depends on location and your persistence (if two are related, for an example a mother and a child) and luck of the draw

My friends that had to quarantine upon their return were mother, father, son, and daughter. I believe, based on photos I saw, they put the mother and daughter in the same room and the father and son in a different room. Both kids are minors.

My friend and his son (13-year old) had to quarantine separately. Their request to quarantine together was rejected.

Which airport or city district (if you know)?

Fuzhou.

They flew BOS-SFO-TYO on UA and connected onto ANA to Fuzhou.

Each of the 12 entry ports seems to have its own rules, which are in flux. I've heard Beijing is the strictest because they want to protect it at all costs. It would be nice to know which is the easiest though I would still do Shanghai myself based on the chance that they might let me leave the hotel early.

Thanks....

'China has agreed to resume visa issuance for South Korean students, employees, those with residence permits from early August'.

The entry/exit bureau never stopped issuing RPs, but my understanding is that since RPs aren't visas, even if they were issued after March 28, they aren't valid for entry yet. They merely let us stay here legally.

You are correct. My colleague in Shenzhen had his RP renewed last month. Perfectly normal process.

With a heavy heart, I can also report that you were correct that RPs are being cancelled by Visa for China offices when they issue a new M visa to enable stranded RP holders to return home in China which means the first thing to do when getting back into China will be to get a new RP. The Visa for China office in HK has been very upfront about this. I'll give you a full report of the progress of the process after I've been to the office tomorrow morning. But they made me put a line on the M visa application form acknowledging that my RP will be cancelled.

Any recent reports on the process for the Beijing flights that stop at a first point of entry?
Does everyone have to quarantine at the first point of entry or are some people let though to quarantine in Beijing? If some are being let through, any idea on the criteria?
If quarantined at the first point of entry, is the ticket still valid for the continuation to Beijing two weeks later?
If quarantined at the first point of entry, are checked bags claimed at the first point of entry?

I don't have any first hand reports, but several friends that did the drill told me that they had to deplane at the port of entry, get tested, wait for results, and then continue on to Beijing ~8 hours later. If I had to fly from a foreign country to Beijing, I would definitely buy a ticket to one of the other 11 gateways and do the quarantine there instead of this.

From people I know on the BRU-PEK flight with HU the first port of entry is XIY. They need to test and quarantine in XIY. If your final destination isn’t PEK, HU will give you a free ticket to your final destination in China. So for example one of my friends purchased BRU-PEK, but his final destination is PVG, HU flew him to PVG instead of PEK.

I flew the first United flight to China since the lockdown.
I think the process put in place at PVG is quite efficient and user friendly. If one is new China, the initial set up can be a bit challenging such as installing Wechat, and signed up to the online registration system before you can proceed leaving the plane, etc. The whole process is smart phone based.

My UA ticket was issued for Shanghai only, although my final destination was Beijing. At PVG border control, if your final destination is Beijing, there is an additional process for record keeping and there was another form I need to fill out. (took 5 more minutes after immigration and before retrieving the bags).

As far as I know, most of the incoming passengers from overseas need to go through isolated quarantine for 14 days. My HK colleagues was able to quarantine in Beijing for 14 days after flying directly from HKG to PEK, but I think that only applied to HK based passengers originating from Hong Kong. Transit to/from China is not allowed through HK at this point.

They drew blood and conduct throat and nasal swab tests on each passengers before sending us to the designated hotel/motel.

I did not have a choice of hotel, so ended up in a motel in downtown Shanghai (near Huai Hai East Road). The first group of 20 passengers from the same UA flight. The motel facility was fine. The only thing not working well was internet. I had difficulties accessing Microsoft Meeting and Zoom for work. VPN did not work well. There were no English language TV channels. I did not turn on the TV once other than the first day.

I used phone apps to order food and groceries. The whole experience is better than Uber eats and any of the of the US apps I had experience. The only drawback is the apps are in Chinese only. the food pictures helped.

Based on some of the information I managed to gather before the trip, I went to Costco to get instant coffee, tea, snack bars etc. for the quarantine. I also brought a yoga mat and downloaded phone apps for exercises. I am a runners, so running is important to me. Unfortunately, I could only run around the circle in my room for 100 loops a-day that equals to one single mile (according to my Garmin watch). Mentally I could not do more than 100 loops in such as small space, although physically I could do my daily average of 6-mile run if I was running outside or on a treadmill.

I ordered fruit, milk and snacks from the supermarket and were delivered within 30 min and most of the meals took between 15 min and 45 min pending on the distance between the restaurants and motel. There are a lot of choices for food and relatively cheap. Food were delivered to the motel front desk and a robot would make the delivery to your door. When the robot arrived at your room, the phone would ring and a computer generated voice would let you know the delivery was ready to be picked up outside of your room. Very cool, the whole process is contact less with human.

There was no services to the room, so you have to clean your own room during the 14-day stay.

There was no hardship at all based on my own low maintenance threshold.

Wow, sounds tough. I don't know if I can do it. I guess I'll resist the urge to travel outside of China for now, even if re-entry is not a problem. What you describe is just not something I would want to go through (drawing blood?!)

That said, if I were to go through it, I could think of the following to improve the experience:

- bring HDMI cable to hook up my computer to the TV (even if the TV channels were useless, can watch from a bigger screen)
- wifi hotspot
- plenty of booze