The Courtyard Xujiahui is a pretty good hotel. When I was in Shanghai, that’s the hotel we used for the visiting foreigners.

Many thanks for this list!

A few thoughts prior to digging deeper:
1. As I intimated in my previous post, Jing'an is a slightly dangerous label these days because it encompasses the Portman/Kunlun (former Hilton) as places within a stone's throw of Shanghai Station
-I could handle Changshou Road or Hanzhong Road for 7 nights, but further north is pressing it
2. Speaking strictly in terms of location, it's hard to go wrong with anything in Xuhui, including Xujiahui
3. Huangpu would certainly be fine if I was a tourist on a 2-3 night stay, but food/transportation options are poor if staying longer, and whether or not you find the Bund/Yuyuan to be desirable, the Westin, HOTB, W and Ren are actually in kind of bad neighborhoods
4. Ji and Kunlun have acceptable brand standards; Jinjiang, City, and Campanile are more hit or miss, though I will not write any off based on brand alone
5. The Peace (not on the list) actually is on the Bund. The problem is that you'd end up spending $150 per day on food, so even if the room rate was Y500 (it isn't), total cost is higher than almost everywhere else in Shanghai (well, setting aside Y2500+ properties)

I suppose anyone reading this thread knows this stuff, but please feel free to comment on or challenge my opinions. I am flexible

I've spent some nights there, it's very basic but not too shabby.

I love the view from this hotel, but I think location-wise it's suboptimal for a quarantine.

I always stay St Regis for the location, and if I want a view the W. Hyatt on the bund is kind of old and the light switches are annoying. It takes me 5 minutes to figure out how to turn the lights off. I don’t believe any of these hotels require you to quarantine in your room. You are free to roam the city mostly.

It looks like I can’t enter Shenzhen freely until Xiamen leaves my travel record (14 days) so looks like I’ll be galavanting around Shanghai for two weeks getting into trouble.

Wait, do I read correctly that you're not allowed to do that +7 at home now? [MENTION=4346]moondog[/MENTION] did you get rid of your lease?

You can definitely still do the +7 at home. In fact, one of my friends is doing home isolation this week and is free to pretty much do whatever he pleases as long has he remains in Shanghai, and avoids certain venues. The wildcard is that not all residential compounds are so lenient. Take travelinmanS as one example, and my colleague in Gubei as another. In the case of the latter, simply going to FamilyMart was a big deal. The guards themselves were the biggest obstacle, but they also placed his name on a well publicized "orange list" in order to encourage neighbors to keep an eye on him. As such, he kept his outside excursions to a minimum.

The guards and residents of my community have always been chill in the past, so doing my +7 there might be an okay option. That having been said, I think staying in a hotel that has a non-vigilante reputation with respect to these matters is probably a worthwhile pursuit.

If all goes according to plan, I will be released from the 14 day quarantine the day before my birthday, and I hope to get outside. I realize that I will presumably have an orange code that will prevent me from entering various shopping malls or my gym (Portman), but am happy to forego these privileges.

https://radiichina.com/students-arou...dies-in-china/

More expository journalism than anything but this is pretty crazy. Imagine doing a year of your degree and then you're in limbo for Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, and goodness knows how long...

I don’t get why people are clamoring to get into China. Time to cut losses and move on. The 2019 China is nowhere close to coming back anytime soon.

​​​​​​Based on the article, which struck me as overly dramatic mind you, the students simply want to complete their degrees. That seems reasonable to me.

Based on the article you are right but GloballyServiced is also right. I left the other day from PVG and the whole experience tells me they plan on being shut for a long, long time. Shops completely closed, everyone with any contact with the planes coming from abroad is wearing the spacesuit, there were about 4 international flights leaving the entire afternoon/evening. They are all in on Zero Covid, they couldn’t care less about international students coming in, nor are they renewing passports of their own citizens effectively prohibiting their travel abroad.

Covid isn’t going anywhere, the government won’t accept even one case. Therefore every case is imported from abroad. This means it’s going to be years and years before anything remotely normal is back.

I think China's zero-COVID policy is simply unsustainable in the long term. Over the last several months, there have been prominent Chinese scholars that have said China will need to find a better balance and live with COVID so people can resume their normal lives. I think one of those scholars even wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. I think after the Beijing Olympics and depending on the COVID situation in the US, there might be a chance for some sort of opening in 2022. China is probably looking for some sort of vaccine recognition from foreign countries and will work on some sort of path forward. Maybe 2023 is the year we'll be well on our way to normality?

Life is quite normal for the 99% that don't want/need to come or go.

Of course it’s not unreasonable but if you’re a smart human dealing with an unreasonable situation you need to be smart enough to move on and cut your losses.

In China you can still be tossed into quarantine, or have your children tossed into quarantine, without a moments notice. More and more people are noticing that this is ridiculous, not that it matters.

I, for once, want to go there to reunite with my wife.
Is it time for me to cut losses and move on?