After staying home for more than a month, Chen Chunmei joined a long line of customers at a popular Beijing restaurant where diners tucked into massive bowls of crayfish following an easing of Covid restrictions in the Chinese capital.

Last month, the city of 22 million stopped people from eating out, closed gyms and sealed off dozens of subway stations to try and stamp out a coronavirus outbreak.

The curbs are now finally easing, including at restaurants.

"I'm very excited, mainly because we'd been sealed off for so long," Chen told AFP.

"I've been ordering takeout or cooking every day. I really wanted to come out for meals."

At its peak, Beijing logged just dozens of infections every day.

But authorities in China are committed to a zero-Covid strategy -- using rapid lockdowns, mass testing and severe travel restrictions to eliminate even the smallest outbreaks.

Chen, 28, said her compound was initially locked down for two weeks but when she was finally allowed to leave, the nearby subway station was closed.

"Since then, I'd been staying at home," she said. "At first I thought working from home was pretty good but after a while, I got bored."

As Beijing's case numbers fell -- it reported just two local asymptomatic infections on Tuesday -- authorities told residents they could return to work this week, while schools would reopen from June 13.

The Universal Beijing resort said it will reopen on June 15, while Chinese media reported that cinemas and gyms will run at 75 percent capacity from this week in most areas.

Dine-ins at restaurants have also mostly resumed, although two districts still have restrictions in place because of recent Covid cases.

- 'Losing money' -

While authorities have persisted with their zero-Covid policy, its economic costs have piled up.

Businesses in Beijing told AFP that the last month bit a large chunk out of their earnings.

"Our revenue for the month of May fell around 65 percent on-year," said Zhang Shengtao, operations director at Beijing Huda Catering.

He added that staff income at the restaurant chain, which employs nearly 800 people, also dropped by around 30 percent last month.

Some breathed a sigh of relief on Monday as restrictions on dining-in were eased.

"I've been longing for the resumption," said Wu Ziwen, a manager at restaurant chain Nanjing Dapaidang.

"There's no doubt that we were losing money," he told AFP, adding that the outlet has been relying on food deliveries to survive.

The dine-in resumption in Beijing is still partial, however: due to Covid controls, his restaurant can only accept up to 50 percent of regular capacity "even if customers flood in," Wu said.

Beijing is requiring people to produce a negative test done within three days if they want to take public transport or enter office buildings.

The outbreak in the capital has also kept visitors like 33-year-old Sun Tao from returning home to Shanxi.

The dine-in relaxation gave him some respite.

"I'm nervous and alert," said Sun, who ventured out of the hotel where he was staying with his wife on Monday evening and waited for a table at a restaurant.

"But I also wanted to feel my tastebuds again."

China's 'epidemic generation' sits high-stakes college entrance exam
Beijing (AFP) June 7, 2022 - High school seniors across China lined up on Tuesday to sit the gruelling "gaokao" college entrance exam under the shadow of Covid-19.

The class of 2022 are the first to have had all three years of China's high school curriculum disrupted by the pandemic, bouncing between online and offline classes and adapting to frequent Covid tests and sudden closures.

The constant uncertainty has compounded the already intense stress of the three-day gaokao, which can determine a teenager's life path in China's highly competitive academic and job environment.

"These kids haven't had it easy," Jin Lijuan, mother of a gaokao candidate, told AFP outside a high school in Beijing.

Anxious parents offered words of encouragement to their children and took photos outside the school as students shuffled through its gates, some cramming last-minute.

Police officers guided traffic around the campus. Signs near the school asked drivers not to honk.

Tuesday was the first time in weeks that many students had seen their classmates, as the Chinese capital had closed schools and offices to try and eliminate a coronavirus outbreak.

"At the beginning, my kid was very happy since there's no need to go to school," Zhao Dong, whose daughter is sitting the gaokao this year, told AFP.

"But as time went by, looking at her computer for a whole day of class became quite difficult."

Students taking the exam in Beijing this year must wear masks, show proof of a negative virus test from the past 48 hours and pass a temperature check.

Local governments across the country have similar requirements.

Authorities in China are committed to a zero-Covid strategy -- using rapid lockdowns, mass testing and strict travel restrictions to eliminate even the smallest outbreaks.

In Shanghai, where 25 million residents are gradually emerging from two months in lockdown, authorities have delayed the exam by a month.

A record 11.93 million people registered for this year's gaokao, state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday, with teens in some locked-down neighbourhoods taking the tests in individual hotel rooms.

"This generation of kids entered high school in 2019... so the entire second semester of their first year was done at home," Zhao said.

"They are like an 'epidemic generation'."

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Shanghai residents chafe under fresh Covid lockdowns
Shanghai (AFP) June 6, 2022
Residents stuck inside a compound nearly a week after Shanghai's much vaunted reopening following a virus outbreak shouted at hazmat-clad officials on Monday, as fears grew that some city neighbourhoods were being locked down again. Authorities in the financial hub eased many harsh restrictions last Wednesday, after confining most of the city's 25 million inhabitants to their homes since late March, as China battled its worst Covid outbreak in two years. But hundreds of thousands have not yet be ... read more