COVID-19, worst flooding in 40 years… what’s going on in Chongqing?

It’s been a hot minute since I last wrote a post for this blog, although I’m not sure anyone will be surprised that it has been. At the end of January this year Ash and I got sent back to the UK as the ‘novel coronavirus’ - as it was known back then - started wreaking havoc in Wuhan, a city 850km away from here, and located in a province which borders Chongqing municipality. The British Consulate-General was closed (and currently remains so) and we spent four and a half months back in (locked in) London.

We’ve been back in China since mid June now, and I’ve had a few questions about what life is like here, so thought I would write things down. 2020 keeps serving us curveballs - as I sit here Chongqing is experiencing some severe flooding and the highest river levels since 1981… whoever says climate change is a myth is LYING.  

China and COVID-19

China has very strict 14-day quarantine measures for everybody entering the country from abroad, whether you are a Chinese national or not. Most often this takes place in a centralised hotel that you pay for (anywhere from £30 - £50 a night) but don’t choose, and where you must stay in your room for the full period. No daily walks, no fresh air, no room cleans. Some hotels allow takeaway or delivery, others do not. Some have WiFi facilities, some do not. Some have double beds, some do not. Some allow unmarried couples to stay together, some do not. Sometimes your VPN will work, sometimes it won’t (this is just a China thing rather than a COVID thing though to be fair).

Long story short, it can be a pretty miserable experience.

And that’s if you can even get to China. Flights are few and far between from a lot of places, and are very expensive. Chinese borders are still closed to a number of visa types, so many people are still stuck outside China with no idea of when they’ll be able to get back. For all of the above reasons we’re also unable to leave China for the foreseeable future. So much like our loved ones back home, we’ll be making the most of staycations and domestic travel!

But what such strict border controls do mean, is that the country can return to almost normality. Coupled with a second-to-none contact tracing system, you can rest assured that you will know immediately if you’ve been in contact with someone, or been near someone, who has tested positive.

When we were in Beijing at the end of June, part of the city was in lockdown due to a local outbreak. The rest of the city remained vigilant but continued as normal - temperature checks and wearing masks were the norm, you had to give your name and mobile number when you went into any restaurant or cafe, and you had to have an up to date Beijing health code, which goes from red to green when you’re allowed out. Social distancing wasn’t really a thing, and in the evenings the bars and popular spots were busy with punters. It was an unusual, but wonderful feeling. Ash’s new manager was the first person I’d hugged other than Ash in about three months, as social distancing rules in the UK meant we couldn't even hug our families goodbye.

In Chongqing, it’s now almost like the virus never existed. You have to have a green Chongqing health code and you have to wear masks on public transport, but there is no social distancing, groups can gather again and schools are back up and running. It took a while for cinemas and karaoke bars to reopen, and some of these do have social distancing measures (you can’t have snacks or drinks in the cinema, for example), but now everything is able to function again. It’s a stark contrast to the empty streets and the one-person-from-each-household-can-go-out-once-every-three-days lifestyle that we left back in January.

That’s not to say there have been no casualties. Plenty of shops and restaurants in Chongqing have closed and many people are still unable to work as they could before the virus hit. It will be a long road to recovery for everyone.

What about these floods then?

Ah yes, just in case 2020 thought it hadn’t delivered enough, China is now experiencing some of the worst floods in 40 years, and many areas have gone into emergency response. In Chongqing, many of the roads are completely flooded, hotels, restaurants, shops, petrol stations and houses are completely under water. Friends have been evacuated to shelter on higher ground and many are unable to get to work or travel as normal. Today (20 August) is expected to be the peak of the flooding, after which time it will move downstream and hopefully drain from the land.

Our apartment is on higher ground upstream of the peninsula, so we have thankfully been unaffected by flooding damage, although roads around us are inaccessible and traffic has been made even worse than normal.

What a year. Sending lots of love back to the UK and friends across the world - every single one of us is dealing with some kind of COVID chaos, and now more than ever we need to all be kind and empathetic.

Speaking of kindness - you’ve probably seen me sharing information and blogs from What Can We Do?. This is a non profit I helped to set up during lockdown which seeks to make community action accessible to everyone, no matter how much time or money you have. There’s something we can all do to make society a kinder and fairer place. This is needed especially now as the charity sector is facing a £12.4 billion shortfall from coronavirus, and 1 in 10 are expected to go bankrupt by the end of 2020. The people who suffer from this are society’s already most vulnerable.

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