Filipino American journalists Rene Pastor and Cristina DC Pastor did not expect the heavy knock on the door of their Beijing apartment one night in 2020. It turned out that it was time for midnight Covid-19 tests.

The couple’s newly released book, Living in China 2019 to 2023: A COVID Diary, recaptures the panic in their apartment complex during that period. At the same time, it paints a picture of real-life immersion in daily Chinese culture that tourists and some foreigners may find fascinating. They learn to haggle using their calculators and to find the right shoe size for irregular sized feet. She even turns into a plantita amid the pandemic.

The authors also present observations on certain unusual facts of Chinese life, such as why Chinese women are staying away from marriage, how the Chinese people learn to speak English by watching the American sitcom “Friends,” and why videos of cute Chinese toddlers eating sour lemon or long strands of ramen noodles are an internet craze.

Jaime FlorCruz, Philippine ambassador to China, writes in the foreword: “Like most locals, they lived a life in lockdown, lining up for mass Covid tests, ordering food online, avoiding mass transit, spraying delivery packages with sanitizers and showing their phones with negative Covid results as they entered public buildings, and experienced other instances of strong-handed measures under the State’s Zero-Covid policy.”

Written originally for the column “Second Thoughts” in China Daily, the slim book of 189 pages is published by Berkeley, a boutique publishing house in New York. It has been ranked No. 87 in Amazon.com’s best-selling books in the field of Asian and Asian-American biographies.

Rene Pastor served as senior business editor of China Daily following 23 years of being a commodities journalist at Reuters. Cristina DC Pastor is founding editor of The FilAm, a print and digital magazine serving Filipinos in metro New York.

Copies of Living in China 2019 to 2023: A Covid Diary are available on Amazon.com.