Travel Journey Card Officially Scrapped as of Dec 13

There’s good news for those hoping to do some traveling this winter, with it being announced that the Travel Journey Card (行程卡 xíngchéngkǎ) will be stopped from tomorrow (Dec 13). 

A statement posted on the official Travel Journey Card WeChat account stated that in order to comply with new Covid regulations the Travel Journey Card would be going offline, and that all “Travel Journey Card inquiry channels such as text messages, web pages, WeChat extensions, Alipay extensions and app will go offline simultaneously.”

The Travel Journey Card was originally launched Feb 29, 2020, to track individuals’ travel histories over the preceding 14 days. If you had been to a medium-risk or high-risk area this would show on the card and could make traveling difficult or in some cases virtually impossible. 

Earlier this year saw two major changes to the card, with the pesky asterisk being removed back in June and the travel history being reduced from 14 days to seven days in July. However, despite these changes, traveling still presented a lot of risks, such as having to self-isolate on arrival in a city or being unable to return to Beijing.

Now that the Travel Journey Card is being discontinued it signals that cross-provincial travel should in theory be returning back to normal. This follows on from other recent Covid easing measures that were outlined last week, which also included the announcement that train stations and airports would no longer require a 48-hour negative Covid test or scanning in with your health code to enter. 

These changes will certainly make traveling within China far easier, and one can only hope that perhaps international travel will follow suit at some point in the not too distant future. 

READ: Some Beijing Venues Still Require 48 Hour NAT Results

Images: Beijing transport, Katie Coy