Life inside Beijing's Winter Olympics bubble

It's Chinese New Year, traditionally a time of great celebration, and the capital is hosting an Olympic Games. But you wouldn't know it.

The streets are eerily empty. The trains that transport the greatest annual relocation of people from the cities to their home villages are almost deserted.

Welcome to Beijing under China's COVID-zero policy and life inside the Olympic bubble.

As tens of thousands of athletes, officials and members of the media fly into the Olympic city, they are met at the airport by PPE-clad officials who quickly and efficiently shuffle the visitors through an aggressive nose and throat swab, and into immigration where only a flashing green QR code sent from the embassy in your home country will unlock the door to entry.

Unlike other Games, movement is severely restricted. Accommodation options are limited to designated hotels all behind security gates.

From there you can hop on a shuttle bus going directly to your place of work or competition venue, again behind security fencing, and back again. That's it. Day after day.

For those visiting Beijing for the first time, they'll never know of the intricate weave of back streets, the thousands of restaurants each with their own specialty of roast duck or dumplings, and the hole-in-the-wall foot-massage shops that prod and poke away at your pressure points, relieving the stress inside your body for the cost of a cup of coffee.

Usually, the trains would be overflowing with Beijing residents keen to get home to their families in other provinces. But this is no normal new year.

This is the era of COVID and China's zero-COVID policies have affected everybody.

Inside the bubble, masks are mandatory, indoors and out. Daily PCR tests are also mandatory.

In some Olympic