The more things change, the more they stay the same...or even get worse

The ice covering the Liangma River is thick enough to support the weight of this father and son

This is posted with the sincerest hope that subsequent events will soon render the unhinged rant contents below irrelevant and outdated. It will remain here for archival reasons. Please read on...

Life can be a continuous string of ironic occurrences. Take Beijing 北京…please (rimshot). On Wednesday, December 7, a day that will live in infamy, the Chinese government announced the sudden rollback of many of its Zero-COVID measures that had been in place for nearly three years. It was announced that we would no longer need to show proof of our negative coronavirus status in order to enter virtually all places of business or to ride public transportation (the the most significant exception being restaurants - though they could now resume indoor dining, proof of a negative swab within the prior 48 hours would still be required). The requirement for daily testing was lifted, and many testing centers were shuttered. From this point forward, China would begin to belatedly join the post-COVID-19 world.

You would think this news would result in an outpouring of economic activity, as pent-up demand would be released and people would resume going out and enjoying their lives to the fullest. Except that when we ventured out to a near-by shopping mall the first weekend following the day that would live in infamy, Beijing had taken (and continues to take) on even more of the air of a ghost town. For although most of the restaurants and shops were open for business, and health codes no longer had to be scanned at the mall's entrances, there were very few people there. According to my wife, the reasons were twofold: 1.) there has been an explosion of coronavirus cases, the true number of which the government is suppressing; and 2.) because of the authorities' seeming lack of preparations prior to the easing/lifting of many of the coronavirus restrictions, many people are afraid of venturing outdoors for fear of getting the virus. It turns out Shu-E was right (see this, this, this and this, to give just a few examples being covered by foreign media).

As I write this, it has been determined that both my daughter's classes and my Mandarin lessons will remain online until at least the end of this calendar year (though I suspect it won't be until after the Lunar New Year holiday early next year that we will return to in-person instruction). Effects are also being felt at my place of work. The Chinese government may have finally faced reality when it comes to the present coronavirus situation (thanks to Omicron and other variants), but breathing space has been wasted and opportunities squandered, and people will suffer the consequences. Time will tell what the long-term effect will be on us - unlike the locals, we've been fully vaccinated with more effective vaccines, and have already been exposed to the virus. But if we're told we need to temporarily leave China should the situation reach a critical level, I will probably ask to curtail this assignment and request a posting somewhere else in Asia (not that I would be given one - see below).

Enough already. If there was one thing that the pandemic has made apparent, it's that one of the main reasons (other than providing for my family) for changing careers in my mid-forties was having the opportunity to live overseas and travel to places I would otherwise never visit. As time has inexorably passed, the downsides of my line of work have become more onerous - the uprooting of home and possessions every 2-3 years; the frequent changing of my daughter's schools; the inordinate amount of time wasted on language "learning", employee evaluations and bidding for assignments; and the emphasis placed on maintaining one's "corridor reputation", the latter being crucial for landing those desired posts (and for getting promoted). But assuming you weren't having your finances drained by having to live in the Washington, D.C. area, there was always the excitement that came with experiencing a new country and culture, and the opportunity to see more of this world, especially in the limited time we have left in this lifetime. 

But then COVID-19 came along in the spring of 2020, and changed the rules of the game. Instead of taking Amber on a long-planned, much anticipated trip to Japan that summer, we found ourselves instead hunkered down in a small apartment in Ballston, having given in to relentless pressure from the front office in Addis Ababa which had decided the "voluntary" in "authorized voluntary departure" meant something other than the conventional dictionary definition. Six months were wasted doing virtually nothing, until I was finally allowed to return to Ethiopia in the fall (at least the girls got to spend time in Taiwan). Once back, however, the ongoing epidemic teamed up with civil strife to restrict us to the country's capital for the remainder of our tour. We did plan to go on a weeklong safari trip to nearby Tanzania in the spring of 2021, but pressure from the medical unit persuaded us to cancel, even though coworkers did almost the exact same excursion at the exact same time, and somehow didn't die from the coronavirus in the process. In fact, the only foreign travel undertaken during that period was an unplanned medical evacuation to South Africa courtesy of my heart, and even then I wasn't allowed to stay an additional day at my own expense to go on a safari. 

Rewind back to Ballston and the fall of 2020. It was bidding time again, and I was aiming for a Consular position in East Asia. In an ideal world, my decades' worth of experience living and working in Japan and Taiwan would have left me well-placed to compete for a posting in this region. But this is the State Department, and I have never mastered the arts of networking and self-promotion, nor built up the all-important "corridor reputation", where who you know will make or break the deal. Which is how I ended up with an out-of-cone position as an assistant general services officer in China - I was so desperate to return to Asia that I was even willing to go through FSI's Mandarin program again. But I was comforted in knowing that the pandemic would eventually run its course, and that I and my family would be able to experience Asia again, especially Japan (long overdue) and Taiwan, once we were resettled in Beijing.

Returning to the present, and the lives of most of my colleagues around the world have returned to something close to resembling a pre-2020 sense of normality, while here in China we have somehow stepped back in time - businesses closed, travel discouraged, school and work online. Way back in the spring of 1998, I made the fateful decision to leave my life in Tōkyō 東京 and return to the U.S. My two closest friends in Japan (both now dead) had left the country - one for family reasons, the other to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. The Japanese economy was at its lowest point since the bursting of the bubble at the start of the decade, and my employer appeared to be teetering on the brink of insolvency. My then-spouse urged me to consider a career change, preferably back in America. And so I (we) departed in May of that year, even though I was quite comfortable living in Tokyo. 

Without delving into the gory details, things didn't go as planned, and it wouldn't be long before I had lost almost everything I had worked hard to establish (save the sympathy - most of the blame lay with me and my actions). And though I would eventually relocate to Taiwan, remarry and start a family, in many respects closing the chapter on my life in Japan was the worst fucking mistake I have ever made.

And now it's beginning to appear accepting the posting to Beijing will be the second-worst. 

Enough of the self-pity party (the last thing I want to become is that person on the WeChat group moaning about how they can't get into their Beijing gym without proof of a negative COVID-19 test, but because all the testing centers in their area have closed, they have to drive "far away" and pay money to have a test done, and they have no choice but to do so because their gym won't refund the fees. Life is hell in the First World). On that first weekend following the day of infamy when we ventured outside in order to dine inside, we had lunch at Saizeriya サイゼリヤ, that Japanese Italian-style family restaurant chain favored by (in Japan) foreign English teachers living on a tight budget. Despite turning up at one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon on a cold but clear day, our table was one of only three or four that were occupied in the entire restaurant:

Where are the customers?:

There were a few families enjoying the outdoor ice skating rink, but normally this section of the mall (even during Zero-COVID) would be teeming with people:

Daytime temperatures have consistently been hovering at or only a few degrees above zero C (at night it's dropped to as low as -13° C/9° F, and will get colder as winter approaches and takes hold). Most of the time that's fine, but there have been a couple of days where the wind would painfully assault my face, so at Uniqlo ユニクロ I finally bought some protection. Amber thought I was pretty intimidating-looking, like I was going to knock off a convenience store, until she noticed the price tag on the top of my head:

As if the coronavirus-induced empty streets weren't eerie enough, a sandstorm blowing in from Mongolia on one particular Monday turned the city into a scene out of a dystopian fantasy film. Depending on which phone app I was looking at, the AQI measuring PM2.5 was either 337 or 500. The PM10 reading was at 1223 at one point. The photos below were not altered in any way - this is how it looked when I went to the embassy in the afternoon (it was also a chilly 2°C/36°F, which certainly did nothing to ease the gloom). Fortunately, the skies have been clear since then:

On a Thursday afternoon that never got above freezing (-2° C/28° F), I made the decision to walk the 40 or so minutes to the Sanlitun 三里屯 shopping district (a bike ride would've been brutal) to buy some stuffers for Amber's stocking. As expected, while many shops (and a few restaurants) were open, customers were few and far between:

Under Zero-COVID there would've been a lot of window shoppers milling about, even on a weekday. But we're in a brave new world now:

Public Tokyo comes complete with its own "Tokyo Casual" manifesto posted on its front glass. For a populace that supposedly hates Japan, things associated with the Land of the Rising Sun seem to be popular:

How deserted is Beijing at the moment? This is Xinyuan South Road 新源南路 as it appeared at around 1530 hours on that Thursday afternoon:

When it's -5°C/23°F outside and the river is covered with ice, it's doubtful anyone needs to be reminded of what not to do. Although here is China...:

I didn't see any prohibitions against walking on water, however:

With the temperature outside after dinner dropping down to -8°C/18°F it was time to break out the big gun jacket for an evening stroll with my daughter. Should it not be obvious by this point, I don't do cold very well:

Amber is more resilient that her father:

Cold weather or no cold weather, pandemic or no pandemic, we can't stay indoors all the time, so yesterday (Sunday) we ventured out of our immediate neighborhood for the first time in what seemed like ages. On the way to the metro station the girls investigated the ice pack atop the Liangma River:

Our daughter provided further proof that the ice could probably support my weight. I'm still wary of testing that hypothesis, however:

We alighted at Nanluogu Xiang Station 南锣鼓巷站 and began walking through the hutong 胡同 north of the station, looking to do some last-minute seasonal gift shopping. As expected, many stores were closed, but enough were open to justify visiting (and risk getting ill). And although this photo suggests otherwise, there were a lot of people braving the cold to crawl through the alleyways:

Plenty of snack stands were open, but surprisingly so were a few indoor dining establishments, with customers seated inside. Which made my wife suspect that heath code phone apps are not being rigorously checked at some eateries despite the 48-hour requirement:

We didn't attempt to test Shu-E's hypothesis, however, as we ended up snacking instead of dining. As a very good friend pointed out,  Amber has my eyes. However, that is most definitely her mother's stinky tofu 臭豆腐 that she's holding - the cold weather apparently kept the foul odor in check:

We elected to return home in a hired car, which may turn out to be a mistake, as the driver (though masked) kept coughing for the duration of the trip. At one point, he rolled down the window, pulled down his mask and let fly a massive spit gob onto the asphalt in true Chinese middle-aged man style. As soon as we got home, Shu-E insisted on washing all our gloves and hats. 

Christmas in Beijing. This town is coming like a ghost town...