The Police

May 23, 2021

You know this is the kind of terrain where it rapidly gets cold the minute the sun goes down

I'm not sure but I think the middle upper whatever level police in the Yanchi County county seat who the police in Dashuigou talked to remember me.

I was in Ningxia twelve nights on the 2018 Tour and while I did end up talking to the police on nine of those nights, my first two nights in Yanchi and Fengjigou (which I'm pretty sure is still within Yanchi County) were the only ones where I was actively hostile or aggressively unpleasant in the process of convincing them that they were wrong and I was right.

After that, unless I couldn't find the police station, I started my nights in Ningxia at the police station.

Even though it was well past the main cluster of hotels, I intentionally picked the hotel closest to the police station. However, when I went past it, it looked like it had been closed for years. This was followed by a couple more spots that looked absurdly expensive from the outside and a touring cyclist kind of nice place with no one at the Front Desk and a person on the phone who told me they were full¹.

Back towards the cluster of hotels in town, the temperature feels like it's dropped at least 10℃³ since the sun went down and, lo and behold, that long closed looking place now has lights on so I poke my nose in and ask if they have rooms.

80元 for an ensuite with sprung beds and I've got no reason to be going anywhere else.

The start of modern China's great humiliation began with the first opium war in 1839

Auntie doesn't understand her computer and she doesn't want me going being the Front Desk to show her² that the Registration Software has a foreigner option. Instead, she calls her daughter in law, and her daughter in law calls the police, and "No Foreigners Allowed".

Oh no, that simply won't do. I'm going to need the police station's phone number so I can talk to them.

You probably need to go to a foreigner hotel. Foreigners stay at expensive hotels. The kind that cost 300 or 500 a night. Not places like this. Foreigners don't stay at places like this.

Historic bridge across the gorge just barely visible as it's made of the same color stone. I'm standing on the new bridge with the old bridge behind me.

Of course we do. I do. And there's no such rule.

But the police said.

Well of course they said. But they said that to you, not to me. And they aren't allowed to tell me things that inconvenience me. Otherwise, I inconvenience them.

She pooh poohs this ridiculousness but with my politely showing no apparent intention of leaving calls the daughter-in-law again, explains the situation, and gets me the police station number.

Promote late marriages and fewer better quality births

The police station, of course, tells me that foreigners can't be staying in a town and that I'll have to be going to Yanchi.

Yeah, that won't be happening. I picked the hotel which I'm at because it's near your police station. I think the hotel should have foreigner registration on their computer but the auntie won't let me check so I'm mostly calling because I need you to download a Temporary Residence Registration Form for Foreigners from the Public Security Intranet to bring over to the hotel for me to fill out.

Ermm... They'll be calling me back, can I wait?

Absolutely prohibit the occurrence of illegal grazing, promote the restoration and rewilding of farmland into forest

It's not even five minutes before they call back and when they do it makes me so very very happy. The person on the other end starts the call by asking if the foreigner is still at the hotel. "Well yes, I am the foreigner."

"You are?"
"I am."

Now, of course the only reason it's possible to not be realizing they're talking to a foreigner is cause I'm in a part of China where no one speaks especially standard Mandarin, but it still makes me happy.

They're on their way.

There's so much going on in this tile mosaic wall poster, it probably deserves translation and an entry of its own

I don't know what took them thirty minutes to arrive from practically next door. Three officers. The two men are in full tacticool gear that you know just to look at isn't what they regularly wear for just lounging around the station while the woman officer is in a more normal plain blue uniform shirt and navy trousers.

They have notes on what info they need from me, and—after photographing every page of my passport to take back to the station—they tell the auntie that she doesn't need to do anything else and I can pay for my room.

"Is there a deposit? How much should I pay?" I ask, scanning the AliPay code.
"Send 200," she says, then, after I've already completed payment amends that to 300.
"That's quite a large deposit. 220元 on an 80元 room."
"Oh no. The room is 300."
"No it isn't. It's 80. You told me it's 80."
"That's the price for Chinese people."
"It's also the price for foreigners."
"But foreigners only stay expensive places. The standard for foreigners is 300 or 500 a night, so it should be 300."
"You just saw me ordering the police around. Do you really want to be getting into an argument with me?"
"Um. No."
"Okay then, so tomorrow, when I check out, you'll return 220 to me?"
"I guess so."
"What?"
"I guess so."
"No. No guessing. Tomorrow you will return my 220 deposit to me."
"Fine."

Both men have body cams and utility vests. The younger one close to me is even wearing his shoulder lights and I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone not an on-duty Traffic Cop in the process of directing traffic actually wearing shoulder blinkies

And with that, you'd think the night was over. But, not quite yet.

First, the younger male officer, the one who looked like he was playing dress up in an older brother's uniform, had to come by my room to ask me nicely for my passport cause the photos they'd taken weren't good enough and they needed to photocopy things. Then, the woman officer had to come by the ask me for my phone number because that was another piece of info that needed to be filled out. And, finally, the younger man again to return my passport to me.

Sadly, I have no photos of the woman officer when she stopped by the room as there's a northern Chinese fashion of wearing specific-for-lounging-pyjamas (that I've never figured out if anyone ever sleeps in) outdoors and she'd already changed from her uniform into the PJs, quilted PJs covered with Tiggers.

---

¹ This might have been true. It also might have been my out of province phone number and the thought that there would be extra Covid related reporting requirements.

² Read: to find out for my own curiosity if Ningxia's foreigner registration is still broken

³ If I'm in the same weather system which led to the deaths of 21 of the runners in a Mountain Marathon a couple hundred km south of here, it may, in fact, have dropped by that much.

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