Hundreds of cinemas reopened in scores of Chinese cities Monday after a six-month nationwide shutdown due to the coronavirus, highlighting its success in taming an epidemic still raging in parts of the world.
Chinese cinemas reopen today. As of July 19, the pre-sale box office of 391 theaters in 83 cities had exceeded RMB1.4 mln on first day of resumption, with 34,000 moviegoers, according to Maoyan, Chinese film box office, and data platform. pic.twitter.com/McoyiD3XdR
— China Economy (@CE_ChinaEconomy) July 20, 2020
But it will be an altered experience for moviegoers: online-only ticket sales, shuttered snack bars, and social-distancing during screenings as worries over COVID-19 persist.
Chinese people rejoice as cinemas reopen
Cinemas can sell no more than 30 percent of available tickets per show, and seat-selection charts on leading ticketing apps indicated that in many theatres people will need to sit two seats apart.
But none of that prevented 25-year-old movie fan Lu Yonghao taking a day off from his human-resources job at a Shanghai company.
Read more: China’s novel strategies overcome the novel coronavirus
“I’m very excited. I haven’t watched (a movie) in more than half a year, so I just decided to take today off and come experience it,” he told before taking his seat in a largely empty theatre.
“I need to watch at least one movie a week to ease the pressures of life.”
Welcome back: 34,000 moviegoers head to theaters as Chinese cinemas reopen https://t.co/KQuzQAQTkY via @cgtnofficial @Chinacultureorg
— Zhang Heqing (@zhang_heqing) July 20, 2020
Before opening, the cinema — an outlet of the SFC chain, one of China’s largest movie-theatre franchises — underwent a through cleaning, with staff painstakingly wiping down seats and 3D glasses with disinfectant-soaked cloths.
The cinema’s manager Bao Yaopei said viewers had been regularly calling the front desk, asking when it might reopen.
“Audiences have really been looking forward to this… to be able to enter cinemas, sit together with others and feel the happiness that movies bring.”
Coronavirus phobia lingers on
But coronavirus anxiety remains in the air, with cinemas in Beijing still closed for now.
The capital did, however, lower its virus alert level beginning Monday after going more than two weeks without a new local infection, declaring that it had contained a cluster that emerged in June.
That outbreak infected more than 330 people in the city and triggered a resumption of some restrictions seen earlier in the health crisis.
Read more: Second global wave of coronavirus nigh amid cases in New Zealand and China
Beijing’s lowered alert will allow venues such as parks, museums, fitness centres and libraries to increase daily visitor traffic to 50 percent of normal capacity, and conferences of up to 500 participants can go ahead with proper safeguards in place.
Chinese film authorities had announced in March that they would reopen cinemas, which were shut in late January, but swiftly reversed course after fresh clusters of cases were discovered across the country.
Among the last businesses to reopen, cinemas have suffered a massive earnings hit.
China’s largest cinema chain, Wanda Film, said it expects to report a loss of at least 1.5 billion yuan ($214 million) for the first half of the year.
Industry recovery will be slow due to lingering COVID-19 concerns and restrictions placed on movie houses, said Chinese producer and screenwriter Fang Li, who has three productions stuck in the pipeline due to the virus.
“Even if commercial films are released after cinemas reopen, they will suffer more than 50 percent losses compared to before the epidemic,” Fang said, predicting it could take a decade for the industry to fully recover.
Illustrating the risks, a new outbreak emerged late last week in China’s far-western Xinjiang region.
Read more: China Says Britain Fuelling Hong Kong Protests
The regional capital of Urumqi has since implemented mass health screenings and shut down most air traffic into the city and local public transport.
Better to be safe than sorry
But the relaxation in coronavirus restrictions as Chinese cinemas reopen does not come lightly. China is still on the look out for potential threats. Anyone going to China will have to prove they don’t have coronavirus before boarding their flight, Beijing announced Tuesday, as the country seeks to prevent new infections after easing travel restrictions.
China has been relaxing a ban on most foreign travellers that was imposed in March to prevent an influx of infections after authorities largely brought the domestic epidemic under control.
All arrivals were screened for the virus on landing, and also had to spend 14 days in quarantine at their own expense at designated hotels.
But under new regulations announced Tuesday by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) citizens must now also upload a picture of their negative test certificate to a health app, while foreigners must apply to a Chinese embassy or consulate with proof of their status.
The tests should be done within five days of travel, the CAAC said.
China has reported more than 80,000 infections and 4,634 deaths since COVID-19 first emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
More than 2,000 cases were imported, mostly from Chinese nationals returning home as the pandemic rages abroad.
Read more: British interference in Hong Kong will ‘backfire’ says China
In recent months China has allowed some foreign diplomats, employees of large enterprises and other business travellers back into the country on specially chartered flights.
It has also eased limits on flights from foreign airlines, although they are subject to penalties if any passengers are found to be infected.
Many Chinese nationals stranded overseas have complained about the difficulty of getting back home because of a scarcity of flights and skyrocketing ticket prices.
AFP with additional input by GVS News Desk