I'm beginning to think that the guy from last night is retarded. At the very least, if he isn't retarded, there's something wrong with him. I have independent confirmation from the hotel staff that something happened to him last night involving being Covid tested and they also seem to think that he's been put in quarantine but all the efforts I've made via him to either get someone to talk to me or to get him to provide me with the names and work units of the people who said he needs to go into quarantine have been met with refusal and evasion.

As with the previous night's "hanger episode", I just inform him in very clear language of what will happen. I am not being restricted nor do I accept restrictions and if anyone wishes to attempt to impose restrictions on me, they can do so directly to my face so that I may tell them to fuck off. I am not eating instant noodles in the room, I am not a prisoner, and I am not waiting until 20 minutes before my train to leave the room. 

When I go down to the hotel's breakfast buffet as he had repeatedly told me I absolutely must not do, the unmasked staff look uneasy to be around me but, they're so concerned about Covid risks, they don't even have masks available to put on while they hover 15 feet away from me and scurry away from any necessary interaction they are forced to have with me.

Checking out, I demand to know who told them I wasn't allowed to stay and eventually get an older manager (not the woman from the night before) who tells me "our hotel has only been open a little while¹" and "I know we don't have a license to accept foreigners, so I thought...." which gets me showing her that page from the Provincial PSB and a "who told you there was such a thing as a foreigner license?" but she refuses to answer the question.

Leaving the hotel, I pass through a neighborhood checkpoint where I'm recorded same as everyone else, and I head to the first spot I see where pulling out my laptop is acceptable. It's a bakery and café, though they've apparently stopped doing drinks despite this literally being the largest profit margin item you can sell. My putting my mask back on after eating prompts the owner of the café (who is doing both front and back of house duties including cooking) to get a mask and put it on herself.

The train station, when I get there about 15 minutes after I leave the bakery, is a special kind of special. I was expecting them to have a logistics office and the ability to ship my bike. They don't. The people manning the luggage scan and metal detector at the entrance also don't want to listen to me as I'm trying to ask them about the logistics office they don't have, choosing instead to completely freak the fuck out over the Uyghur.

As three of them decide to push me backwards out of the station and fail because I'm very solid and they're not very big, I ineffectively yell things like "can you please listen to my question!" 

The train station police office is all of about 150 feet away from where this is happening but, with what's been shouted over the radio about a dangerous ethnic minority causing a disturbance, means they couldn't respond until after they had put on their stab vests. Therefore, by the time they showed up, the Station Manager had already poked his nose out of his office and seen my Hat. 

Seen and recognized my Hat. 

As someone who wasn't merely a fan of mine, but who had actually exchanged messages with me, he was Very Very Excited to meet me. That smoothed things over considerably to the extent of my leaving most of my stuff in the station while going to the Post Office to mail what could be mailed; my doing it again during the 90 minutes that the waiting room was closed between trains; and, finally with him accompanying me down the platform to make sure that the conductor knew it was okay for me to put my bike on the train.

¹ If they've only been open a little while, they were dreadfully lax on both initial construction and on maintenance