T-1: 北京

September 15, 2024

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.

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.

Hotel room in Wushan, Gansu, where they gave us paper registration forms

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.

Hotel room in Haikou that had power and water when most of the city didn't

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."

Hotel room in Beihai that I was upgraded to after they saw my not at all negative video about their hotel

I think they cleaned the back of the TV set just for me

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.

All-in-one Registration Kiosk in Qiongzhong. Doesn't work for foreigners.

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.

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.

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

--
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.

Hotel near Hongqiao Airport that insisted on walking me to a nearby hotel because their local police station was imposing verbal restrictions

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 money for travel expenses, and then ghosted me while I was en-route.

Getting a ride with my favorite taxi service

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.
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.
Fuzhou was an international brand. It was also part of a media trip.
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.
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.
Haikou was because my apartment had neither power nor water and was as a walk-in.
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
Gansu was a carefully worded rebuke because, even being there as part of an Official Propaganda Department Sponsored Event, registration was still a nightmare.

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.

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