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China's Covid Testing Booths Get Second Life as Libraries and Food Stalls

Local governments are finding new purposes for thousands of testing booths, unwelcome relics of Covid Zero.

Covid testing booths transformed to food stalls in Suzhou on Jan. 25.

Covid testing booths transformed to food stalls in Suzhou on Jan. 25.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
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Tens of thousands of PCR testing booths are littered across China, with many residents just a 15-minute walk away from a swabbing point. Now that Covid Zero has abruptly ended, cities are left with the problem of what to do with them.

Some have been retracted by operators, consigned to the scrap heap or listed on second-hand online marketplaces for resale. Others have become eyesores abandoned on the streets, battered by the elements. But some local governments and communities are coming together to creatively reconfigure these unwanted relics into new landmarks.