The Olympic Games begin in Beijing on Friday. Because of the fear of Corona, China hermetically shields the competitions. And the entry requirements are more rigid than ever before. This leads to crazy scenes. An experience report.
They stand at the gate in all white. Wrapped up from head to toe. In a full-body suit, with an FFP2 mask, protective goggles – even the shoes are covered. This is not how you imagine cabin crew on an intercontinental flight.
When I boarded “Air China” flight C560 at Charles de Gaulles Airport in Paris, the two ‘figures’ dressed in white measured my body temperature and nodded. You seem content. I don’t find out more. The flight’s destination is Beijing, where the Winter Olympics begin on Friday.
In general, this creates high spirits in the sports world. At the moment, however, things are looking a little different. The reason: the corona virus. More precisely, the rigid measures with which the Chinese government wants to prevent the omicron variant from spreading in the country.
Even before the passengers are allowed to board the plane to Beijing, fever is measured for the first time. (Source: t-online)
China is pursuing a zero-Covid strategy. For the games, this means that athletes, officials and journalists should move around in the closed bubble without contact with the outside world – in a hermetically sealed parallel world.
Hackl: “These games will be very different”
“These games will be very different from what we’ve seen before,” says Georg Hackl, for example, who will be a t-online columnist describing his impressions of China over the next two and a half weeks. I realize what “different” means in this context before I even set foot on Chinese soil.
Not only because I had to enter a wide variety of data on numerous portals, sometimes months in advance, which was sometimes very questionable from a German data protection point of view. No, there is no boarding service on flight C560 either. Instead, a transparent plastic bag with provisions is on my seat.
Take a temperature once, please: During the flight to Beijing, the body temperature of the travelers is checked several times. (Source: t-online)
The most important task of the flight crew is different: taking a temperature. The flight attendants wrapped in white pull out their thermometer twice more and scan my body temperature on my wrist. A “wish by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China,” according to an announcement that is difficult to understand. And the results? Keep them to yourself here too.
Suddenly someone coughs next to me and the people sitting around look around in shock – but false alarm. Someone choked while eating. Meanwhile, the reaction is not surprising: none of the passengers want to get infected with Corona on the plane.
Because, although everyone has submitted at least two negative PCR tests in the past four days and has been tracking their body temperature daily via the app for weeks, there have recently been positive corona tests again and again after arriving in China. Just like with ARD presenter Claus Lufen, who has been sitting in a four by four meter room in the quarantine hotel ever since.
China and the omicron problem
According to initial findings, Chinese vaccines are said to offer only minimal protection against omicron. That’s why the authorities there want to prevent the new variant from spreading in the country during the Olympic Games of all things.
When the first omicron cases appeared about two and a half weeks ago, officials said they had come in the mail from Canada. The message behind it is clear: the risk of the virus comes from outside. Since then, the nervousness has increased. The entry controls are correspondingly meticulous.
The reception committee at the airport in Beijing shows the arrivals the way. (Source: t-online)
At the airport in Beijing, several dozen Chinese greet the passengers – unsurprisingly, they also wear full body armor. Otherwise, the chic glass building is deserted. In general, the airport seems to be asleep. Apart from the charter flights to the Olympic Bubble, no aircraft from abroad have landed here for a long time.
The reception committee is not particularly communicative. It shows the way with hand signals, but otherwise remains taciturn. This changes abruptly when I want to take a picture. And not from a specific person – who wants that – but simply from the scenery. “No photo, no photo”, a tall man tells me unequivocally. For once, he wears a turquoise mask and blue shoe covers.
When I fill out my data on an oversized touch screen monitor, the said man looks particularly closely over my shoulder – but then also helps me with the input. It is about the customs health declaration. From a German point of view, it gets a bit strange. For example, the Chinese authorities want to know whether there have been any corona cases in the home community or in the residential area in the past two weeks.
We continue through the airport building, where four additional stations await before entering the Olympic bubble – including a corona test, in which the stick is pushed down my throat so far that my eyes water. But hey, that’s part of it. Too bad that a picture is taken immediately afterwards.
Overall, the arrival procedure at the airport is amazingly quick. After less than an hour and a half, the bus takes you to Zhangjiakou. There are, among other things, the biathlon and ski jumping competitions – and my hotel. The journey drags on. The bus takes about five hours for the approximately 200 kilometers.
With blue light escort on the empty highway
In the meantime, a man in the already familiar white costume gets on. In the hour and a half that he is on board, he counts the dozen or so passengers three times – and asks about the hotel reservations. He gets off the bus in a brand-new but also deserted parking lot in the middle of nowhere – and the door behind him remains locked. The bus stands for about three quarters of an hour and we can’t get out.
At some point we continue – initially at what feels like walking pace – on a seemingly deserted motorway behind a police car with blue lights flashing to the hotel. When I finally get there, I have to hand in my passport and accreditation – and I’m supposed to wait eight hours in the hotel room for the result of my corona test, which I did about six hours ago. A strange noise, a kind of hissing, keeps coming out in the hallway. Tssst, tssst, tssst. Later I learn that the hallway has been disinfected. A standard procedure. The Chinese leave nothing to chance here.