Pack your swimming trunks - and keep your distance: Chinese tourists on the beach in Qingdao
Photo: STR / AFPThe woman who climbs out of the Yellow Sea under the summer sun and trudges up the beach seems to be of an older age. Her bent, somewhat laborious gait suggests it, but it is impossible to tell exactly: She is wearing a full-body swimsuit, a tight-fitting hood covers her hair and face, holes in the fabric only leave eyes, mouth and nostrils exposed.
The so-called facekini has been popular in China for years, where tanned skin is considered a flaw by many. At least when it comes to swimwear, everything is the same on the number one beach in the east Chinese port city of Qingdao.
Sun protection for advanced users: a woman in a facekini
Photo: Hector Retamal / AFPOtherwise, much is different in the travel nation of China this Corona summer. In normal years, Chinese tour groups populate Heidelberg Castle and Venice's St. Mark's Square, China's individual tourists populate Bali's beaches and the jazz clubs of New York.
But now air traffic from China has practically come to a standstill. Before that, Beijing's capital city airport was the second busiest in the world after Atlanta, with more than a hundred million passengers annually. Today, only a handful of international flights take off there every day. So what are China's tourists doing instead?
Mediterranean climate, deep yellow beaches
Since the Olympic sailing competitions were held on the sea off Qingdao in 2008, the city has blossomed into a tourist destination. The German colonial rulers, who ruled there from 1898 to 1914, left avenues lined with plane trees and Wilhelmine buildings with red tile roofs that are now considered the city's trademarks. Mediterranean climate, deep yellow beaches.
One afternoon at the end of July, however, only isolated groups of older men were sitting in the sand playing the traditional Chinese game of mahjongg, and a few young people were hitting a volleyball back and forth. If you take photos from previous years against it, the most striking thing is how empty it is. School holidays are now also in China.
But many Chinese are foregoing vacation this summer. Individual companies have advised their employees and many schools against parents against it. Although the leadership in Beijing has brought the epidemic relatively well under control with drastic lockdown and monitoring measures, individual clusters keep appearing in different provinces.
Woe to you if you happen to be close to an outbreak: The mandatory Corona apps installed on every cell phone precisely register your own location. Quarantine is not discussed from a voluntary perspective in China - it is simply prescribed, sometimes by hundreds of thousands who have unfortunately been near a source of infection. That alone discourages many Chinese from going far from home.
Whichever major Chinese airport you are traveling to these days, in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Wuhan: the feeder highways are free everywhere, the departure halls are empty, and only a few ticket counters are open.
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During the five-day May holidays, spending on domestic tourist travel fell by 60 percent compared to 2019, and by almost 70 percent during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival at the end of June. According to the booking website Ctrip, the cities of Shanghai and Chengdu as well as the holiday resort of Sanya on the tropical island of Hainan, also known as "China's Hawaii", were among the domestic destinations that were still comparatively well attended despite the slump.
Still, Hainan's hotels were only about a third full in May. The tariffs were low, and large five-star suites with a sea view, including breakfast, were available for less than a hundred euros. At the breakfast buffet it was easy to keep the distance rules, in the pools the swimmers could swim their laps undisturbed. There were no queues, which is as unusual as it is beneficial in China.
Almost no foreign tourists in China in 2020
The guests in Hainan in May included a striking number of expats. Foreigners who live in China are allowed to leave the country - but because of the entry restrictions that still apply, they have little chance of returning afterwards. Instead of going to Phuket, Mallorca or Berlin, they are now vacationing within China.
Conversely, practically no more tourists from abroad will come to the People's Republic in 2020. Even in many places that foreign travelers usually frequent, you are hardly used to strange faces. Some Chinese are suspicious of foreigners these days - be it because the virus is still out of control across national borders, or because of the tense atmosphere with the West.
The Art Museum of Qingdao is housed in a building with a column portal and atrium, and a massive wall surrounds the area. There is a guard at the gate who has to check the health codes of all visitors. When the Corona app does not immediately turn green, he becomes angry. What are you doing here as a foreigner? Where do you actually come from?
From Germany.
His face brightens, he holds up his thumb: Oh, well, then everything will be fine. Really unwelcome, he indicates, are only Americans.
Icon: The mirror