Do you think it's time for us to revive the visa and twov visa threads? I'm quite curious about my mom's 10 year visa. Currently, it appears to be useless, but maybe she can come over with it next January?

Yeah and maybe I’ll win the Mega Millions tonight.

She is currently eligible to apply for an S2 visa and visit you in China, as long as you have a valid work RP.

In fact, the following people would be eligible to apply for S2 based on a connection to you: spouse, parents, children under 18, parents of spouse.

Interestingly, it appears that she might even be eligible to apply her own RP once she is in China. Normally countries don't allow parents of work visa holders to live there indefinitely, but China does seem to be an exception to this rule.

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Thanks for the heads up. I'm planning on visiting her during Q4, so it's not imperative for her to come here in January. Ideally, I'd like her to be able to avail of her current visa (that she already paid for), but it's good to know that I can potentially sponsor her based on my own WP.

I was informed by the consulate that even thought I had 3 years remaining on my 10 year visa, I needed to apply for a new visa

Most consulates have a statement somewhere, saying that all visas issued before Mar (?) 2020 are automatically cancelled. If you apply for a new visa and they see the old one, they'll put a "cancelled" stamp over it.

Circuit breaker changes
 

Policy changes announced today that now require a 1 week cancellation if a flight has more than 4% of its passengers testing positive on arrival. It will be a 2 week cancellation if a flight has more than 8% of its passengers testing positive.

Still ridiculous, but good news in the context of zero Covid land’s policies.

HK implemented exactly the same thing a while ago. I guess Beijing were happy with the result.

IMO flight circuit breakers are much less problematic than community circuit breakers. Some compounds have over 10,000 residents, and a single positive case means bad news for all. On a slightly related note, I was initially worried about the "10 q-tips per test tube" practice (because all 10 get orange codes if 1 is positive...and it's conceivable that they live in ten different communities), but I haven't been burned yet. Single q-tip test tubes still exist. However, I don't know of any testing kiosks that always use them (e.g. my favorites usually give me my own test tube, but when they are running low, they switch to the 10/tube thing).

Here's a link to the official notice:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1H6L5yZmONp6FMJj5DiZLQ

Using percentages instead of fixed numbers is definitely a positive (baby steps) development.

Take a vacation, get static managed https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/06/china...hnk/index.html . These folks can’t catch a break.

When there's a compound lockdown, do other residents know who had the positive test, either officially (notice posted on door like IIRC Singapore did) or through the grapevine (lack of confidentiality)?

In the case of my compound, we always know who the positives are.
1. Their specific buildings get sealed
2. They are mentioned in our WeChat groups. I wouldn't call these "official", but the community leader (who works for the government) is a member

Social pressure in the Confucian sense (e.g. focus on the community) is a major part of the equation. This is why public shaming comes into play.

We haven't had any positives since the end of the big lockdown in my compound. Other places have, but the new lockdowns have been quite short in cases that I'm aware of.

That having been said, the current Sanya situation doesn't seem pleasant, based on what I've read thus far. Most of the 80,000 people locked down there don't live in Sanya, so they are stuck in hotel rooms. Apparently, their room rates were slashed by 50% per government order.

I heard that hotels are complying -- by giving guests 50% of the high season, winter rates. It's currently low season so the "discounted" lockdown rates are actually higher than the regular low season rates tourists originally booked.

Yeah but do they get EQNs though? :D