Chinese Teams Return Home

As you know, we faced a number of urgent questions regarding the transportation of teams from China right before the start of the AniMajor. This was due to the fact that return tickets to China became void due to changes in European airspace.

Due to this, our travel agents had to arrange a private flight back so that the Chinese government could issue visas to the teams. Everything went well, the players and staff arrived in Kyiv, and PSG.LGD won the AniMajor. But as it turns out, more problems emerged regarding the return flights.

During the tournament, the Chinese government introduced new restrictions on international travel, meaning that it was no longer possible for the teams to return via private flights. As such, the Chinese teams stayed at the hotel in Kyiv.

We had to involve all our forces and contacts, including the ones in the Chinese embassy and the city halls of Chinese capitals, in order to resolve this issue. We proposed an option where the teams would remain in Kyiv and fly straight to Sweden from Ukraine (at that time there was no information about the cancellation of TI in Stockholm). This turned out to be impossible due to the difficulties in obtaining Schengen visas for Chinese citizens who are outside their country. We did our best to help the teams leave the country and return home.

And thanks to the efforts of Chinese Dota fans, the teams eventually managed to arrange a flight back.

Invictus Gaming's manager expressed gratitude on Weibo:

The organizer [WePlay] is responsible for all travel expenses. In this case, the organizer did everything possible to help us return home, but to no avail, although the team only needed to find return tickets. Thank you Lisa for your help in purchasing all the tickets. She promised us that she did not receive any personal benefit from this ticket purchase. Nowadays plane tickets are very limited during special times and different agencies and channels will definitely create price differentials. It wasn't easy to go back, but we got all six tickets in one go within a short time after we made the flight request, which allowed us to spend the last few days in Kyiv quite at ease. The community has worked hard to get the Chinese players back as soon as possible and hopefully no one will hate others if you don't know the full story. I also sincerely thank the fans who supported us, thank you! CN DOTA!

We are pleased to announce that all of the Chinese Dota teams have been able to return home safe and sound.