August | 2021 | In Foreign Places

Six weeks in China! Although given my first two weeks were in a quarantine hotel, I’m only about a month into the real world.

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The only interesting part of my quarantine days? Daily arrival of an inflatable octopus.

So what’s my real world like?

It takes time to really get going, especially in COVID times. There’s a lot of work to do first.

Such as?

Well, there’s eating. In order to enter a restaurant or a grocery store, I need to show my green health code, which says I’m COVID-free. To get a green code, I need a phone and a WeChat account.

WeChat, if you don’t know, is the app you have to have in China. It’s a messaging app, but inside the app are countless mini-programs. So before I enter a store or a metro station or some other indoor space, I open WeChat, click to display my code, and then I’m allowed inside (Italy recently adopted something similar).

Inside that restaurant, I might also use WeChat to scan a QR code for the menu, order my food, and then use WeChat Pay to pay the bill. At a restaurant, grocery store, or paying back a colleague for your share of the lunch bill, NO ONE uses cash. It’s all about the WeChat Pay.

Do it yourself stir-fry pack?

So many fungi!

Some of the available grocery store items to purchase—once you’re allowed inside!

Because of security concerns, I can’t have WeChat (a Chinese app) on my US Government issued phone. So before I could set foot in a store or a restaurant, I needed a personal phone with a Chinese SIM card. Then, because WeChat Pay doesn’t work with American banks, I needed a Chinese bank account. Only after I had a bank account connected to my WeChat, had downloaded the health code mini-app within WeChat, set up my health code profile, and gotten my final post-quarantine negative COVID test, could I start to live life some degree of normality.

Within my apartment, normality includes accessing American websites. For that, I need a VPN, essential for getting past the Great Firewall of China and accessing many western websites.

I have three VPNs, based on pre-departure advice that different VPNs would work differently in different cities and at different times and there was no “One VPN to Rule Them All.”

Of the three I invested in, one won’t work at all, one was working on all my devices but suddenly started causing one iOS device to freak out, one seems to be working fine on all devices.

But WeChat doesn’t play nice with VPNs so when I inevitably forget to turn off my VPN and I try to enter a grocery store, WeChat doesn’t work and I panic, thinking I’ve lost my precious green health code.

After the bank and phone and WeChat and health code were all set up I could focus on settling into my home and neighborhood. Currently I only have two suitcases of my own stuff with me. A shipment of 250 lbs. is en route from D.C. via air, and the rest of my things, last seen in Kazakhstan, are on the literal slow boat to China. Even when they arrive (supposedly by mid-Sept) I can’t claim them until the Chinese government has issued my Diplomatic ID, which may take a few more weeks.

In the meantime the apartment comes with all the basics for living: kitchen things, beds, bedding, towels, furniture. I also got to sample two complimentary weeks of maid and breakfast service. Before having my final post-quarantine Covid test, I wasn’t allowed to go to the breakfast buffet and my breakfast was instead delivered by a robot.

After the trial period I had to decide if I wanted to invest in those services going forward. Everyone who knows how frugal I am knows I was ABSOLUTELY not going to get maid service. I am just one person, relatively tidy, and I have a robo-vacuum (does not deliver breakfast). Who needs a maid?

Then I tried to wash my own sheets. They’ve given me a king sized bed and a compact clothes dryer. Do you know how long it takes to dry king sized sheets in a Euro-size dryer? Suddenly $9 a week for a year’s worth of twice weekly light cleaning + trash disposal + towel and bed linen change seems like a good idea.

But I ABSOLUTELY was not going to get the breakfast buffet. Maybe occasionally I could grab breakfast but—oh, what? Breakfast is like $20 a pop or you can pay $125 for an entire year’s worth of weekend breakfasts? Fine. But just weekends. ABSOLUTELY not the daily breakfasts. Oh, but for another $92 I can get breakfasts EVERY SINGLE DAY? Which means even if I just grab a couple of pieces of fruit to go that’s cheaper than buying ONE banana in the consulate cafeteria each day?

Selections from the Breakfast Buffet

Jesus Christ. Apparently I am now a person who lives life with maid service and a daily breakfast buffet. A reminder how quickly one’s definition of “normal” changes. Also, I am probably going to die of bacon poisoning.

Anyway, with all this activity, and some killer heat, I haven’t explored quite as much as I’d like, but I take at least a few hours every weekend to make myself try something/somewhere new. So far I’ve checked out a little bit of my own neighborhood, Pearl River New Town, aka 珠江新城, aka Zhūjiāng Xīnchéng: