Moving to Beijing in the summer of 2020 has been a tough one.
It meant we had to lay our fate into the hands of that invisible obstacle. For months we did not know the answers to our 'whats' and 'hows',and it wore us out.
But we investigated, planned, organized, re-organized, re-booked, waited, tested, flew, arrived, tested, quarantined, tested again before we were officially declared welcome.
And then an unpredictable story began...
It's been three years with restrictions.
While the world was struggling with covid, China had managed to force it out of the country, and schools reopened, a kind of normality came to the country in 2020. The fight however did not win the battle, as keeping China virus-free came with huge restrictions. And the more the world got used to live with the virus, the harder it became to live here.
Since we arrived in August 2020, we only saw an increase in measures. We scanned, we tested, we accepted limitations to our freedom of movement. We could not leave China without accepting up to 3 weeks of complete isolation (meaning each member of our family alone) upon our return, after having tested (at times blood tests) multiple times. At times, we could not travel within China - at times we could not cross the borders of Beijing without it having consequences.
We lived under a double cutting sword of Damocle, as the chance of getting covid was so little, and life often was kind of normal (not taking the scans and reporting etc into consideration). We were never scared of the virus. But we were so scared of the measures that were keeping it out and that would be rolled out once the virus came too close.
At times, situations were so absurd we would not have believed them if we did not live under the consequences. (They found traces of the virus in someone's parcel received from Canada, so we knew all the mail we would receive the next months would first undergo thorough disinfection and a 2 week quarantaine - no kidding, our Christmas post arrived in April).
But we bonded. We created friendships while we went through the hardships that never took an ending. We made the best of it. We kept looking for lightness and found it in humour nobody else understood.
It meant we had to lay our fate into the hands of that invisible obstacle. For months we did not know the answers to our 'whats' and 'hows',and it wore us out.
But we investigated, planned, organized, re-organized, re-booked, waited, tested, flew, arrived, tested, quarantined, tested again before we were officially declared welcome.
And then an unpredictable story began...
It's been three years with restrictions.
While the world was struggling with covid, China had managed to force it out of the country, and schools reopened, a kind of normality came to the country in 2020. The fight however did not win the battle, as keeping China virus-free came with huge restrictions. And the more the world got used to live with the virus, the harder it became to live here.
Since we arrived in August 2020, we only saw an increase in measures. We scanned, we tested, we accepted limitations to our freedom of movement. We could not leave China without accepting up to 3 weeks of complete isolation (meaning each member of our family alone) upon our return, after having tested (at times blood tests) multiple times. At times, we could not travel within China - at times we could not cross the borders of Beijing without it having consequences.
We lived under a double cutting sword of Damocle, as the chance of getting covid was so little, and life often was kind of normal (not taking the scans and reporting etc into consideration). We were never scared of the virus. But we were so scared of the measures that were keeping it out and that would be rolled out once the virus came too close.
At times, situations were so absurd we would not have believed them if we did not live under the consequences. (They found traces of the virus in someone's parcel received from Canada, so we knew all the mail we would receive the next months would first undergo thorough disinfection and a 2 week quarantaine - no kidding, our Christmas post arrived in April).
But we bonded. We created friendships while we went through the hardships that never took an ending. We made the best of it. We kept looking for lightness and found it in humour nobody else understood.
Suddenly, as Omicron made it impossible to escape, things changed. The end of covid arrived so suddenly we felt like living through a zombie-movie: after weird weeks, when the streets were empty, suddenly, we could cough in public again without creating panic. Suddenly, the gates opened, and I found a face of Beijing I had never seen before.
(Copyright VAckx)
(Copyright VAckx)
