Guided arrival airport experience...

But it was legit and as a foreigner entering the country of outbreak origin, I couldn't have felt safer.

[many thanks to my friend Becca from @halfhalftravel for inspiring me to post this excerpt from our conversation on July 30 about our recent flight to China.]

After landing and arriving at our gate, we were immediately instructed to (more like ordered to) remain seated - and you've previously flown in China before, you know usually at this point most passengers have already bolted upright and made the mad dash of grabbing their belongings, seemingly w one foot already out the fuselage door hahah.

But that didn't happen!  Every single soul was still and silent as our plane was boarded by a small army of hazmat-suited customs agents who conveyed next-step instructions on how to proceed.  They stressed the importance of and reminded us to scan a QR code that was provided even before we had boarded our flight at our place of departure (it was basically a standard customs entry form confirming our personal information and travel history of the two weeks prior, digitalized and conveniently processed w/o having to pen/paper anything).

After taking that first step off of the plane and into the jet bridge, I could immediately smell alcohol - smell and also feel mist on my face from what I could only presume to be a recently sprayed sterilizing substance to minimize unwanted pathogens from an incoming intl flight (my son yawned and even opened his mouth for a whole second longer to take in some of the edible air for fun).

Walking into the terminal was eerie at first.  How many sneezes and micro droplets of contaminated liquid are being carried by the aircon right now, how many symptomless infected persons have walked through this very space before us, what if Secondborn drops his helicopter toy onto the floor and then puts the propellers in his mouth again, I thought in a split second. But as we turn to continue through the terminal, I see it up ahead - a massive assembly of hazmat-suited figures w all eyes on us, dutifully awaiting our arrival w one main conduit for queuing, branching off to different stalls and sections for various stages of processing.

We were greeted (w extra "heyyys" and hand waving for my double-masked and face-shielded two-and-half-year-old) and told to present our own QR codes that presented our completed forms for review.

A lot of personal questions followed (and were gladly answered) as the middle-aged gentlemen customs agent flicked his blue nitrile-gloved fingertip up and down a tablet device and spoke with a distinct and boisterous voice through a KN95 facial mask, a protective collar that extended up from his Tyvek suit by DuPont to cover half his face, a generic face shield, and a plastic screen that acted as a protective median between us: how long have you been in Taipei, where and w whom did you live, where did you travel to within the city and province (hahh), anyone in your family or immediate circle of people who you most often socialized with travel internationally, where do you live in China, what do you do for work, what is your relationship to Simona M., on and on… and the whole time, all I could focus on was fuck, they have touchscreen nitrile gloves!

We were then directed to another station and asked to present our QR codes again, this time to retrieve biohazard sterilized bags and viles w our names and ID info printed on the labels.  Multiple signage with arrows posted almost anywhere our eyelines could be directed us to walk a long ways through a maze of makeshift pathways and turns until we reached a door that led us outside into the scorching heat.  A temporary mobile unit had been separately erected outside and away from the terminal building, complete w its own air circulation and cooling systems and more crews of heavily protected medical personnel directing traffic of returning travellers to get their nucleic acid samples taken.

W a slight tilt back of my head, two probes ultra longgg and thin were inserted into both nostrils of my nose (kind of like tiny brushes for stainless steel reusable straws but even smaller and thinner than a toothpick) - surely they didn’t touch my eyeballs but it felt like they tickled them.  Not only were they in deep, they were left inside for maybe six to eight eternal seconds before being removed and placed inside my labeled tubes for testing.  And expectedly, they only swabbed my son’s mouth but vigorously so, making sure to get the insides of his cheeks, tongue, and gum linings as well.

As we re-entered the terminal building afterwards, the cool air-conditioned environment was a welcome feature to beat the heat of summer in Shanghai.  We navigated the same maze w ease and excitement because we knew the tough part of our arrival and airport experience was over w.  Strolling through the rest of the colossal and near-empty airport brought back a flood of memories (especially of the duty-free collection area where we used to spend hours in line getting our 中华 cigarettes and shit).  As devoid of people as it was, the final customs and immigration area had teams of hazmat-suited personnel spraying the air above and below w pressurized containers and leaf-blower-like machines to sterilize where most people gathered and passed through before heading out to baggage claim carousels.

Thankfully, our suitcases (and one carefully wrapped up Giant balance bicycle for kids) were waiting for us as we descended down the escalator (yes, I took our baby stroller down an escalator, what).  

When we finally went out the exit, additional protected personnel directed us to different waiting areas that corresponded to various provinces of our final destinations.  Another scan of our QR codes confirmed our identity and our address of residence, as they updated their chartered bus name lists and asked us to wait for the next available transport to our quarantine hotels.  I heard accents and dialects from Zhejiang and Anhui Provinces, but our Jiangsu waiting area had the most occupants.  And in this section, we had Chinese nationals who were returning to the mainland not just from Taipei but from Hong Kong, from Paris and Salt Lake City, and other intl cities that I didn’t bother to ask anymore because my kid was running around the entire area like a fiend knocking down those dividing stanchion posts w retractable belts.

As we boarded our bus a couple of hours later and took the front seats because, obviously, manic child on board, I noticed a row of armed and masked soldiers standing nearby (medical masks, not the other ones making their appearances in western media these days), probably monitoring all exiting buses bound for quarantine hotel sites.  They, as well as their PPE-protected colleagues working nearby other buses, uniformly paused and took a moment to salute us as we drove off for the next part of our trek.  

As we merged w traffic on the city highways and hit typical rush hour for that time of day, I reflected on our guided airport arrival experience and thought about that salute.  A profound and inexplainable sensation began to grow in me, a reignited feeling of optimism for the future, that they weren’t just going through the motions of their mandate for their job and position, but that they were acknowledging and saluting us, humanity, that we remain as safe as can be, that we move forward deserving of care and accountability by those who are most abled and best positioned to do so.

[learn more about our quarantine hotel and check-in experiences here.]

// Joey Gu