I have been here since 2014, and I am not an engineer with the high salary that comes with that being that style of expat of china. I am a university teacher with two masters degrees in English. Once covid hit, leaving the country had become monetarily harder in how much just a plane ticket began to cost. Plus, there's the issue of actually lining up employment elsewhere. I left america because having a PhD in English, at the time, only gave you a 40% chance of being hired full time in higher education. Not everybody can just pick up and leave China on a whim. I do plan on leaving, but it's likely going to take me two years to organize my exit. As for this "covid nonsense," I just contracted it and got over it, thank you very much.