Lisa Cao, a 20-something office worker in Beijing, enjoyed a special Spring Festival holiday this year. She traveled to Laos during the weeklong break, which ran from January 21 to 27, after spending the festival, formally known as Chinese New Year, in China for the past two years. “After outbound travel resumed earlier this year, I was so excited that I decided to go abroad as soon as I could,” Cao told Beijing Review.
This is the first Spring Festival holiday since China optimized its COVID-19 response policies last December and removed all quarantine requirements for inbound passengers on January 8. Group travel from China to designated countries also resumed on February 6.
As an avid traveler, Cao visited domestic and overseas destinations during holidays before the pandemic. She returned to China from a trip to Poland in early 2020, when COVID-19 started spreading, and
