I am currently in quarantine, with my last day being next Thursday. On Saturday night (Oct 30-31), the highlight of the triennial Wang Yeh Boat Burning Festival takes place in Donggang.
When I timed my return, I specifically took into account two weeks of quarantine, so that I could attend the festival, something I have done every three years since 2006, and it’s not a tradition I’m eager to break.
Now, out of the blue, they (the CECC and the hotel) tell me that I need to undergo a week of self-health management FOLLOWING my two weeks in a quarantine hotel. (Why didn’t they tell me this in July when I booked my tickets?)
What are my options? Can I drive down to Donggang alone, stay away from crowds, and watch the burning from a safe distance, masked up? Last time I was in self-health management (March 2020), I was allowed to go out as long as I was wearing a mask.
What happens if I go?
Or will I have to settle for the smaller and less spectacular festival in Xiaoliuqiu in December?
I’m pretty sure you can go out. When my colleague came back from China, he went back to normal after two weeks of home quarantine, but this was right before they took away the home option.
Seems I need to avoid public transportation (not a problem), monitor my temps, and avoid crowds. I’ve been to the festival many times and I know how to stay away from crowds at that normally crowded event. Seems no proscription on going to other cities, as far as I can tell.
They do. I asked the hotel and they gave me a link to the CDC site. Apparently there is no prohibition on travel to other cities. This is the item of my primary concern.
I want to go, but not if it meant I would break any laws.
Quarantine has been a well-discussed issue in many venues. In the past, SHM was something separate from quarantine. I did SHM when I arrived in March 2020, but no quarantine. And sometimes people who interacted with Covid carriers had to do SHM. This is the first I had heard that SHM followed quarantine.
Then you missed the news about famous folk like Wang Leehom getting fined for attending a dinner party while under self management period.
Or the kids tracked and fined for attending a Mayday concert while on self management…and then one turned up sick I think, to make it worse.
For example.
Unfortunately, yes, it has been a thing for a while, more enforced since we got hit in May. So the nobody told me argument ain’t gonna fly with CDC officials.
I would think traveling in your own vehicle would not be an issue. But being at a crowded place might.
The other thing is: have you checked if the event is still taking place? And if it is, will there be crowd control? If there is a limit in people allowed to participate, you may have to use QR code or sign in, at least show some ID. And then they will know you are under SHM. What happens next, I dunno. But my feeling is they won’t let you in the venue.
I am telling you this as a couple of events, both religious and sports stuff, have had no audience kind of celebrations. So it is a possibility. That takes the fun out of the event, I know, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
This has been well known for ages. At least since late 2020 I guess - I was at a Christmas party last year where a Taiwanese guy was wearing a mask the whole night because he was still in the post-quarantine self-health management period after returning from the U.S. (I guess he shouldn’t have attended the flat party, but whatever).
This sounds not unreasonable to me, but I’m not the CECC - you’d have to check the exact rules. I’m not sure how strictly they enforce this period anyway, if at all. I do know of a couple of people who essentially just did the usual stuff.
According to all I have checked, it has not been postponed (unlike the one in Xiaoliuqiu, which was postponed to December).
But I will check the news tomorrow, because the first day of the week-long event occurs tomorrow (or maybe even today). It would be nice if they postponed it… the Gods choose the day, and they may announce that the Gods have picked another date.
I’ve been to this festival five times and I know how to social distance in it. There are plenty of back-alleys that are deserted, and I can wait on the beach for the boat to arrive rather than follow it from the temple.
But if it turns out to be illegal for me to go, I’ll go to the one in Xiaoliuqiu (though it’s much smaller).
I just did this at the begining of september. The big things are no crowds or indoor dining. The CDC is also still monitoring your phone and to you will get a daily text to reply to. A friend of a friend even got a call from them when he had been in a Starbucks for too long. So I wouldn’t risk it.
Yeah those damn pilots we should lock them up forever! All of them are super dangerous disease vectors!
Blaming them and locking them up is way more important than securing our supply chains with the rest of the world and getting vaccines shipped to Taiwan.
You must not be very good at statistics then. We are talking about a handful of people out of ~15,000 pilots and cabin crew in Taiwan. So let’s call it 0.03%. Those who broke rules paid dearly while everyone else got on with their jobs while taking lots of shit from folks that have no clue of what is going on and as such should educate themselves before holding such strong opinions.
So did the rest of Taiwan. Many people lost jobs and incomes and businesses shut down . And then some pilots kept breaking the rules. I’m not saying all pilots were doing it of course!
What’s annoying is the rules were not stringent for those pilots to follow but they still couldn’t do it.
I also want to be clear I blame China airlines more than anything as they obviously couldn’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag.
Because the rules can’t be too stringent without the airlines going bankrupt or the pilots all burning out (they are already under current rules). The current situation is a compromise between keeping out covid, passenger safety, airlines profitability, need to have access to supply chains, etc. You see when you start thinking about it it’s very complex and no solution is perfect!
Lots of cabin crew have paid a heavy price by not having enough work and having to switch careers. Covid has been bad for lots of folks so why just shame and blame all the time? It’s not helpful