What does the (crazy) entry into the Chinese health bubble look like?

In Beijing and Zangjiakou,

It is 7:05 a.m. local time on Monday when Air France flight AF 128 hits the tarmac at Beijing airport with a good part of the French delegation on board, but also athletes and staff from Haiti, Canada, Germany, Austrian, as well as officials and journalists. Seen, teeming, through the window during the approach phase, the Chinese capital is the antithesis of what awaits us in a few seconds at the airport, empty, cut off from the rest of the country, as if abandoned. On the screen of our seat, the camera located at the front of the device retransmits images that one would swear straight out of a bad science fiction film.

We see two people wrapped up in white overalls guiding the pilots to the parking area, in the pale pallor of the dawning day. The scene is lunar. It would be almost amusing if it did not foreshadow all that we are going to experience during these Winter Olympics, in a country which prides itself on having contained the virus for the past two years and sees foreigners as possibly bringing evil . Because that’s what it’s all about: since our arrival in China, not a second goes by without us feeling perceived as plague victims. The virus penetrating the healthy body, neither more nor less. And what follows will prove us right.

The straws in the nose, the karcher and the Bronzés

Throughout the signposted route supposed to guide us to the shuttles specially chartered for the Games, the instructions are given bluntly. ” Sit down there. Stand up, straight ahead, faster! “. No doubt, the hundreds of cosmonauts in protective suits are on their toes. After passing through customs without incident and having our temperature taken, an elevator awaits us. Inside, the rule is as clear as the markings on the ground: no more than four inside, and above all, please turn your back.

Then comes the dreaded ordeal of the double PCR test with homemade sauce. The first, in the nose, is sunk to an abyssal depth, the speck disappearing almost entirely from our sight. The second, deep throat version, is inserted into the throat. “Go Ahhhh”, the young man repeats to us. “Grrrbblbbbllll”, will he be entitled as an answer. Internally, we would like to play it Jean-Claude Dusse in Les Bronzés are skiing: “I’m going to plant it for you, me, the straw”.

And again, we complain, but on arrival the results were negative. This was not the case for 119 fellow galleys, who tested positive upon their arrival at the airport and were immediately placed in solitary confinement. Among them, a handful of athletes forced to immediately isolate themselves in their rooms while waiting for two consecutive negative tests to hope to live their Olympic dream. The most famous catch? The American bobsledder Meyers Taylor, triple Olympic medalist, who keeps a tiny hope since she does not enter the competition until February 13.

The health walk continues, and while we are invited to collect our luggage and board the buses, the airport staff disinfects everything in its path with great blows from a carcher. Everything here is vaporized, from the airport seats to the windows of the coaches, which drip long white streaks and prevent you from admiring the landscape. But whatever, the worst is over. On the highway, as we get closer to Zangjiakou, the city located about 200km from Beijing where the biathlon, cross-country skiing and freestyle skiing events will take place, not a hairy person or almost. In the distance, the black mountains are emerging in an inhospitable landscape as possible. The few Olympic frescoes that line the highway do try to brighten up the picture, but it’s lost in advance.

Shining version Zangjiakou

After 4 hours of travel and two pee breaks in desert areas, the huge hotel complexes built well before the pandemic and initially supposed to welcome hundreds of thousands of tourists, stand on the horizon. There, impossible to say if it is the fruit of our mind now formatted by the ambient “glaucitude” or the gray and threatening sky which dominates the region, the fact remains that the whole gives a strange cinematographic impression. A mix between the Grand Budapest Hotel and the huge scary building in The Shining. Welcome to the bubble of Zangjiakou

At the hotel, again and again the same people in combinations. They haunt (and disinfect 24/7) the long corridors that still smell of fresh paint and bleach, while others unpack boxes and put the finishing touches to the latest works. Here, an important clarification is needed: far be it from us to want to knock out these locals under wraps who, once out of the airport, let’s say it, do everything to make the life of the “bullards” as painless as possible. . And their task is co-lo-ssal. In truth, we are all in the same boat. Indeed, these thousands of volunteers, mostly students, entered the bubble in January and will not leave until April, after the Paralympic Games and a final 21-day quarantine. Cheer up friends!

Facing the Planet and Internet Censorship

Before receiving the results of our PCR tests, we are asked to remain locked in our room. It would almost be good news if it weren’t scorchingly hot inside. After a short phone call to reception, we are told that we cannot adjust the temperature ourselves. Never mind, we then open a window so as not to suffocate. Outside, the thermometer reads -15° C but the feeling is closer to -8000. The fight against global warming will have to wait.

The one against internet censorship too, notice. Not that we doubted for a single second the seriousness of the Beijing regime in its war against freedom of expression on social networks or private messaging, but to experience it IRL, like any ordinary Chinese citizen, is quite funny. Indeed, once connected to the wifi of the hotel, impossible to access Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, WhatsApp or Signal. So much so that we had to wait until we were at the press center the next day to give a sign of life to our loved ones (In the meantime, the installation of a VPN will have all the same overcome the technological barriers of the regime +1 for the free world).

So it’s like that, cut off from the world – and once sure that our tests have not revealed the slightest trace of Covid – that we head to the restaurant where two people are waiting for us. One is responsible for spraying our hands with disinfectant, the other for giving us plastic gloves that must be worn at the table. So, solo between two sheets of Plexiglas, we warm up our stomachs, hearts and minds with a plaster of rice, pickled mushrooms and some delicious ravioli. The best time of the day, certainly, before returning to our bed for a well-deserved good night’s sleep. And to dream of the new oropharyngeal test that awaits us when we wake up. Jean-Claude Dusse, I promise, tomorrow we’ll release your line.