Over in the Travel in China During Covid groups, I've noted that a surprisingly large number of my "interesting" (by which I mean "hostile") check-in experiences end with the angry shouty people doing a complete 180° after the opportunity to sleep on it and think over their own behavior.

One of my more memorable apologies was an episode in 2018 in Gansu where I'd extended the olive branch with a "sorry I had to be such a twat to you, but being nice doesn't get the police to show up, and you were already my third hotel of the evening" and the woman was just "yeah, whatever, I'm sure you had your reasons, but can you please tell me how you made that PSB officer back down, cause that was so cool!"

It used to happen before I was famous, so it's not just them getting on TikTok and swipe swipe swipe, hol' up, that's the person who is in my hotel right now.

Given that I ended up paying about twice what the room should've cost because I didn't get told a price until after I'd forced them to give me a room and I wasn't really in a position to do more than make a snide comment, I don't really care why the dude is being nice to me and asking about my trip and commenting on the weather. I'm fed up and I'm grouchy.

The day's gray drizzle, my being on main roads almost the whole time, and everything visitable being obviously locked do not, in any way, make a positive contribution to my mood. Even if the one and only checkpoint I pass through is completely unconcerned about foreigners, having to deal with hotel issues again and again and again and not even getting the positive stuff I should be getting from the daytime part of my travel is grinding on my psyche.

So, when Sarah and HB call me with a "when are you coming back" something like ten minutes after I ride past the Yunyang Train Station, although I start with "probably giving up sometime in the next two weeks", by the end of the call it's strongly looking like "maybe tomorrow".

I eat dinner, buy my train ticket online, go to the closest hotel, decide against it because second floor lobby, and head back towards Yunyang. I've got maybe two or three kilometres still to go when the Road Magic happens.

Some guy who it turns out is not a fan and has no idea that I'm famous online saw me eating dinner. Used to live overseas himself. And he's already booked me a hotel room.

And if there's an edge of "not quite right", of his probably being the kind of dick who describes himself as a "Nice Guy", it's questionably just my mood and I'm substantially larger than he is.

Chatting along the way about his time in Spain, in Africa, about the foreigners he totally knows for sure absolutely (though they might not know him), and how this town used to have a bunch of Koreans studying TCM, he drives me to a hotel in the surprisingly county seat sized town of Yunyang.

The manager is a woman about my age. Speaks some English. Insists on using her English at me. Responding to my Chinese with loosely interconnected batches of words that I really only understand because of context. Stuff like that.

She does not want me showing them how to register myself on the computer and she definitely does not want me writing myself down in their Covid logbook. Not because foreigner but because of the current "national law" that "all people staying at hotels must have a 48 hour validity Covid test" and mine is five days old.

The presence of the Nice Guy hampers my ability to shout at people so other than a "don't be preposterous", I'm like yeah whatever. Tell you what, I already planned to handle my check in myself so thank you for the ride, I'll find a hotel that isn't staffed by idiots.

"No, no, no, of course you can stay!" the Manager says. "We'll use his ID card."

I have no words.