A lil tale about Chinese authoritarianism:

Wuhan is a lovely city, with officials who can be annoyingly pushy, amateurish and charmingly forthcoming at the same time (latter is rarely to be found in Beijng)

Before my departure I had to do a corona test at the local test station

It was the 3rd I did in 3 weeks. The local neighborhood committee in Wuhan called me about it almost every day (e.g. Sunday 9pm).

Day after the test they called me again. "You have to come one more time." I asked why. "You have to come again."

It turned out they lost my sample.

Let's say I didn't react very nicely. I'm not coming again, I said. "But you have to, without it u can't go back to Beijing." I'm not coming, I repeated. (Knowing I had no game at all.)

Et voilà! Next day the health officials arrived at my hotel entrance on their scooters

They apologized like 5times for the mistake and off they went.

Rest of the process was really smooth. A lady added me to her private WeChat and sent the test result 3 hrs after it came out of the lab. I give 5/5 for a service-oriented control regime (plus the test was free).