May 21, 2021
The Police
Of all the many many different people involved in making this a very memorable night, the police were perhaps the only ones I didn't see face to face.
Given all my various stories of challenging authorities who don't have the authority to be doing something which annoys or inconveniences me, it might surprise people that I took as long as I did before I started yelling at people.
First of all, no one ever said "you can't" or "it's not allowed" to me. It was always "just one more thing" from one more department that either didn't know how to do their job with relation to me or overstepping boundaries. Second, by being agreeable, by not yelling at people (who had to know their bosses' requests for what to do with me were unreasonable), it meant that when I finally did start yelling, I got a handful of apologies.
These apologies won't change my making a complaint but they will change the tone of the complaint to one of pointing out complete systemic failure at multiple levels rather than "so-and-so pissed me off". Cause—to be perfectly honest—I'm mostly not angry at the grunts who were doing their jobs as their supervisors ordered them; I'm angry at the faceless supervisors.
Beginning in 2008, China started implementing a mostly standardized computer program (sometimes a webpage or phone app) to register hotel guests. This was to replace the former system of logbooks but, as recently as this week, I've been entered by hand in an official logbook.
Almost every version I've ever seen of this system has foreigner registration as a tab or menu option. In 2012, when I first started arguing that I ought to be allowed to stay somewhere, and when I hadn't yet done the research into relevant laws, my go to rhetorical question was "would the public security bureau have given you a foreigner registration system if you weren't allowed to register foreigners?"
I talk my way behind the counter and into registering myself on the computer most occasions when there is a computer. Hardly all of them but certainly most of them.
Because three of the less than ten occasions where the computer didn't have a foreigner option were on the current trip, and because of that hamlet where I got stuck in the cold rain near the very start was otherwise a logbook but the police wanted me "properly" registered, I know for a fact that being registered by the police on their system is something which can be done without any input from me, that they don't even need my passport and can in fact handle it with just photos of the relevant pages.
This is important. Remember it.
The hotel's registration didn't have a foreigner option. The hotel that I specifically booked on the grounds of it being one of less than a dozen in the city listed as foreigner friendly on a foreigner facing website didn't have a foreigner option for registration.
Other than asking me nicely if I'd cancel my reservation cause this was going to be a massive clusterfuck of painful (I declined because wherever else I went wasn't going to be any easier for me), the hotel owner made a few calls then took my passport off to the local cop shop.
It should have ended there.
It should have ended as an amusing story about the staff quickly masking up and the lobby rapidly getting spritzed down with disinfectant so that any government employees who showed up could smell that the place was Following the Rules.
It did not end there.
When the hotel owner got back, he got on the phone with someone who tried to talk him through registering me on his computer. Which they couldn't because his computer didn't have foreigner registration.
So the two of us were told to drive downtown to the public security bureau desk at the government service center for me to be registered on their computer. This could have been done with photos, should have been done with photos, did not ever require a 15 minute drive.
The PSB officers, a man and a woman, weren't particularly well versed in how to do what needed doing but they were friendly and they figured it out. I actually thought them being on a video call with someone who could look at the computer screen and ensure everything was right was actually a rather clever solution.
I was annoyed that I hadn't had dinner, that the people coming to pick me up were waiting outside the hotel, that the bike shop had called someone they knew and been told "it's a very simple procedure, shouldn't take more than 10 minutes" 10 minutes before my 15 minute drive downtown but no one was ever refusing me, no one was giving me a hook with which to say "you're wrong, that's not the law".
We go to leave but we can't leave. Some other department has gotten in contact with the hotel owner and they also want to register me. Since we are at the government service center, they're going to come and meet us here.
After a staged photo of me with the PSB officers taken by the security guard who just wants to lock up the building and go home, hotel owner and I stand outside chatting with the officers. I get the opportunity to bring up how I ended up stuck in Thailand at the beginning of this whole mess and my being a suspected Covid patient when I arrived back in China¹.
My back is to the parking lot so I can't see the people arriving but I hear them arrive when the male officer (who is unmasked because, even if I'm being polite enough to wear a mask, he's smart enough to realize I live in China, am traveling locally at bicycle speeds, and have both green codes²) exclaims "fuck me, what the hell are they wearing?"
My phone is passed around, my codes are looked at, pictures are taken, and then someone says "okay, now we're going to take you to the hospital for a NAT test" and the first incident of my losing my temper and yelling "no the hell you aren't" happens.
Whether or not they realize it is a calculated bit of intentional rudeness, I not only get up in their face when yelling, I take my mask off. This is the kind of yelling where I can see flecks of my spit landing on their goggles.
"I am a vaccinated Chinese resident traveling inside China and I've put up with this shit long enough. Registration is supposed to be a five minute process and this has gone on long enough. I am going back to my hotel where I will be meeting my local friend for dinner and if you have anything else you want me to do, you can come back and meet me at my hotel after dinner."
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Public Security Bureau lady initially goes knee jerk "us vs. them" on defending her side from my being unreasonable but by the second or third sentence she's come around to my side and is also yelling at them.
Hotel Owner and I then walk back to his car. We get stopped on our way by PSB lady who must have run to her car in order to drive over to visitor parking, catch us, and apologize to me with some of the standard platitudes.
I don't know what the male officer says to the 'suits but when I find them in my hotel lobby (after I'd quickly changed and come downstairs to meet the locals from the museum for dinner) and they're telling me I can't leave, I get more apologies. "We're just government workers, don't take it out on us."
Sit and chat with them for maybe 15 minutes. Go over everywhere I've been. Touch on my ability to afford a trip like this being the laptop in my panniers, the rush job I did yesterday that got me in two hours very nearly a month and a half of the most senior person there's salary.
It's warm in the lobby and while everyone is still masked, the hoods have come down. I'm not being allowed to go to dinner but they've at least joined in realizing how fucking ridiculous this is.
The hoods quickly go back up when they see the people from the CDC arrive. I'm told it's just an interview and that I can wait in my room but, in reality, I'm getting a NAT test whether I agree to it or not.
I wastefully finish most of the block of Parmesan from today's care package. I'm hungry and while oatmeal is always a possibility, the pannier with the bowl is still downstairs.
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The next episode of yelling comes after a rather uncomfortable nose swabbing. It starts with confusion. I'm so gobsmacked by the question being asked that I need body language and gestures to confirm that they actually think I'm going to agree to an anal swab. "You can go to the bathroom and do it yourself" the nurse suggests.
"No. You can get the fuck out of my room." I bellow, pointing at the door. "All of you. Out. Now!"
She tries to tell me it's standard practice in China. "No, it isn't." (At least not for people who aren't close contacts of known patients) "You will leave before I make you leave. In 3...2...1."
They leave. I have time enough for two more mouthfuls of cheese when a knock comes at the door. "We...uh...we didn't finish filling out your travel history form. Can we please come back in?"
I check that there are, in fact, only two of them and that no sample coolers are visible before letting them in for an interview at least as thorough as the one I got when I was fresh off an international flight and presenting suspicious symptoms. I'm seething but now is not the right time nor the right people for me to be doing anything.
I cooperate.
Finally, at 10pm, everything is done and I get picked up to go to dinner.
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¹ Naproxen, which is my go to drug for flying, is not just an antiinflammatory, it's also an antipyretic. The combination of my taking a fever reducer and my preexisting wheeze when I arrived back from Thailand in March 2020 got me an all expenses paid trip to the Infectious Diseases Building Isolation Ward until my NAT tests came back negative.
² In addition to the standard green code (which supposedly registers you for contact tracing if anyone ever scanned in at places) and which can be remotely flipped to yellow or red if you've been in close contact with a patient or suspected patient, I've also got a gold "fully vaccinated" border a the green track code from my phone's location history.
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