My Big Summer Adventure

Just 2 days after getting back from Zhangjiajie and its wonderful sights, I’m leaving for my big summer trip. I’ve got a lot of laundry, packing, and other miscellaneous tasks to do in those short two days.

I’ve been waiting for this trip for months now. I’ve been talking about it, dreaming about it, and looking at pictures of all the places I’m going to be seeing. To say I’m excited for this trip is an understatement. It’s the highlight of my summer. It’s going to be awesome!

Because of the recent Covid outbreak, which caused Zhangjiajie to go into lockdown a few days after I left, I wanted to be extra careful and get another Covid test before I left, which was, of course, negative. It was just one more task to add to the list.

Flying North

I had to leave for the Shenzhen airport before the sun was up and then explain to my taxi driver that I wanted to go to the airport and not a metro station. There were lots of hand gestures.

I still say that I said the correct Chinese for airport, but for some reason, no taxi driver seems to believe me when I say that I want to go to the airport, until they have it confirmed several times.

But, I arrived in the correct place just under 2 hours before my flight. And the security machines were all able to read my passport, so I didn’t get to be special and different, like with the train, until boarding the plane, when I got to use the priority access lane, behind the mother with the baby.

And because Chinese planes don’t seem to be able to fly more than a couple of hours without needing a break, I got to stop at another airport for all of 30 minutes. I got off, joined the massive line for the bathroom and barely moved before it was time to get back on the plane to finish the journey to Xining.

In Xining

My plane landed about 20 minutes early and that was the last good thing that happened. At the health code check, mine is still green, by the way, I got stopped and told I’d have to check in, but to do that, I had to go to a different terminal (next door), something about not being able properly check me in because I have a foreign passport.

Once in the other building, with all my travel companions waiting on me, the guy there decided that based on my travel history, I’d need another Covid test (no, showing yesterday’s results did me no good) and possibly quarantine. There’s no talking him out of anything and he won’t discuss the future without the test results.

So, after a long wait, I get shuffled into a hospital van of some sort (there were flashing lights!) and told that I’m just going to the hospital for a test. Afterwards, I’d either be dropped off at my hotel or be allowed to get there on my own. It wasn’t really discussed, but it was implied that I’d be free to go about my travels when the results came back negative.

However, when the van stopped, I discovered that I was driven to a quarantine hotel!

The Wrong Hotel

While I was getting checked in, a not-so-good lunch, and questioned about my travel history, I kept telling myself that it’s just temporary. I’ll get the test done here, they’ll get the results, and I’ll be free tomorrow and can continue on with the trip, just a little delayed.

For the rest of day, all I asked was “When am I getting out?” The company I booked my travel with, China Discovery, were also doing their best to figure out where I was and when and how I was going to get out.

As for the answer to my rather simple question, no one knows. The only answer I got was “I need to talk to my boss”. But the boss didn’t want to pick up their phone. No one could get in contact with them until the next morning!

It’s a great way to treat the tourists – send them to quarantine and forget about them. That’s one way to get people to spend money in the city. And then never come back, telling their friends and family to never go their either.

After waiting for 8 hours and not hearing from the boss, I decided that I’m never coming back to Xining, if I don’t hear anything by tomorrow morning, I’m never coming back to the province. If they decide to quarantine me again, I’d rather get deported back to America and give up on China as a bad idea.

The Accommodations

One thing that helped me keep the fantasy that I’d get out soon was that the room was not stocked for a long stay. My quarantine room in Shanghai had everything you’d need for the whole 14 day stay – water, toilet paper, Kleenex, garbage bags, instructions.

This room had a small plastic bag in the bathroom with a couple small shampoos, body washes, and a couple rolls of toilet paper. No water, no garbage bags, not even bathroom towels! And the TV didn’t work.

At least I get some really crappy food delivered 3 times a day? Yeah, that’s not really a positive to me, either.

My Tantrum

After almost 2 full days in quarantine with no answers, but a lot of phone calls and asking, I’m told that it’s looking like I may be in for 14 days.

Shortly after, I got a phone call from one of the very few people there that spoke any English saying that because of some random quarantine procedure and that I was 1 kilometer from a medium-risk area, I’d need to stay for the 2 full weeks.

It didn’t matter that I had a negative Covid test. It didn’t matter that, when I was there, there were no medium or high risk areas. It didn’t matter that I left the now “bad” area 5 days before I got to Xining. It didn’t matter that I had a vacation planned and was supposed to leave the city that day.

All that mattered was that I was in Zhangjiajie and had been “close” to a “high risk area”.

I threw a fit worthy of a 2 year old.

I cried.

I yelled.

Mostly at the poor lady on the phone that barely spoke English and was only talking to me because she could say more than a couple words. I know it wasn’t her fault but she was the mouthpiece to crushing my hopes and dreams and grinding them underfoot. She got to take my justified and very understandable grief and rage.

And, it helped. It didn’t help me feel better, but it did get them to reconsider. Once I was crying and being told to “calm down” (like that ever works), she said that they can do a test and maybe in a day or two, I might be able to get out.

But I didn’t get that promised test that day. I got it on the third. Nose and throat. And they were not gentle about getting that throat swab, either.

After over 24 hours of waiting and hounding the one medic on WeChat, I had my test results – negative. (What a surprise!) But, before I could even get my hopes up, I was informed that the boss had changed his mind, or they just didn’t tell me the whole truth from the beginning, I had to take 2 more tests and then I could leave. The second one was scheduled for the next day, my 5th, and the third for the 7th.

Maybe I would get to leave the 8th, but I didn’t have any faith in them to tell me the truth anymore. They were starting to sound like the boy who cried wolf.

Hunger Strike

By this point, I had mostly stopped crying and stopped being angry, unless I talked to the one lady on the phone (she said “sorry for the inconvenience” and I yelled, a lot, and hung up on her a couple times. I felt it was deserved). I had moved into depression.

And with that depression came a hunger strike. As I mentioned, the food there was really bad. They somehow managed to overcook rice so much that it was mush (How do you screw up white rice in China?!) and undercook all the vegetables at the same time. It wasn’t a hardship to not eat it.

After refusing all meals for a day, they started hounding me to eat. I got messages and phone calls telling me I needed to eat. My answer was very simple “I go. I eat.”

I didn’t completely not eat for several days. I did have a couple things of chips, about the equivalent of 2 cans of Pringles, and once they stopped checking my food intake so closely, I did eat some of the food they brought (they did have some good popcorn chicken a couple times). But it was nowhere near how much food I was supposed to be eating.

Leaving

By some miracle, they managed to not be lying about leaving after my 3rd test’s results came back on the 8th. I was free after breakfast, I just had to wait for someone to come and get me. Flights to Shenzhen leave in the morning or after 6 pm.

To help pass the time, as I wouldn’t be eating their especially bad breakfast, I got to send them some more health codes. They were obsessed with trying to get this one code that doesn’t work for foreigners. The only ID types are Chinese ID, non-mainland “Chinese” passports (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau), Chinese passports, and permanent resident card, none of the things I have.

But, they kept insisting that the passport option would work for me. Three different people entered the information, before they gave up and just let me go, just after 10 am, too late to catch a morning flight.

Being let out of quarantine is literally them opening the door and you being allowed to walk out. You need to hope that your hotel is near civilization.

Mine wasn’t.

I was in the outskirts of a third tier city. There were no restaurants or fast food. There were no convenience stores to buy a snack or water. There were no subway stations. There were few taxis. The only thing going for the location was there was what passed for a major street nearby. If need be, I could follow the street all the way to the airport, granted it’s 20 or 30 km away and I’d never survive the walk. But, in about 5 km was the “downtown” area, with a whole 5 streets.

After a few kilometers of walking, I was finally able to hail a cab, and after more confusion over my destination (why can’t cabbies understand me saying “airport” in Chinese?), I was at the airport hours before my flight back to Shenzhen. I got a lovely bowl of chicken curry and waited.

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This was definitely, by far, my worst travel experience. What’s your worst trip?