Well, here’s another installment of The Viral Saga of Monty in Beijing.
When we last saw our hero, he had gotten tested for coronavirus antibodies and was prepared for the proverbial “knock on the door” if said antibodies were a shade too anti, so to speak. We now rejoin him on a Wednesday because, well, what better day of the week to start a work week? Evidently his test was negative because there was no knock on the door.
Actually, we’ll rejoin him the afternoon prior. Notication was made to all high school staff, the notification being only in Chinese of course, that to get back onto the campus, one must bring the following items:
[ol][li]School ID[/li][li]Government ID (in our hero’s case, that is his passport)[/li][li]Record of daily health conition, to include body temperature[/li][li]Beijing Health Kit (that is Beijing’s contact tracing app/mini-program)[/li][li]Nucleic Acid Test Certificate[/ol][/li]
Ah, this caused an heroic (yes, I do pronounce that word with a soft “h” and that is thus the correct indefinite article, but do not worry, I do not say “Mrs. 'Aversham”) reformatting, digital saving, and file transfering of Item #3, and a mad rush to the nearest print shop still open to print the form and sign it.
And we are now at the school gate on Wednesday morning, 6 May 2020. The administrative staff were all present and standing, each one, behind a table and armed with a digital thermometer. Monty fell into a line of people, each person in the line standing one meter away from the person in front of them, yellow and black safety tape conveniently placed appropriately on the concrete sidewalk to ensure this happens. When he reached the table, he presented the items listed above and was politely informed that there is no need for #3. So, he was out approximately US$2 for that. Admin worker used the digital thermometer, discovering Monty had a temperature of 35.6C, which was about 0.75C lower than his own digital thermometer infomred him an hour earlier.
He took his usual stroll to the office he had last seen on 18 January 2020, noting that there were both yellow and black safety line tapes and cute little stickers with “Keep a Distance” and those little yellow bare feet to indicate how far away is “a distance” (he assumed “a distance” is one meter). Entering the building, he notices even more safety tape and stickers on the floors and steps. Wending is way upstairs and down the hall, he finds his desk just as he had left it.
Shortly after settling in again, our protagonist was summoned with all the teachers who were not currently engaged in teaching via videoconference to gather in the school’s assembly hall for “Corona Virus Pandemic Prevention Procedure”. (Yes, you read that right. A smarter move would have been to dispatch small groups to the empty classrooms in the primary school and watch the the training on the CCTV (affectionately referred by the school’s foreign staff as “Stalker TV” owing to two of the channels showing the entry and exit of people to/from the campus), which has one channel showing the assembly hall stage 24/7. And I think it’s a bit late to worry about preventing the pandemic).
The training was in both Chinese and English. The first thirty minutes was a lecture in Chinese by the Communist Party of China chairman for the campus. The next fifteen minutes was in English by one of the ABC (Australian-Born Chinese) senior staff members. The lectures were actually not bad. The campus has three dormitories designated to isolate suspected cases until one of the staff doctors can assess them and get the appropriate transportation to the appropriate treatment or quarantine facility off campus.
At lunchtime, to satisfy his curiosity, our hero descended to the basement canteen (aka cafeteria) to see how lunch would be managed. The first thing he noticed is a bit of an upgrade to the facility. There are now some English signs for the foreign staff, but still not enough. There were plenty of stickers and safety tape on teh floor advising everyone to “keep a distance”. The long lunchroom tables had been replaced with very short tables, each table with just one chair by it, and the tables situated so there is one meter between any two tables in any direction. As our hero cannot stand the, let’s call it, cuisine there, he wandered to the campus store in the corner of the canteen, to discover the store is closed. He then returned to his office to finish work for the day.
At 17:30, he joined the crowd (which, of course, was a bit more spread out owing to the distance rules) to head for the shuttle buses. To ensure no crowding at the campus gate, the facial recognition wickets were turned off and everyone bypassed those to get to their assigned shuttle. Our hero alighted and mere minutes later was on the way home.
The rest of the trip home proceeded as his usual workday in 1 BVE did.
The next chapter will detail the return of students on Sunday, 10 May 2020 CE (1 VE) and 11 May 2020 CE (1 VE).
