I am unable to provide an official answer, but my overseeer really wants me to stay close to her
-hopping on a plane to Beijing (or anywhere) would be a stupid idea
-I'm not inclined to press the "within Shanghai" limits; let's go with "within Xuhui"

It’s 9:11pm and I just got a phone call from the Chinese government demanding I arrive at a hospital before midnight for a covid test because I was in Changsha 7 days ago where they had 1 positive covid test.

TargetDX is a solid hour from SFO. I was cool with their location because I stayed in MTV for three days.

Target DX and Apostile are in San Jose. I would definitely recommend Apostile for anyone vaccinated with the Chinese vaccines as they offer PCR and the antigen test sans N protein for about $300 if you use a coupon. In my post above, however, I meant the two in SF proper which are both more expensive but are also much easier to reach from the airport via BART.

Target is the best option for our friends who drive up from Los Angeles.

I did Apostle a few weeks ago in SJ. It's BART-able (+VTA light rail). The process took around 45 mins from when I arrived. Despite the fact that you have an appointment, it's first-come-first-served. The price was also the best of all the options.

I'm in quarantine for another some days (not sure, not counting), and then I'll have a week here before travelling to PEK.

Target is only $350, but getting to/from there is not easy.

Wow, harsh.

I wonder what happens if you don't comply.

You might not get an answer since those who didn't comply are nowhere near a computer now :o

Yeah, not complying does not strike me as a good strategy.

Today is the 2 year anniversary of the day I left China for the last time. I have not returned, and I wonder when I will be able to. Spring of 2022 seems out of the question. Fall of 2022? 50/50 is probably optimistic at this point.

Unless you have something very special to offer China or have a job here that they seem as necessary, I don't think you'll be getting in for a few more years. 2025 is my bet.

how do you get coupons?

Google apostle diagnostic coupons

Thank you! ^

This drill is not easy, though the frontline people are really nice. I'll see you at Abbey Road tomorrow, and provide details YariGuy

Here you go. GTranslate as needed
https://www.apostledx.com/index.php?...ormation_id=12

Alarmism about this is weird. I was in Xi'an a couple weeks ago and got a similar phone call today — they tell you where to go and you do a free, quick test, assembly-line style. Technically I was supposed to do it a week after return, but strangely no jackbooted thugs came to take me away over it.

1. get new RP
2. fly back to USA (only $1000)
3. ask the SF consulate if I was good
4. bought 857 for $2300 (that used to fetch us business class, but I was upgraded, thanks to one of guys here)
5. 3 days in Mountain View
6. $350 for the Covid test in (very south) San Jose
7. $1000 to stay in a "hotel"
8. I am not allowed to go anywhere until 10/30

Is step 3 still necessary?

I'm talking about domestic travel here. International is obviously another kettle of fish.

My total cost was around $80K for 13 months in China.

Maybe 2035 whenever the emperor lasts.

Don't think (3) is still necessary for RP holders.

It could get worse, say China increases quarantine days from 14 to 21 or 28 (many places already require more than 14 days)

My ticket costs 275K UA miles in J on the outbound SFO-PVG, or $22,000 cash or $8,000 in Y. So I obviously redeemed miles. The return costs 250K miles or $3800 in Y. I decided to pay cash and got almost guaranteed upgrade.

A 13-month trip to China (Aug. 2020-Sept. 2021) costs me about $80K. Spent about $40K for 400 nights mostly at Marriott hotels in 35 cities. Another $40K for food, air/rail/taxi/car/sightseeing, personal stuff including a new iPhone Pro Max and a nice Huawei laptop, and of course, red envelopes for relatives and friends in China.

With a budget of $7K or 40000-50000 CNY per month in China, you would live very comfortably. I almost always get upgraded to executive suite at Marriott hotels.

He explicitly told me that 3 was not necessary in his email that I showed you guys. The thing is, if I didn't maintain contact with him, I wouldn't have been cleared to leave. He was very quick to respond, and told me exactly what I needed to do...apart from the second health code I got at SFO (UA is on top of this).

I flew Y on the trip to the US (AA), and it was pretty nice. The food was okay, and everyone in economy got 3 seats to themselves.

Flights are empty out of Shanghai at least. No reason to buy business unless your company is paying or you really enjoy spending coin. Premium economy is an even worse deal as the armrests don’t raise so you can’t even get the poor man’s first class experience that economy ex China delivers these days.

Another case of a HKG transit, this time in Beijing:

??10?29???2??????? 1??????????1????????????

确诊病例2：亚美尼亚籍，10月24日从土耳其出发，10月26日先后经阿联酋和中国香港到达北京首都机场，海关经健康 筛查并进行核酸检测后，经闭环管理送至集中隔离酒店。10月26日报告核酸检测结果为阳性，10月27日转 至定点医院，当日诊断为无症状感染者。10月29日出现鼻塞、发热症状，综合流行病史、临床表现、实验室检 测和影像学检查等结果，诊断为确诊病例，临床分型为轻型。

An Armenian national, departed Turkey on 24 October, transiting the UAE and Hong Kong arrived at PEK on 26 October. I guess HKG isn't really segregating the China flights from the other flights so there is no way to enforce the no transit rule as long as the flight into HKG allows you to board.

I was pretty sure there was a previous notice banning transit via HKG to China. It was on the HKIA notices page, it does not appear now:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b61647f6bc.png

I'm pretty sure transit to China is still forbidden:

https://www.hongkongairport.com/en/i...523424631510-3

It's just that the enforcement is being left to the check-in agent at the port of origin so there are probably many places from which you can board in violation of this rule, especially if your carrier is not Cathay.

As we know from the Australian-NZ travel bubble, segregating red and green flights is a crucial part of a viable bubble, unless of course if Hong Kong is only planning a land-based travel bubble with China.

The problem with that is, wouldn’t transit security at HKG also be able to enforce the no-mainland-transit rule? Show up at any of the transit security checkpoints with a boarding pass for a mainland flight and get turned away and start proceedings to be returned to your port of origin would be the way to do it if they were serious about that restriction.

Do they even check the boarding pass at transit security?

From what I've read about the hk-mainland travel bubble plan, mainland flights are going to be completely segregated from the others. Supposedly the new system will be in place by December 1 on a hybrid basis, and fully implemented in February.

Yes, hopefully once the new segregation is implemented we will stop reading about these positive cases that transited Hong Kong.

TIL that you can qualify for a green code to China as a visitor in Korea by staying there for 28 days:

https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/cekor//chn/lsfw/t1905551.htm

You certainly used to need a boarding pass to be able to go through transit security, checked by both a human and read by machine. Unless the passenger had a 2nd boarding pass...

Yes but they may not be checking the destination on the boarding pass, could just be checking the validity. We've had multiple cases of people transiting HK to China who ended testing positive, that means even more cases probably have made it through who didn't test positive since the positivity rate of inbound passengers is less than 1%.

The proposed segregation might finally put an end to these transits.

China is definitely going to be segregated. Based on the SCMP article, it appears that they are trying to figure out a way to add Australia and Singapore to the mix. From an industrial engineering perspective, this is a daunting task unless the solution entails mixing those three groups of passengers. I'm just happy that they are finally making a serious attempt to pull this off. I would love to be able to go to Thailand, but Hong Kong is an excellent consolation prize.:D

If it’s anything like the Macau setup, they won’t let us foreigners living on the mainland participate in any scheme they setup.

Agreed. Unless any of us becomes the CEO of Apple during the next week, we're relegated to the February edition.

The China to Hong Kong border is already open for foreigners (first arrival on 15 September) without quarantine. But only HK residents can fly in from China, the rest of us have to do the land border crossing from Shenzhen, Macao or Zhuhai unless you fancy staying in a quarantine hotel for 7/14 days.

Of course going the other way entails 14+7 days of quarantine and monitoring. But word is that this may change starting from mid-December with a strict quota and then expanding further in February.

If you can overlook the quarantine, going from Hong Kong to China is actually surprisingly easy. You don't even need a pre-flight PCR test, just get your ticket to a mainland city and off you go. Or you can cross at one of the two land borders but that requires a prior booking (just a formality as not that many people cross due to the quarantine) and a PCR test before crossing.

Not necessarily. From what I've seen the big difference between Dec and Feb is that only business travel would be allowed at first. So if you can somehow qualify your travel *to* China as business-related then it could work earlier than Feb.