D19: 赞皇 → 内丘

June 21, 2022

On account of them not being assholes, I told tonight's police I would mosaic out any identifying information

I ought to have tried to visit the important pagoda just south of Zanhuang. I ought to have tried to re-find some of the interesting things noted when I passed this way again in 2018. I ought to have remembered to get a fresh photo of the welcome sign at the start of the town that was supposed to be my end point and the super rare character that is still officially the town name but basically never used (not even on the government buildings). I ought to have done many things that I didn't do and that I don't even really have any particular excuse for not having done.

It's an uneventful ride. None of this is fresh or new to me and, unlike some places I've visited multiple times, there isn't really an extra layer of interesting to be discovered by coming back. The scenery is pretty but not beautiful; and the buildings are neither old enough nor new enough to have much about them which catches the eye. Even with stops to get new photos of previously visited shrines or to add content to my Rural Safe Electricity Usage series, it's just a tiring hot day in some steep hills.

Not counting the very dramatic end of the day, what highlights there were included a woman coming over to me before I left Zanhuang proper to tell me she loves watching my videos, and the owner of my lunch stop remembering me on account of his "yeah, this looks good enough" having been my "yeah, this looks good enough" ten years ago.

All of this would, of course, be overwhelmed by the way things unfolded at the end of the day.

Although both phones are running the same apps, Maps on one shows slightly different results than Maps on the other. In this case, it's zero places to stay versus two with one of those two being shown as "closed" and neither of them being where I stayed in 2012 but one of them almost certainly being where I had stayed in 2018. At the time, although it certainly wasn't anything you could call "nice", it had been eminently acceptable for the price¹ so, not yet knowing that my previous stay had resulted in a slap on the wrist², I went to that one before I went looking for food.

I made it all the way to riding day 19 before mentioning Marc Kurlansky's micro-history "Salt"

Your daily Hebei anti bed wetting advertisement

Unless you count "hallloooo, halllloo, is there anyone around" as yelling, no yelling happened. Not even when I found a phone number and called to say "hey, I'm an old customer come back" and got told the bold-faced lie "all the hotels in Hebei are currently closed because of the pandemic", I still didn't yell.

This is both because (believe it or not) yelling actually isn't my default, and because I assumed (apparently⁴ incorrectly) that this was the only place in town.

I don't know how much the issue was the previous wrist slapping and how much was Covid, but she really really didn't want me to stay; wasn't capable of providing an alternate solution; and was really unhappy that one of the rooms had been left unlocked and I had put my stuff in it and lay down on the bed.

"If you don't get off that bed and out of this room, I'm going to call the police on you!"

"Eh. You can sell me a bed now, or you can sell me a bed after the police come. I'm fine with either option."

Then I lay back on that hard wooden cot in sufficient comfort as to go "fuuuuck, I must be really exhausted for this to be comfortable" and messaged my chat group "it begins". It was 7:37pm.

By 7:50, the police had arrived, convinced me to at least temporarily put my shoes on and stand up while addressing them, and had even convinced me to talk to them on the verandah. Then they mentioned foreigner hotels and I went back inside and laid down again.

As of 8:15, on the pretext of registering properly at the police station, I had been coaxed out of the room⁵ once again.

If you are used to western police, Chinese policing is very alien. Both systems have serious flaws and I'm not going to make any public judgement calls on which system is better. Suffice it to say that, although there's an iron fist of consequences, it isn't usually applied at the beat cop level. Instead, these guys are negotiators. They never actually intended to let me stay but convincingly saying that they were going to register me was enough to get me out of the room and on to their territory.

It was at the Police Station that I found out about the guesthouse having previously been slapped on the wrist specifically on account of my staying in 2018. They even found the file on their computer and let me look at it on the screen. Check and mate and we're going to drive you to the city where there are hotels that have specifically been designated for training in taking foreigners.

At least some of the martyrs are relatively recent deaths rather than WW2

Right side is everyone from here who died in WW2

The city is the wrong direction. It's not only downhill, it's also not on my route. I negotiate a compromise where we find a hotel (with a valid license⁶) in the next town on my route and we go there instead, a 35 minute trip over the mountains.

A return to the guesthouse to pick up my panniers, I get the front seat of the police car. The formerly unlocked room (which is currently being used by people from the County Poverty Alleviation Office⁷) has been locked, possibly with some of my stuff still inside. We wait for the guesthouse owner to come back and it turns out that the only thing she hadn't removed to the verandah was my large bidon.

We are back at the Police Station and loading my bike by 9:00 and have arrived in front of the hotel found on Maps by 9:35. In the group, I note that I'm not sure if the windows are down because the weather is stunningly nice or because they don't want to say anything to me about how bad I smell.

My first experience in being explicitly refused a Covid swab. "We are only doing people on their way in to the county"

But the way in to the next county was missing it's Epidemic Prevention and Control staff

A traffic stop that took place between the two checkpoints

A pretty building that didn't fit anywhere else in terms of photos

A search for hotel staff commences. Phone numbers are found. Called by me. Called by them. It's late. The hotel doesn't feel like opening. I am to be driven to the city after all.

And that's where the fun really starts.

Remember, when I approach the Front Desk, this is one of the specified hotels that definitively knows all about taking foreigners, that we've been sent to this location by the Public Security Bureau, that I'm arriving in a special blue and white taxi, and that I have two uniformed officers with me who don't quite 100% believe my telling them that most of these incidents aren't my fault. Remember this. Remember it well.

All testing students can pick up bottled water

More tents and aid stations outside the school

Cause the first words out the lady's mouth at 10:58pm are "I don't think we're allowed to take foreigners. Are you sure the government says its okay?"

I am standing in her lobby with two police officers who have clearly delivered me to her lobby and she needs to ask if the government says this is okay. This is then followed by calling a manager to check and even attempting old favorites like "we don't have the qualifications" and "no one knows how the registration system works".

Eventually, we walk over to the more expensive sister property on the same parking lot to use their computer which will be far more capable of allowing me to be registered in that it has a scanner which, in completely failing to OCR anything from my passport, will still result in my going behind the desk and manually entering everything myself.

Trying to get me to leave the initial room

Equally as impressed as I am by the highly professional staff of a hotel "trained to take foreigners", the police alternate between joining me behind the front desk and standing at the counter on tippy toes leaning over to watch what I'm doing.

Finally, at 11:30, four hours after this started, I get my hotel room. It costs 88 yuan.

¹ A whole 15 yuan, it came with the ability to take a cold shower at the far end of the verandah.

² I know from that Trip Journal that I wasn't registered, and that they didn't want to try to register me.

What I don't know is if my unregistered stay was reported to the local police from the detective³ in Hainan to whom I was still reporting my location on a daily basis, from the town two nights away whose police were very thoroughly harassed by me, or from some other method of figuring out "we had a foreigner, where did she stay?".

Looking over the desk to see why things are taking so long

³ Is there anyone reading this who doesn't know about my 2018 arrest for drug smuggling?

⁴ When I was losing the "staying in this town" argument with the police, I overheard "none of the guesthouses meet the minimum standards to be allowed to have a lodging license anymore" so this presumes more than one exists. Be aware though that, in 2018, I picked this place over my 2012 place because it was the nicer of the two options.

⁵ A friend of mine heard this sentence and said he visualized me as a recalcitrant cat at the vet's, and the police as vet techs with a bit of fish which they were using to lure me out of the cat carrier while I crouched in the corner hissing at them. This is not that far off from the truth.

A poster at the not open place about, you guessed it, the rules for hosting foreigners

⁶ Other than her not wanting me, part of the issue was that the place I was trying to stay was no longer a legally valid guesthouse on account of current licensing standards requiring piddling unnecessary things like plumbing.

⁷ Obviously the police knew that people were still using the guesthouse as a place to sleep, however—notwithstanding the part where the guesthouse owner didn't want me—Poverty Alleviation Office workers staying at a place that isn't licensed isn't the same as a foreigner staying at a place that isn't licensed.

Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 1,101 km (684 miles)

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