Even though I've pointed myself at the police station "to make things easier" and even though I've not had a particularly tiring day, I still make sure to eat and rest before I report to them that I'm an ordinary human being who has already booked and paid for a room in the closest hotel.

The police, however, want me to go to one of the town's three Foreigner Hotels.

At this point I haven't told friends online that I'm having a hotel issue with the police and I haven't gotten a copy of the letter from only ten days ago that the provincial Ministry of Public Security issued in response to a query for an academic journal on what restrictions their province has for foreigners, what the names of the foreigner hotels are, the standards to become a foreigner hotel, and the method of applying with: "our province has no restrictions of any kind on foreigners wishing to stay in hotels". 

My not having gotten this yet means I'm using my usual techniques. Once the officer on the duty desk has spoken to someone about the foreigner and her "insistence that she needs to see something in writing about foreigner hotels", I just assume, along with the hotel having accepted my reservation from the OTA, that things are sorted.

Of course, you know that things haven't been sorted.

When I get to the hotel, it takes quite a bit of over the top antisocial behavior on my part (I started friendly, it didn't last) to get the cops called on me, and I assume it's probably because I'm making very sure that they aren't being allowed to do any other business with anyone else until I have a room key.

And the police don't fucking help.

They don't help me get the room which I've already paid for and they don't help the hotel that's refusing to honor my paid for reservation get me out of the lobby. In point of fact, it's the pissed off hotel owner (who by now has lost at least two customers) who solves things by actually accepting my authoritative statement that "if you want to illegally refuse me service, the law says you have to pay compensation equal to 5x the cost of my reservation". 

The law in question is the "I made it up one day cause I felt like it" Law of Marian. But that's okay in my ethical headspace cause, unlike the police who are currently trying to tell me that this hotel doesn't have a foreigner license under provincial law (and who are about to be very unhappy when I show them that letter from their Ministry of Public Security), I'm rather carefully not saying that my law has the official backing of any legislative body.

The hotel owner goes to the ATM and she gets cash and she solves things by paying me to leave.

I'm gobsmacked.

Since last year when I made this Law up as a tactic for some of the less shouty foreigners to use when rejected, no one has ever been paid to go away. Ever.

Has to be a first for everything.

Cash in handlebar bag, I leave the lobby and the police immediately start to disperse leading to my rapidly having to run after them with an "excuse me, but, where I am spending the night" and an outright refusal to do anything more than give me the names of the three Foreigner Hotels until I "ask nicely" for them to help me.

And so, having sufficiently bitten my tongue and performed the act of "asking nicely" (in a very clear falsetto with over the top flirting), I follow them 3km to what they've decided is a hotel that can take me only to have the Front Desk ladies look at me and the police and tell them "she can't stay here" which leads to more disorderly behavior on my part and a chiding lecture by the officer who'd told me to "ask nicely for assistance" that I wouldn't act this way in my home country and I shouldn't act this way here.

It probably wasn't in my best interest to respond "A hotel in my home country wouldn't refuse a guest on the basis of illegal verbal laws that the police have made up without authorization" but, eventually, the hotel agrees to check me in.

Except that somehow none of my attempts to book through any of the Chinese OTAs will go through (they say the reservations never arrive for them to confirm but I don't believe them) and, after about a 30 or 40 minute wait and two attempts to book, I pay the full 198y walk in rate (versus 120 for the same room online).

Almost immediately after I get to the room, they call me to tell me my bike needs to be moved down to the unguarded outdoor parking lot. I respond to this by first saying "no", then explaining "no", then hanging up, taking the phone off the hook, security latching the door, and ignoring them when they come and knock.