This essay explores different responses to experiences of uncertainty about PCR testing in China during the Covid-19 pandemic. We examine creative responses that were developed to manage unknown testing outcomes, durations, and environments. As a contribution to empirical work on experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic, our work centres on the management of uncertainty through chance, play, and humour.

This essay looks at the so-called poison kings—people who, knowingly or otherwise, became transmission vectors of Covid-19. We explore the history of the term and its relationship to the corona-shaped virus. The examples we bring demonstrate how the label was deployed mostly as a moral category during the Covid-19 pandemic, even though sometimes there were […]

Shenzhen, the home city of Tencent and a global technology hub, has long been one step ahead of the rest of China in digital governance and control. In October 2022, the city’s Bao’an District—where one of the authors of this paper, Hailing, was living—witnessed a small-scale outbreak of Covid-19. In response, the district government announced […]