Literally meaning “tube appointment,” it’s a way to band together with your friends to avoid being suspected of COVID-19. China frequently conducts PCR pool testing, putting ten people’s samples in one tube. If your tube contains a positive sample, you could be quarantined for follow-up tests. Residents of Beihai, a coastal city in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, have complained that they’ve been taken directly to isolation centers without follow-up testing. So Beihai people have started arranging pods of likely negative friends to share a test tube.