Shanghai and COVID

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Last week Max and I went to Shanghai. It was nice to get away although considering the climate here it was a little nerve wracking. It was also a long time coming. I’ve been in China for almost 7 years and I had somehow never visited Shanghai so it was great to finally make it. And of course we saw some great stuff while we were there.

First up is all the great stuff we saw. We were there for three full days so we had plenty of time to see things, although it still somehow didn’t seem like enough. Each day obviously started with coffee then we went to check out that day’s attractions. The first day we saw the Jing’an and Chenghuang temples then took a sightseeing bus tour near the Bund. The second day we went to the museum of the first CPC national conference and wandered around the Sinan mansions. The third day we finally made it to the Yu Gardens and took a boat tour on the Hunagpu River. And before we left on Thursday we went to Sun Yat-sen’s old house. Interspersed in there we also had plenty of time for more coffee and meals and all that. I really enjoyed everything we saw, even though it was just a small piece of Jing’an district.

What I didn’t enjoy was always worrying if we’d be able to go places or even get back to Shenzhen. China right now is a hodgepodge of various codes and apps that you need so that you can show people your health code and get COVID tests so that you can go places. Unfortunately they often don’t quite work right for foreigners. I was unable to set up the Shanghai code in WeChat and had to use the version in Alipay for example. And don’t get me started on the garbage fire that is the Guangdong app. Overall the system seemed much better in Shanghai than it is in Shenzhen and except for the first night before our airport COVID test came through we never had any trouble. And no rules seemed to change while we were there, stranding us in Shanghai.

Unfortunately the codes would not sync for me. Which meant that as the trip went on I watched my Guangdong code from 24 hours to 5 days. We did manage to get back into out complex without any trouble, although it took a while. But when I woke up Friday morning to go to work I saw my code was 7 days. My airport test in Shenzhen had not gone through. After poking around I saw that I hadn’t entered my data right in the app we had used for the test in the airport (which is different from both the apps I use for a test in my complex and for a test near work) so it did not register. Which meant I couldn’t go to work. So close yet so far.

So the trip overall was mostly good. It was definitely great to get out of Shenzhen and see a new place. I found quite a lot to like about Shanghai, or at least the small part of it we saw. But it was definitely hampered a bit by the worry that we’d get stuck in Shanghai or have trouble getting back into Shenzhen because of our health codes.

This post just touched on the trip but I will write more about the trip and what it’s like living in China with all the zero COVID policies later.

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