought, time that would be used to vaccinate people and put care in order. Little happened on either front. In the years that followed, an increasingly higher price had to be paid for sticking to zero covid, although my hometown Beijing came off well, certainly compared to Shanghai or Ürümqi.

For three years everything was dominated by corona. I mainly moved into the apartment where I now live because it lockdownproof is: a place with an outdoor space. Extra space in the fridge, space for a barbecue. There is now also a second-hand rowing machine: from running around the bed in the quarantine hotels I had previously suffered a dismal Achilles tendon injury.

Opening the app to see where the cases were, looking out the window to see if there were already white suits walking around in your complex, it was daily fare. And cotton swabs in the throat or nasal cavity: just as normal as eating breakfast.

Then the first day back at the office: the table that stood at the entrance for almost three years is gone. The men who checked your health app, your corona test and your travel history every day and forcibly pulled you out of the elevator if they weren’t satisfied are gone. Printed QR codes have been pulled from the walls, containers where PCR tests were conducted have been dragged away. Also absent: a solid exit plan.

For almost three years I hardly knew anyone with corona in China. Then got pretty much everyone the virus at once: I hardly know any more people who have not contracted an infection.

For the first time in China, it really makes sense to wear a face mask. It is the end of a dark age, the awakening from a bad dream. You are happy about the regained freedom.