What follows is a summary of my impressions of the cycling trips during the pandemic.

1.   The first two years were strange in a way.  We saw some short-lived success, if you could call it that, from China's zero covid policy.  This led to a temporary form of normal life and enabling these domestic cycle tours to happen.

2.  At the same time, the tours had vastly reduced adventure and were a shadow of my former trips.  This especially rang true with all the restrictions and constantly dealing with locals who weren't friendly to foreigners.  It was kind of shitty cycling to be honest.  But there was some fun to be found.  The HIIT classes also supplemented the trips otherwise I would be bored out of my mind due to the lack of challenge.

3.  The vaccines ended up being false hope.  They were not the ticket to restored normalcy, borders re-opening, and international trips.  As time went on, the Chinese vaccines proved to be useless in stopping covid.  Not only that, but 30% of the population (mostly elderly) didn't take the vaccines anyway.  This was one of the contributing factors to the strict lockdown which later happened in 2022.  

None of this really made sense.  China goes around and starts a pandemic for whatever reason.  They have all the state tools to prevent it getting out to the world, but they allow  international flights out of Wuhan and the virus spreads anyway.  Later, they lock down Wuhan and find a way to contain covid domestically while the rest of the world ends up with the pandemic.  With this time they bought, they could end up developing a vaccine which they do, but the vaccine ends up being useless.  The two year opportunity, if you could even call it that, is totally squandered   

Enter 2022.  The rest of the world moves on from covid while China goes into strict lockdowns and other increasing draconian restrictions.  

A lot of planning was done during the infamous Shanghai lockdown of which you can read all about here.