I am woken at half past 7 by an apparently urgent message regarding the locking of the outside door and people going places and how it would be best if I'm out by 8am. Being as I was woken up, I don't particularly question this urgency until I'm 90% of the way through packing up the stuff I brought with me to the room¹ at which point I'm like "no, I paid for the use of this room" and check out time in China is never earlier than 10am.

Then, figuring that if it really were some kind of urgent, someone would come and knock again, I went back to sleep.

Around 8:30, an alarm I don't remember setting went off, so I got up to pee and to re-dose myself with Benadryl. Time spent sweaty and in tight fitting synthetic fabric (even thin breathable synthetics intended for exercise) keeps knocking back most of my progress on the heat rash but it's definitely better in the morning after a night of frigidly too cold a/c than it was at the end of the day, and each morning is better than the previous one.

Once again, this means that I'm not actually moving until the day has started to heat up but after the suprisingly non damaging blow up at them over not scheduling me for work², Large Media Client is sending me stuff almost daily and there's a major event going on that, along with the last bit of proofreading on the chapters the Foreign Languages Press just sent me, should result in a decent enough excuse to allow me to call a halt at the next town.

I'll be doing that anyways as, despite it being a very easy bit of flat trending in a generally downhill direction, I've definitely got heat rash on the front side of both thighs and the effort—even with Benadryl—not to scratch myself bloody is maddening.

I get myself lunch in a place that has a sign about rooms for rent and park myself in front of the fan as any method of dropping my body heat helps the itch. When I ask about rooms though, they're "awfully sorry" to tell me that they have no vacancies which is the same excuse I get from their next door neighbor.

For what I think is the third of three hotels (there's actually a whole bunch on the other side of the water) I squint and call the phone number on the sign before they can see that I'm a foreigner and confirm that they actually have no guests at all right now as "this is the low season".

However, in spite of my cleverly trapping them in advance of the possibility of them also being asses, they're delightful people who insist on carrying my bike down the stairs for me, showing me what all the various switches in the room do, and making sure I have no problem getting connected to the wifi. They also take one of my pre-filled out copies of the Temporary Residence Registration Form for Foreigners.

It takes about an hour for me to finish work at which point the Benadryl catches up with me and I pass out.

Sometime after dark, at an hour that's approaching uncivilized, I get a knock on the door and a visit from the local government. I'm never made entirely sure if the hotel told them I was there or if one of the first two hotels wasn't satisfied with merely refusing me a room and also decided to tattle on their neighbor's potentially unregistered guest⁴.

The Form which I gave the hotel owner is totally one that I found on the internet and absolutely not one that I made myself. I merely filled it out in advance as a way of making things more convenient. And, although I'm still not happy with the choice of font, or the placement of some of the data, this visit has shown me that my Form successfully manages not only to convince small rural hotel owners of its validity but also to convince the staff of small rural governments.

There's a particular national law about registration of foreigners quoted on the bottom of the Form. Like everything on the Form, it's bilingual and you might think it's there to warn a foreigner that they need to register. In point of fact, by being an easily searchable quote from the most authoritative legal body in China, it's actually there to scare the shit out of people who might dare to attempt to think about telling me "it's against the law for foreigners to stay here".

Did I tell the police I was here, they want to know. Cause the police are supposed to be told. It says so right here on the bottom of this Temporary Registration Form for Foreigners, that foreigners should tell the police and should fill out a Form, and if I haven't already told the police (a question they surely know the answer to without asking me) they'd like to make sure I'm aware that the police will also need to come by the room as well, and that I've been naughty for not proactively informing the police of my presence.

Trying not to grin like an idiot, I successfully manage to accept my dressing down with an appropriately contrite attitude and wait for the police to arrive twenty minutes later, Form in hand, to look at my passport and residence permit and confirm that they are astonishingly identical to the color scans provided with the Form and that all the info in the Form does in fact match the info in my passport.

¹ A room which is rather down the street and in a completely different building than the restaurant with the "hotel" sign where I had paid for my room, but, which has air conditioning and a fan and a private bathroom, so I hadn't really asked questions.

² I really rather they not randomly bestow me with lots of last minute stuff while I'm biking. However, during the ten day period where I was in Haikou and where I announced my availability via their preferred channel, 21 of their 25 English articles weren't proofread by anyone, one was by me, one was by the Other Professional, and the other two were done by someone³ whose work quality barely manages to hit native English speaking high schooler.

³ Nearly a decade ago I fired this person for, among other things, stealing from my company. This makes people think that my dislike of her is personal rather than professional. I also dislike her personally but my bitching about her work is based entirely on her doing a shitty job.

⁴ The fine for a hotel for not registering your guests is not a small one.