A trip back to China
A few impressions of post-Covid China
I have just got back from a two-week trip to China.
This was the first time I returned since moving away in February 2023. Things change fast in China, and if you don’t visit often your picture of life there quickly becomes outdated. I spent most of my time seeing old friends and acquaintances in Beijing and didn’t do anything terribly exciting, but I still developed a few impressions which I will share below.
I spent the first few days of my trip in Hong Kong, where I applied for a new visa for the PRC. I hadn’t been to Hong Kong since early 2019, just before the huge protest movement and the subsequent crackdown. Five years and a National Security Law later, in spite of all the talk of Hong Kong being “over”, I have to say that it was hard for me to notice the difference on the ground. Then again I was just a casual visitor, and I have never been particularly familiar with the city.
Hong Kong still feels like a different country from Mainland China, the street life is as bustling and diverse as ever, and Cantonese rather than Mandarin remains the dominant language on the streets, in contrast to cities in Guangdong. Nonetheless, the trial of 47 activists for “subverting state power”, which came to a conclusion just as I was there, shows that in fact things have changed a great deal since I was last in Hong Kong.
Obtaining a tourist visa for Mainland China was a hassle. Since my last work visa was never cancelled and was theoretically still valid, I had to present a letter from my last employer in China, stating that I no longer work there. I also had to present an itinerary, hotel reservations for my first and last night (luckily those could be cancelled), and the booking of a flight to leave China. Since my flight out was from Xiamen, I had to show evidence of a train ticket or flight to go to Xiamen as well.
It all cost a lot of money, but I was able to get a tourist visa in two days by presenting all the documents required. Unfortunately I was travelling on a British passport, and Brits are not eligible for the 15 days of visa-free entry recently granted to many European nationalities.
After completing all the formalities, I flew to Beijing. The atmosphere at Daxing airport was in complete contrast with when I last left China, just after the end of the Zero Covid period, when the international terminal still looked almost abandoned. This time everything was extremely smooth. I only had to wait a minute at the customs queue for foreign citizens, partly because there are still few foreigners flying to Beijing, but also because people are no longer being made to fill in health declarations and asked endless questions. The staff were all extremely friendly and ready to help.
This visit confirmed my impression that a genuine attempt is being made to make China a little bit more welcoming for foreign visitors. Over the past few years, even setting aside the pandemic, travelling in China had become almost impossible for outsiders, mainly because of their exclusion from the digital infrastructure that regulates life in China, beginning with digital payments.
This was starting to cause problems, especially since there is now an economic downturn. Even foreign investors no longer wanted to go to China on business trips, and the Chinese government could no longer afford to snub foreign tourists. That is probably why they are now trying to be a bit more open and convince the world that China is safe and friendly, in spite of the travel advisories various Western governments have in place.
Things have started to change on the ground too. WeChat and Alipay can now apparently be linked to foreign credit cards (I didn’t try), and foreign citizens seem to be able to access more services than they used to. It helps that most of the extreme tracking measures put in place during the pandemic have been rolled back. Even the ticket machines in the Beijing subway, which a year ago could only be used if you inputted a Chinese ID number, can now be used by anyone.
Recently the government also stated clearly that all Chinese hotels should, in principle, accept foreign guests. Unfortunately, my experience suggests this is not yet happening on the ground. While in Beijing I stayed with a friend, but when I travelled to Xiamen I found that most local hotels state on the booking apps that 仅接待大陆客人 (we only take Mainland Chinese guests).
Some hotels, in a fit of generosity, write 仅接待大陆及港澳台客人 (we only take guests from Mainland China and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), which is still no use to me. It may be that the hotels have just forgotten to change their ads, but rather than phone them and check, I decided to book a hotel that didn’t carry such a warning. As long as there aren’t serious penalties for hotels that exclude foreigners, and well-publicised cases of enforcement, I doubt they will stop doing it.
Apart from this, the main difference I noticed from when I was last in China is that it feels like the Covid pandemic has been finally left behind.
When I left China, in February 2023, it was only 2-3 months since the country had abandoned its strict Zero Covid policy. Masks were still universal in public transport, and common on the streets. The country was reeling from its terrible Covid exit wave, which killed a lot of elderly people, including a friend’s grandmother. Everyone was only just getting used to the idea of living normally again.
Coming back in June 2024, the spectre of Covid-19 feels far in the past. No one talks about it anymore, just like everywhere else in the world, and masks are rare. Most of what was disrupted has gone back to normal. The topic that really worries observers now is the economy.
I saw no particular signs of China’s economic malaise on the streets of Beijing or Xiamen. People look about as prosperous as before, malls and restaurants are bustling and there is no obvious class of unemployed people loitering about (this may be because migrant workers who are unable to find a job tend to leave the big cities and go back to their places of origin). Beijing’s subway continues to expand, and in fact a new stop has opened right in the middle of Sanlitun, the city’s most international neighbourhood.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real. Anyone going to Europe or North America in 2008 would not have seen obvious signs of the effects of the financial crisis, either. The economic downturn did rear its head in conversations I had with a couple of Chinese friends, who lamented that the “economic environment” isn’t very good this year. All the same, it must be said that on the ground one barely gets the impression of a country in the throes of crisis.
Beijing’s air pollution remains quite bad. It’s way better than it was 8-10 years ago, but there are still days when the Air Quality Index goes above 150. This might be normal in cities like Bangkok or Jakarta, but it is many times above the WHO’s recommended limit, and would be considered a scandal in much of the world. And yet the idea that Beijing’s air pollution has been completely eliminated and is no longer an issue is widespread, and encouraged by the media.
When I mentioned Beijing’s pollution to a Chinese acquaintance who works in a state organisation, she was genuinely surprised and said “but Beijing’s air is no longer polluted. Perhaps you haven’t been back long enough to tell!”. This is how most people react if you bring up the topic.
One day I visited Wudaokou, Beijing’s university neighbourhood, where I once lived for about two years. Most of the bars and cafes I remember are gone, but that’s what you expect in China. There are new ones. What was really striking, compared to when I lived in the area (2010-2012), was the almost complete lack of foreign faces on the streets.
The number of foreign students dropped dramatically during the pandemic, when those outside of China were forbidden from returning, and those within China were forbidden from leaving their campuses. While numbers are creeping up again, they are clearly far down from where they used to be 10-15 years ago, when excitement about China was at its peak in the West.
While in the area I also visited the campus of Tsinghua, China’s top university, where I once studied Chinese. The campus was as lovely as ever, but getting inside was hard. When I studied there anyone could just walk in, and the campus was considered to be a tourist attraction. Nowadays it’s no longer that simple. Just like other Chinese universities, Tsinghua has strict security checks at the gates. Only students and staff are allowed in. Outside visitors need to register in advance.
I went to Tsinghua with a friend, a foreign diplomat (and Tsinghua alumnus). We had tried to register as visitors the previous day, but due to him being a diplomat our registration was rejected. We were told to apply for “alumni cards”, but there was no time for it. We decided to try anyway. We spoke to the guards at the gate and, after showing evidence that we had applied for the alumni card, and letting them take photos of our passports, we were (to our own surprise) allowed in.
All these controls struck me as a symptom of the general securitisation of life and the tendency to monitor everyone’s movements that has been a trend for the last decade in China. It bears mentioning that back when I was a student the universities felt perfectly safe, in spite of the fact that outsiders could enter at will.
We also visited the nearby Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) where we would often hang out in our student days. Getting in was a bit easier, but we still had to show our passports and talk our way past the guards. The campus was just like I remembered it, except that there is now a McDonalds right in the middle.
After spending nine days in Beijing I flew to Xiamen, my last stop in China. I was there for two days. The seaside city, just across the Strait from Taiwan, is known to be one of China’s most pleasant. The only previous time I visited was in 2018, when I stopped there for a night on my way to Kinmen (I was also quarantined in Xiamen in 2020, but all I saw was the view from my hotel window).
Xiamen’s star attraction is Gulangyu, a little pedestrian-only island just off its coast. In 1902, Gulangyu was turned into an “international settlement”, where 13 foreign countries had extraterritorial privileges and Sikh policemen employed by the British kept order. The island is full of old European buildings and winding lanes, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It can be reached in a few minutes by ferry from Xiamen.
I visited Gulangyu in 2018, but it was the evening before the National Day, so the island was packed to the brim with domestic visitors and impossible to enjoy. This time, however, it was much less crowded and far more pleasant to walk around. The view of Xiamen’s skyline from the island was pretty impressive.
After a couple of days in Xiamen, I flew out. My experience leaving the country was also quite different from what it was last year. At the time Chinese citizens going overseas were being treated with real suspicion. This was basically a holdover from the Zero Covid time, when people were discouraged from leaving. The queue at customs moved at a snail’s pace, as all the Chinese in front of me were quizzed intensely about their plans, even if they were just flying to Hong Kong.
This time the queue moved much faster, and everyone had their passports stamped and were allowed to leave without a second glance. Some sense of normality has definitely been restored to international travel, at least. Let’s hope it lasts.
Great piece! The lack of foreign faces compared to the pre-COVID times is a sentiment I often hear from my friends in China. It’s refreshing to hear that things are getting back to normal though.