FREE FOR THE TWO SESSIONS MEETING
The pre-NPC quarantine requirement was also imposed at the regional versions of the Congress – a contrast to the complete abandonment of restrictions elsewhere, from airports to offices.
So in mid-January, by which point most people I knew had already recovered from the virus, I completed my fourth and shortest quarantine, for 24 hours, at a hotel in Shanghai. It also required three polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests taken over three consecutive days, and the completion of a table monitoring your body temperature each morning and afternoon for seven days.
The problem was that PCR testing booths on the street corners had by then mostly been disassembled, along with much of the data (though official estimates claimed there had already been hundreds of millions of infections).
I found one hidden away off Nanjing Road. It was around 2pm. “Am I the first person here today?” I asked the hazmat-suited workers. “No,” they replied. “You’re the third”. The test, no longer free, cost 16 yuan (US$2.30).
For my next two tests, after scouring the streets on my bike, I came across a booth on Wulumuqi Road, the site of protests against the zero-COVID regime a week before it was abandoned.
The worker added me on WeChat to collect my details. “The destination’s the UK?” she asked, assuming I was taking the test for international travel. It’s the Two Sessions, I said. It’s free for the Two Sessions, she explained, with one of those crying-with-laughter emojis, because I’d already paid.