Welcome to ‘Dalifornia,’ an Oasis for China’s Drifters and Dreamers

To find the dance circle in the bed-and-breakfast’s courtyard, drive north from the bedsheet factory converted into a crafts market, toward the vegan canteen urging diners to “walk barefoot in the soil and bathe in the sunshine.” If you see the unmanned craft beer bar where customers pay on the honor system, you’ve gone too far. Welcome to the Chinese mountain city of Dali, also sometimes known as Dalifornia, an oasis for China’s disaffected, drifting or just plain curious. The city’s nickname is a homage to California, and the easy-living,…

Slowing, Graying and in Debt, Can China’s Industrial Heartland Be Revived?

Hundreds of workers at a factory in Shenyang in northeastern China weld automated machines, 95 yards long, that are used to bore subway tunnels. At another factory there, employees assemble robots that China’s solar panel makers will use to streamline their production. Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning Province, one of three large provinces in the northeast that constitute the cradle of China’s heavy industry. Now the central government, confronting a national economy that has slowed because of a real estate crisis that defies easy fixes, is turning to cities…

Hong Kong Wants More Tourists, but Mostly ‘Good Quality’ Ones, Please

One by one the tour buses descended on the blue collar neighborhood in Hong Kong known as To Kwa Wan — literally translated as Potato Bay — unloading throngs of travelers from mainland China outside large restaurants where a quick lunch awaited them inside. Outfitted in white, red and orange ball caps to denote which tour they belonged to, the visitors crowded the sidewalks, smoked cigarettes under a “No Smoking” sign and bumped into the glass storefront of a real estate office where Nicky Lam, a property agent, was rolling…

U.S. Will Lift Covid Testing Requirement for Travelers From China

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is planning to end on Friday a requirement that travelers coming from China present a negative Covid-19 test before entering the United States, according to a person familiar with the plan. The plan to roll back the restriction comes as a once-enormous viral wave subsides in China, and after other countries have announced their own easing of restrictions for people traveling from China. The administration considered both factors in making the decision, the person said, and will continue monitoring flights from China and other countries…

As China Reopens Its Borders, Mixed Feelings at Home and Abroad

HONG KONG — Over the past three years, Zhou Wanhui, a Hong Kong resident, has visited her parents in China just three times. Though they live only two hours away by train, Covid restrictions made it so difficult to cross the Hong Kong border into mainland China that one of Ms. Zhou’s trips included a three-hour flight to Shanghai and nearly a month of quarantine in two cities. Families like Ms. Zhou’s — kept apart for weddings and funerals, birthdays and graduations — are finally preparing for less arduous reunions.…

As China Lifts Pandemic Border Controls, Mixed Feelings at Home and Abroad

HONG KONG — Over the past three years, Zhou Wanhui, a Hong Kong resident, has visited her parents in China just three times. Though they live only two hours away by train, Covid restrictions made it so difficult to cross the Hong Kong border into mainland China that one of Ms. Zhou’s trips included a three-hour flight to Shanghai and nearly a month of quarantine in two cities. Families like Ms. Zhou’s — kept apart for weddings and funerals, birthdays and graduations — are finally preparing for less arduous reunions.…

E.U. Urges Nations to Require Negative Covid Tests for Travelers From China

BRUSSELS — The European Union on Wednesday “strongly encouraged” its 27 member nations to require a negative Covid-19 test for travelers boarding flights from China to the region, amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the country and Beijing’s lifting of its draconian travel restrictions. The bloc’s recommendation, an attempt at a unified policy, came after three major European tourist destinations — France, Italy and Spain — as well as Britain, introduced testing and other requirements for travelers from China. The E.U. move would bring back a tough pandemic-era measure…

China Denounces Covid Testing Rules Imposed on Its Travelers

The Chinese government on Tuesday denounced Covid testing requirements imposed by other countries on travelers arriving from China as unscientific or “excessive,” and threatened to take countermeasures. As China prepares to open its borders later this week, allowing its citizens to travel abroad for the first time since the pandemic began, countries like Canada, the United States, France, Spain, Japan and the United Kingdom have moved to restrict travelers arriving from the country. The countries have cited concerns about a surge in Covid-19 infections in China, the potential risk of…

China Covid: U.S. Testing Rule Meets a Collective Shrug

Some Chinese were disappointed by the Biden administration’s new testing requirement for travelers coming from their country. Others radiated contempt, calling it the latest Western effort to contain China’s rise. But many were simply indifferent. For many Chinese, the U.S. rule that they must present negative Covid tests to visit is a tangential development. China is grappling with severe outbreaks that have sickened countless people and overwhelmed hospitals and funeral parlors. Many are focused on trying to hold on to their jobs and homes as the economy sputters. And to…