T-1: 北京（双语）

September 15, 2024

Harassing the police in Chengdu 在成都的时候，他们给我带来麻烦，我给他们带来麻烦

At the end of May of this year, the State Council and a couple of other departments that I can't be bothered to look up at this moment issued a very important document regarding the "hotels and foreigners" problem that I'm always harping on as being the worst aspect of my bike trips.

As some of the people reading here might be new or might not be familiar with China, I feel like I ought to go into the history of the "hotels and foreigners" issue, but again, I don't really feel like it right now.

今年5月底，国务院以及其他几个我此刻懒得去查证的部门发布了一份非常重要的文件，是关于我一直念叨的、在我骑行之旅中最糟糕的“酒店与外国人”问题。

由于这里的一些读者可能是新来的，或者可能不太了解中国（或者是没有外籍朋友的中国人），我觉得我应该讲讲“酒店与外国人”这个问题的来龙去脉，但话说回来，我现在又不太想讲。

Short form is not only that there are no legal regulations preventing foreigners from overnighting anywhere we are allowed to be during the day time, but that there also have been no such regulations for roughly the past 20 years. Separate from the lack of legal regulations not necessarily leading to a lack of extra-legal and explicitly unwritten regulations, there's also a whole lot of urban legend swirling around; and, as a result, even if I book a hotel room that is explicitly listed on the OTA as "willing to take foreigners" that does not mean that I a) won't be going behind the front desk to register myself or b) won't be calling the local police to come and handle a mess that was very likely caused by them instructing hotels¹ on how much trouble they will get in if they take foreign-passport holders.

简而言之，不仅没有法律法规禁止外国人在任何白天可呆的地方过夜，而且在过去大约20年里也一直都没有这样的规定。缺少这方面的法律法规不一定就意味着没有法外的、明确不成文的规定，除此之外，还有大量的传说流传着；结果就是，即使我预订了一家在在线旅游平台上明确标明“可接待外国人”的酒店客房，这也并不意味着我：1）不需要到前台后面自己为自己登记；或者2）不需要打110叫当地警察来处理一个很可能是由他们告知酒店¹如果接待持外国护照的人会惹上大麻烦。

Hotel room in Wushan, Gansu, where they gave us paper registration forms 在甘肃给了我们纸质的登记表的哪家宾馆。

Starting in 2012, I've been writing articles mostly aimed at the bike touring community (but widely shared and used by non-cyclists) on the fact that we very much are allowed to stay at small hotels in rural China; and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the vast majority of English-language content that is not bitching about how "as a foreigner, I wasn't allowed to stay somewhere" but is instead on how "I stayed there anyways and you can too" was either written by me or references me².

From 2020—with the onset of Covid and the discovery that the hotel rejections which I thought were mostly a small county thing are something that nearly every foreigner in China has experienced—this expanded into written complaint letters about police who still didn't succeed in convincing me I wasn't allowed to stay somewhere, and teaching other foreigners the value of government complaint hotlines.

从2012年开始，我一直在写面向骑行群体的（但也被非骑行爱好者广泛分享和使用）的文章关于我们外籍人完全可以在中国的乡村小旅馆住宿；而且据我所知，我也深信，绝大多数并非抱怨“作为外国人，我不被允许在某处住宿”而是讲述“我反正就在那儿住下了，你们也可以”的英文内容，要么是我写的，要么就是参考了我²。

从2020年起，随着新冠疫情的爆发，以及我发现原本我以为主要是小县城才会出现的酒店拒客情况，其实几乎每个在华的外国人都经历过，这演变成了书面投诉信，投诉那些（仍然没法让我离开他们所说的“不允许接待外国人”的宾馆）继续说废的警察，同时也教其他外国人利用政府投诉热线的重要性。

Hotel room in Haikou that had power and water when most of the city didn't 当时城市大部分地区停水停电，而这里却水电正常住下的“没有资格接待外宾”的海口宾馆

In 2022, I published an article on my WeChat Official Account called "Foreigners Allowed." Despite this account having around 3,500 followers, and it being a really long, dry collection of laws, the article now has 19,100 views. To put that in perspective, my Big Media Client rarely gets above 50 views per English language article on their WeChat Official Account, and most Chinese language accounts consider 2,000 to 3,000 views to be pretty good. This was followed by the creation of a WeChat group where I ostensibly offered a paid-for service where we would call hotels and government hotlines in advance of a foreigner's intended stay, so as to make sure that they wouldn't have problems at check-in, but which really was all about a) teaching other foreigners how to handle the situation on their own and b) teaching other foreigners that "you too can write effective complaint letters about being inconvenienced by local non-compliance with the law!"

That was 18 months before the Central Government Notice that is basically a dozen pages of legalese for "we are sick and tired of hearing about this issue, stop telling foreigners that they can't stay in hotels" and which opens with "in response to complaints received by people from Nigeria, the U.K. and Pakistan³."

2022年，我在自己的微信公众号上发表了一篇题为《外国人可以入住》的文章。尽管这个公众号约有3500名粉丝，而且那篇文章是一篇冗长、枯燥的法律法规的汇总，但如今它的阅读量已达19100次。对比来看，我的大型媒体客户在其微信公众号上发表的每篇英文文章阅读量很少能超过50次，而且大多数中文公众号认为2000至3000次的阅读量就已经很不错了。在此之后，我创建了一个微信群，表面上我在群里提供一项付费服务，即在外国人打算入住酒店之前，我们会提前给酒店和政府热线打电话，以确保他们顺利办理入住手续，但实际上这项服务主要是为了：1）教其他外国人如何自行处理这种情况；2）教其他外国人“你们也可以就当地不遵守法律给自己造成不便的情况写出有效的投诉信！”

那是在中央政府发布通知的18个月之前，那份通知基本上有十几页法律术语，大意是“我们已经听够了这个问题，别再告诉外国人他们不能住酒店了”，并且开头提到“应对来自尼日利亚、英国和巴基斯坦的人士³的投诉”。

Hotel room in Beihai that I was upgraded to after they saw my not at all negative video about their hotel 北海的酒店客房，他们看了我拍的他们酒店的视频里完全没有负面评价，之后就给我升级了房间。

I think they cleaned the back of the TV set just for me 我觉得他们专门为我清理了电视机背面

This was followed 6 weeks later by a second Central Government Notice (this time from seven departments including the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Tourism, Public Security, and National Immigration Administration) that further clarified "if you kids don't stop squabbling, I'm going to turn this car around and go home" and made it abundantly clear not only that foreigners are allowed to stay at all forms of temporary overnight lodging, that temporary overnight lodging is not allowed to blame non-existent government regulations on the personal (and completely legal) choice to not take us, that no local government department is allowed to enact any kind of verbal or written restriction on temporary overnight lodging taking us, and that online platforms selling hotel rooms needed to get rid of statments such as "this hotel is only qualified to take domestic guests."

According to people who are far less assertive than me about refusing to leave hotel lobbies for any location other than their room, and who are far more willing to pay 3× the price or go someplace inconvenient in order to ensure a lack of issues, the change since the May Announcement has been utter night and day. That's not to say that hotels aren't still rejecting foreigners, its just happening a lot less, and its getting reported on in the Chinese media as something that isn't supposed to be happening.

六周之后，中央政府又发布了第二份通知（这次是由包括商务部、文化和旅游部、公安部以及国家移民管理局在内的七个部门发布的），进一步阐明“孩子们你们还不停地吵让我头疼！继续的话，你会很后悔”，并且非常明确地指出，不仅外国人可以入住各类临时过夜住宿场所，而这些场所不得将合法不接待外国人的个体选择的归咎于不存在的政府规定，任何地方政府部门都不允许对接待外国人的临时过夜住宿场所实施任何口头或书面的限制，而且销售酒店客房的在线平台需要删除诸如“本酒店仅接待国内客人”之类的表述。

那些没有我坚定的在前台不给入住房间就不愿意离开大堂的人，以及那些更愿意花三倍的价钱或者去不便利的地方住以确保不出问题的人都表示，自五月份的通告发布以来，情况发生了天翻地覆的变化。这并不是说酒店就不再拒绝外国人入住了，只是这种情况少多了，而且中国媒体也在报道说这种事本就不应该发生。

All-in-one Registration Kiosk in Qiongzhong. Doesn't work for foreigners.琼中的一体化登记终端机。没有外国人的功能。

So, since my Very Weird Beihai Trip⁴ in mid-August, I've started the "Checking Into A Hotel While Foreign" series of short videos. And, because I'm an ornery cunt, I decided that Episode Nine⁵ was the perfect time to intentionally pick a hotel that was listed as "we can't take foreigners" as it would either result in my being able to give some left-handed praise on how great it is things have changed or it would result in me being able to abuse Consumer Protection Law and force the booking platform into paying for an upgrade for me.

所以，自从我八月中旬那次非常奇特的北海之行⁴后，我就开始制作“外国人入住酒店”系列短视频。而且，因为我是个固执的混蛋，我认定第九集⁵的时候正是个绝佳时机，可以故意挑一家标明“我们不接待外国人”的酒店，这样做要么能让我反说"夸赞"一下情况已经发生了很大的改变，要么能让我利用《消费者保护法》迫使预订平台给我升级房间。

And, well, I haven't had a shitshow level of confrontation with the police approaching last night since the place in Henan in 2022 where the police ordered the owner of my original hotel not to take me and then forced him to pay for my going to a substantially more expensive hotel.

But, hey, not only did the booking platform upgrade me to a slightly more expensive hotel, I got enough documentation that, even though first-tier customer support tried really hard to convince me that restrictions totes exist, supervisor-tier paid for my upgrade and will also be complaining to the relevant authorities about the local police⁶.

而且，自2022年在河南那次因为警察命令我原本预订的那家酒店的老板不许接待我，然后强迫他给钱让我去住一家贵得多的酒店之后，我就再没遇到过像昨晚那么糟糕的与警察对峙的情况了。

不过，这次预订平台不仅给我升级到了一家稍微贵一点的酒店，我还拿到了足够的证明，尽管一线客服非常努力地想让我相信住宿限制还存在，但主管层级的人员为我的升级付了费，而且和我一样会就当地警察的做法向相关部门投诉⁶。

Only nationwide chain hotel I stayed at on this year's Round the Island, also the only time I needed to call the police in order to get into my room今年环岛旅行期间我住过的唯一一家全国连锁酒店，也是唯一一次我需要打电话叫警察才能入住的酒店。

--
¹ If I'm traveling someplace that doesn't get a whole lot of foreigners and anything negative happens to me that results in a police report, as was wonderfully illustrated by the County Commissioner of Li remembering being told of my existence six years earlier from when he was the Mayor of Daqiao, the police will be getting a royal ass-chewing. The favored tactic for mitigating the risks of this happening is to make it difficult for foreigners to be in their area at all.

² I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

¹ 就像礼县的县长记得六年前他还是大桥镇镇长时就被告知过我路过他镇的情况，如果我去一个外国人不太多的地方旅行有任何不好的事情发生在我身上，导致要报警处理，警察可就会挨一顿臭骂。为了降低这种事情发生的风险，他们惯用的策略就是让外国人压根儿就很难进入他们的辖区。

²我很乐意被证明是错的，但是我确信我是对的。

Hotel near Hongqiao Airport in 2023 that insisted on walking me to a nearby hotel because their local police station was imposing verbal restrictions 因为他们当地派出所施加了口头限制，2023年在虹桥机场旁的一家酒店坚持把我送到附近的另一家酒店，

³ I'm around 70% certain that I've identified the Brit and the Pakistani.

⁴ A foreign fan of mine, who has previously stated that I've saved him and his wife thousands of yuan since letting them know that they didn't have to take "no" for an answer, and who regularly gives me 100y tips, invited me to come visit him and his wife while they were there, sent me more than enough money for travel expenses, and then ghosted me while I was en-route.

³ 我大概有七成把握能确定那名英国人和那名巴基斯坦人是谁。

⁴ 我的一位外国粉丝此前说过，因为我让他们知道不必接受“不行”这样的答复后，帮他和妻子俩口子省下了好几千元经常给我100元小费。他们在北海的时候邀请我去他们所在地拜访他们，还我转了够花的旅行费用，然后在我赶路途中到现在消失了。

Getting a ride with my favorite taxi service 乘坐我最喜欢的出租车出行

⁵ Beihai was listed as 'can take foreigners' and had a front desk worker who had been "taught about the existence and use of the foreigner component of the registration system" in early June.

⁵ 北海酒店被列为“可接待外国人”，那里的前台工作人员6月初“学过公安游客信息登记网中有针对外国人的相关内容及其使用方法”。

Shanghai was included in my airline ticket, was listed as 'cannot take foreigners' and had a front desk worker who didn't really know what to do, but knew that he had to do it.

上海的酒店包含在我的机票行程，虽然列出“不可接待外国人”，那里的不太熟悉的前台工作人员知道自己必须得处理相关事宜。

Fuzhou was an international brand. It was also part of a media trip.

福州是个国际品牌酒店，也是媒体之行的一站。

Chengdu was included in my airline ticket, was listed as 'cannot take foreigners,' swore till they were blue in the face that they weren't legally allowed to take me, and gave me a room key without registering me.

成都的酒店包含在我的机票行程，列出“不可接待外国人”。多次说按规定不能接待我，结果没给我登记就给了我房间钥匙。

Chengdu had no listing for can or cannot, was a police-caused problem, and resulted in a written complaint letter that got multiple apologetic phone calls.

成都没有关于能否接待外国人的明确标注，这是警方导致的问题，为此我写了一封投诉信，之后接到了多个道歉电话。

Haikou was because my apartment had neither power nor water and was as a walk-in.

海口的情况是因为我住的地方既没电也没水，我是直接上门入住的。

Sanya was included with my train ticket, was listed as 'cannot take foreigners,' and had a common ad hoc procedure in place for registering foreigners

三亚的酒店包含在我的火车的行，那家酒店列出“不可接待外国人”，不过当地有一套全国常见的非正式给外国人登记的程序。

Gansu was a carefully worded rebuke because, even being there as part of an Official Propaganda Department Sponsored Event, registration was still a nightmare.

甘肃的情况说的比较委婉。即便我是作为当地宣传部活动的一员去那里的，登记手续依然是一场噩梦。

⁶ Sure the Public Security Administration and the Ministry of Commerce explicitly said that local agencies aren't allowed to tell hotels that they don't meet the qualifications to accept foreigners, but we say that this hotel doesn't have the qualifications to accept foreigners and that's final.

⁶ 没错，公安部和商务部明确表示，地方机构不允许告知酒店它们不具备接待外国人的资质，但我们说这家酒店没有接待外国人的资质，这就是定论。

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T-1: 北京 （双语）

T-1: 北京（双语）