I3/2: 石家庄 (双语)

October 25, 2024

I will not laugh at the taxidermied animals, I will not laugh at the taxidermied animals, I will not laugh at the taxidermied animals 我不会嘲笑那些动物标本。重要的事情说三遍

The first time I entered Hebei on this trip, I got an out-of-the-blue message from a guy that I've never once had a conversation with. He added me or I added him (not sure which) back in November 2013, when WeChat still used to periodically scrape your phone contacts¹ and suggest that you add people on account of both of you having each other's numbers saved².

Listed as "CountyName Police Officer," the two of us met in 2012 during an Incident that is one of the Important Episodes in the Origin Story of how I became the kind of person whose insistence that all hotels in China are able to take foreigners rose to the point of teaching other people "you too can write complaint letters to the government."

这次骑行，我第一次进入河北时，收到了一个我从未聊过天的人的消息，来得猝不及防。他加我好友还是我加的他（记不清了），那是2013年11月，当时微信还会定期扫描手机通讯录¹，然后推荐那些和你互相存了对方号码的人²。

我的通讯录里给他存的是“某县警察”，2012年的一件事让我们相识，那件事在我“为何会坚持认为中国所有酒店都能接待外国人，甚至到了教别人给政府写投诉信”的成长故事里，算是重要篇章之一。

That year was my second Big Bike Trip. Riding from Beijing to Haikou by way of Yan'an and Gansu. I look back at my (currently offline) journal entries from that Tour and there's nothing to indicate that I was unaware that "hotels sometimes say go away" but there's also nothing to indicate that I thought it important enough to make advance preparations.

那一年是我的第二次长途单车之旅。从北京出发，途经延安和甘肃，一路骑到海口。如今翻看当年（现已下线）的骑行日志，虽然找不到任何迹象表明我当时不知道"旅馆有时会拒外籍游客"，但同样也没有任何记录显示，我认为这事重要到需要提前做准备。

The new Natural History Museum at Shijiazhuang Number One Middle is much better than the one they had when I was a teacher 石家庄一中新的自然历史博物馆，比我当老师那会儿的那个好多了

However, there are certain limitations presented with the presentation of taxidermy that wasn't a great example of the art 50 years ago 不过，馆里的动物标本展示还是有局限的，毕竟50年前的标本制作工艺本就不算精湛

That trip's first rejection was a downtown-type hotel in Beijing's Fangshan District and happened halfway through check-in when the front desk threw her hands up in despair at trying to figure out the foreigner component of Public Security's Online Hotel Guest Registration System, decided "yeah, actually, you can't stay," and gave me my money back. Going to the police for help with what to do, they drew me a map of local hotels and told me to come back if none of them would take me³.

My second rejection came a few days later on the outskirts of Baoding, in a town called Dawangdian. I wasn't impressed with the hotel options available, went to the police station to ask them if there were any others I hadn't found⁴, and when they told me my citizenship meant I wasn't allowed to stay in the countryside, rather politely gave them the choices of "me in a tent in your parking lot" or "you calling the relevant authorities⁵ and figuring it the fuck out⁶."

那次旅行中，第一次被拒是在北京房山区的一家市区型酒店。办理入住到一半，前台对着公安游客信息网外宾登记犯了难，绝望地一摊手，说“其实你不能在这儿住”，然后把钱退给了我。我去警局求助，他们给我画了张当地酒店分布图，还说要是都不行就再回来找他们³。

几天后，在保定郊区的大王店镇，我第二次被拒。当时觉得可选的酒店都不怎么样，就去派出所问有没有其他我没找到的⁴。他们说因为我的国籍，不能住在乡镇，我挺客气地给了他们两个选择：“要么我在你们停车场搭帐篷”，要么“你们给相关部门打个电话⁵，把这事儿弄明白⁶”。

Sarcasm notwithstanding, it's really cool that a high school has this kind of collection and display 撇开那些吐槽，一所高中能有这样的藏品和展示，真的挺棒的

Similar to many hotel owners on both the 2008 and 2012 trips⁷ the hotel owner in CountyName decided that the easiest way to handle the weirdness of whatever needed to be done differently with me was to walk me down the street to the police station and make my paperwork their problem. Because this was not that uncommon an occurrence, I was expecting one of three scenarios:

和2008年、2012年两次旅行中遇到的很多酒店老板一样⁷，某县的宾馆那个老板觉得，处理我这种“需要特殊流程”的客人，最简单的办法就是把我领到派出所，让他们来处理手续问题。这种事当时不算少见，所以我本以为会是以下三种情况之一：

The police know what to do. It takes five minutes to complete. Photos are probably taken. Everyone is happy.
The Police don't know what to do, but decide that being informed of my existence is enough. Everyone is happy.
The police don't know what to do or how to do it. At some point during the roughly 90 minutes spent trying to figure it out, someone goes down the street and buys a round of iced lemon tea⁸ or mung bean ice cream. Photos are taken. Everyone is happy.

In CountyName, however, I copped a fourth scenario: "the police don't know what to do and flat out refuse to call the relevant authorities to ask for help."

1. 警察知道该怎么办，五分钟搞定，可能还会拍几张照，皆大欢喜。

2. 警察不知道怎么办，但觉得知道有我这么个人就行，皆大欢喜。

3. 警察既不知道该做什么也不知道怎么办，在花大概90分钟琢磨的过程中，有人会去街上买冰柠檬茶⁸或者绿豆冰棍，拍几张照，皆大欢喜。

但在某县，我遇上了第四种情况：“警察不知道该怎么做，还死活不肯打电话向相关部门求助”。

The rooftop greenhouse where urban students get to Grow Their Own Vegetables is really cool! 楼顶的温室太酷了，城里的学生能在这儿自己种蔬菜！

Which is why, after far too many hours at the police station, the weather turning cold, and me starting to get hangry, that night in CountyName earned the honorable distinction of being the first time I YELLED at a police officer.

就这么在派出所耗了好几个小时，天越来越冷，我也饿得发慌，那天晚上在某县，我第一次对警察发了火，现在想想都觉得挺光荣的。

With me informing them that I was sick of their shit, that I had given them all the tools necessary to figure out how to do something not that difficult, that any problem caused by my not being registered was something which I would blame them for, and that I was leaving to walk back to my hotel now, it was somewhere on the spectrum between firm lecture and temper tantrum. And, if I have to be perfectly honest, it was much closer to the tantrum end of the spectrum.
So, you can imagine how incredulously surprised I was that it worked!

With them getting to my hotel before I did so that they could admonish the hotel owner to "make very sure absolutely nothing happens to the foreigner," I really wasn't all that surprised to see a police car sitting on the county line the next day when I got to the "Welcome to Come Again" sign, and even less surprised that my definitively removing myself from continuing to be their problem was something that warranted visual confirmation.

我冲他们说我受够了这破事，说我已经给了他们所有能用上的信息，办这么点不难的事绰绰有余，说要是因为我没登记出了什么问题，我肯定怪他们，还说我现在要走回酒店了。这番话介于“严肃说教”和“发脾气撒泼”之间，说实话，更靠近撒泼那头。

不过你能想象吗，我当时简直不敢相信，这招居然管用了！

他们比我先到酒店，还告诫老板娘“务必保证这个外国人绝对安全”。所以第二天我骑到“欢迎再来”的牌子处，看到县界上停着辆警车时，也没太惊讶。他们需要亲眼确认我真的离开了、不再是他们的麻烦，这就更不意外了。

It's a foggy (with hints of smog) day outside. The train station is big enough that this means it is also a foggy day INSIDE. 外面是雾蒙蒙的一天（还带点霾）。火车站大得很，连车站里面都像是起了雾。

Particularly as he has never once said anything to me (or, so far as I've been aware, interacted with my social media) in the 11 years we've been WeChat contacts, if he hadn't been saved in my contacts as "CountyName Police Officer," I would have no idea who this guy is. But, upon seeing my "I'm in Hebei" post, he thought it reasonable to WELCOME ME to visit his county, or, if that wasn't going to be on my route, to ask if I would be passing through Shijiazhuang cause he'd like to treat me to dinner.

That dinner is not happening on account of I'm fleeing the cold on tonight's overnight train back to Hainan.

毕竟这11年里，他从没跟我说过话，也没在我的社交媒体上有过互动。要不是我给他存的备注是“某县警察”，我根本不知道这人是谁。但他看到我发的“我在河北”的动态后，居然觉得可以跟我说“欢迎来我们县玩”，还说要是不顺路，问问我会不会经过石家庄，想请我吃顿饭。

这顿饭是吃不上了，因为我要乘今晚的过夜火车回海南，逃离这寒冷。

But...as has so often been mentioned, my life is summed up in the five words "and then it got weirder" ... his brother works at the Shijiazhuang Central Train Station and Officer Now-Something-Much-More-Important than he was in 2012 apparently told Bro that I'm a Very Important Guest who should be treated very importantly. I'm so important in fact that Bro is super bothered by his inability to help me with getting my bike onto the same train as the one I'm taking at what happens to be peak transit time for one of the busiest stations in the country.

但……就像常说的那样，我的人生能用几个字概括：“然后更离谱了”……他哥哥在石家庄火车总站工作，这位2012年还是个小警察、现在显然职位高多了的警官，居然跟他哥说我是“非常重要的客人”，要好好招待。我“重要”到什么程度呢？他哥因为没法帮我把自行车送上我要坐的那趟火车（偏偏赶上中国最忙的车站之一的高峰时段），心里特别过意不去。

At the Train Station Cargo Office 在火车站货运处

Adding up to nearly 40 minutes (not including the pauses for him to phone some of his co-workers), we have a total of three calls with each other. Copious amounts of "No, really, it's okay. I can use China Rail Cargo. I'm seriously okay with this" on my part interspersed with lots of apologies and polite suggestions from him of ways that I could inconvenience potentially dozens of people in the quest to save 200y before he finally realized that the reason I was saying "it's fine" and "it's not a problem" was because I actually didn't view this as being a problem.

Then, with a short and frustrating interlude spent trying to use their app to schedule pick up, I biked to the train station cargo office and shipped my bike back to Haikou.

我们总共通了三次电话，加起来快40分钟（还不算他中途给同事打电话的时间）。我一个劲儿说“真的没事，我可以走中铁快运，真的不麻烦”，他却一个劲儿道歉，还客气地提议各种办法，说哪怕麻烦几十个人，也要帮我省下那200块钱。直到最后，他才明白我嘴里的“没事”是真的觉得这不算事儿。

后来我试着用他们的应用程序预约上门取件，折腾了半天也没弄好，就直接骑车去了火车站货运处，把自行车托运回海口了。

¹ Douyin also scrapes your phone book, but Douyin and WeChat are sufficiently in competition with each other that they won't give each other mutual access the way Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google have on the international internet.

¹ 抖音也会扫描手机通讯录，但抖音和微信竞争激烈，它们不会像脸书、领英和谷歌那样，允许彼此共享数据权限。

The person before me was shipping pig sperm. 在火车站货运处排在我前面的人在托运猪精液。

² I say "used to" as if it doesn't still do that. It's just that, with the rise of mobile internet and the addition of features like VoIP calls, no one uses their phone number anymore for anything other than taxis and delivery guys.

² 我说“以前会”，搞得好像现在不会了似的。只是随着移动互联网兴起，加上微信语音通话这类功能的普及，现在除了叫车和收快递，没人会用手机号干别的了。

³ None of them would and I was on my way back when the seventh hotel said okay.

³ 第七家酒店终于同意了，我当时正往回走。

⁴ Super common behavior back before online Maps started having as much information as they do now

⁴ 在在线地图还没这么全信息的年代，问警察叔叔“哪里有酒店”的操作太常见了

⁵ One of whom even spoke to me on the phone and tried to convince me I would be ever so much more comfortable if I went to the city.

⁵ 其中有个部门的人还跟我通了电话，劝我说去市区住肯定舒服多了。

⁶ A tactic taught to me by a foreigner who lived in and traveled China in the early 80s.

⁶ 这招是一位80年代初就在中国生活并旅行的外国人教我的。

⁷ And still occasionally happening as recently as 2022

⁷ 2022年还偶尔会遇到这种情况

⁸ Especially because "to have tea with the police" is a polite euphemism for "to be called in for an interrogation," I am quite amused by the number of police officers with whom I have had tea.

⁸ 尤其“和警察一起喝茶”这话常被当作“被传唤去问话”的委婉说法，所以我每次真的和警察一起喝茶时，都觉得特别有意思。

Today's ride: 9 km (6 miles)
Total: 1,728 km (1,073 miles)

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