Day R16: No More Quarantine

January 10, 2023

Today the quarantine requirement for international arrivals to China was rescinded. And so ends the border closure that lasted from March 28, 2020 until now. This marked the end of the pandemic as far as I was concerned.

With this development, a whole new realm of possibilities was opened for future international trips. At the same time this would mean an enormous amount of catchup and dealing with the massive backlog of international business that had been frozen. I would set out to tackle everything at a fast and furious pace over the next 3 years or so.

But for starters, I wanted to continue this victory biking theme with a ride to the Pudong International Airport. That is, I wanted to see for myself and take pictures of arrivals coming in without a quarantine. The last time I set foot in that airport was going through the myriad of checkpoint chess in March 2020 and eventually having to do two weeks home quarantine. As much as that sucked, it wasn't even strict. I technically could have gone out any number of times. It was also before the official policies were introduced that had arrivals endure two weeks of strict hotel quarantine and then a week of home quarantine. Many were not granted permission for home quarantine by the housing compound anyway as their application was rejected.

In essence, you were subjected to a 3-week prison sentence on arrival (14+7 days) for the crime of having committed an international trip. This sentence was later reduced to 7+3 and then finally rescinded just now.

Because of that and also being stuck in China for almost 3 years, I had not set foot in an international airport since. All trips during the pandemic were domestic and done through the other airport.

So it was with no small measure of excitement and trepidation that I decided to bike to the international airport and set foot in there once again.

Nice starting scenery downtown. The weather would change to become more and more spectacular

The city was starting to come back to life. I thronged my way through the busy streets of the downtown core and then took the ferry to the other side of the river. It wasn't long ago when even that was impossible. The lockdown in April and May basically separated the city in two parts and nobody could cross that river. Even months afterwards, you had to scan QR codes to enter the ferries and present negative PCR test results.

Bike path on the other side. I went on this for a bit.

The roads opened up wide on the Pudong side of the river and the traffic thinned out to basically nothing. After awhile I got bored of the main roads that the GPS was sending me on and took some side turns to find more interesting things.

This was one of such things, a building that stood out for some reason

Not sure what they are cracking down on but it's gotta be something.

Found a nice empty park to take a breather in. As a friend said, dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic is like jet lag. It will take a long time to process all this madness, but the calm scene here felt like a good start.

Looking at my map, I rerouted midway and decided it best to park the bike at a nearby subway station and take that to the airport, rather than bike the whole thing.

I was still technically in the recovery phase and trying to build up distances. As well the main concern was safety, if I left the bike parked overnight somewhere it might get stolen. Better to stop off somewhere and then swing back to a bicycle shop on the way back to see if I could get some repairs on the Montague.

That ended up being a really good call as there was one of my favorite restaurant chains right across the street from the subway station and I could easily lock up the bike to a pole there. I then enjoyed the delicious lunch and carried on by subway to the airport.

Once there in the main corridor between the transit hub and the actual airport, I nearly couldn't stand up straight. One flashback of memories after another hit me all at once. It had been almost 3 years since being in this airport. It was also in this exact place, maybe 6 years ago, that I had just landed in the middle of the night from the adventure of a lifetime in the Philippines. There had been a whirlwind of dating, including meeting a girl at the Manila airport right before my flight out. She would later become my ex . I was an exhausted wreck from that trip back then anyways. I'll never forget walking that corridor in the Pudong airport on the flight back with no way to access my bank accounts and yet somehow finding my way back home at 4am.

So today, walking that same corridor, it was pretty intense to say the least.

Arrivals off a flight breezing through with NO QUARANTINE

I was pretty lucky with the timing to have gotten this photo because as you can see from the board, there aren't many international flights operating these days. This was likely a flight from Amsterdam.

It is only Day 3 of the no quarantine policy and it will take ages before airlines can resupply the routes like they were before covid. That means ticket prices are through the roof.

All this certainly affects our trip that is planned for next month to Canada and the US. In fact we got lucky because we bought the tickets when the quarantine was still in effect and gambled correctly that they would scrap the policy before February.

As soon as they announced no quarantine, the airfares doubled overnight!

Domestic flights were also using this airport throughout the pandemic. It remained relatively busy the whole time, but the trips I took during covid were all from the other airport which is domestic only.

Apparently this guy had the same idea as me

Nice place to enjoy a coffee. This is where I had exited the airport in March 2020 before the border closed and just missed the mandatory quarantine orders by days. At that time Sophia had picked me up from the airport right here which you can read about in the previous journal

International flights are not quite picking up yet, but they will

After that, it was a subway ride back to where my bicycle was and then a ride to a shop that looked promising to fix some of the issues with the disc brakes. The weather became more and more gorgeous as the afternoon went on.

Most likely the remnants of a covid checkpoint

The bike shop had everything needed for a quick repair and it was done within minutes. The mechanic also pointed out that because this folding bike had been on the airlines a lot, it explained the warp disc and also the wobbly wheels. The solution? He basically said the spokes just need to be trued. This is quite valuable information actually and it explains why many mechanics in China won't do this job or won't say that's what the problem is. Truing spokes is quite long and tedious work and doesn't allow them to make a quick buck. They would rather not say this and it is very frustrating because I wasted a lot time and money replacing wheels in the past.

With this knowledge in hand, however, I plan on taking the bike back to Canada for my upcoming trip and will get the mechanics to do it over there along with some other fixes with the brakes, replacing the chain, changing tires, and a general tune up.

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 679 km (422 miles)

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