Somewhere in the cacophony of hanger¹, arguments, yelling, stress responses², and being downright insulting³ to the uniformed and plainclothes officers that showed up, Dr. M remembered them saying that our next destination, the county town of Kelan, is also Closed.

The phone call which determines that Kelan is at least as "Closed" as Wuzhai⁴ will force us to turn north towards the town of Sanchai and the truck route, but it is hardly the morning's only phone call.

After they first patched me through to the Public Security Bureau for the wrong province (Shaanxi versus Shanxi), and then patched me through to someone with the right province but who had no idea what I was talking about when I said "Closed County," the National Immigration Administration hotline turns out to be kind of useless.

"12345," the general municipal services complaint line is better. At least, they are able to get us through to a county-level official who confirms that they definitely believe themselves to be "Closed," that they're really sure documents that prove their "Closed" status exist, and that it's perfectly normal to allow foreigners into an area while also preventing them from staying in that area overnight⁵.

Also according to him—despite them having things like vans and pick-up⁶ trucks with which to quickly and easily remove us from their jurisdiction—it's also perfectly normal as a Restricted Closed County to let us continue biking through their county without so much as setting a single car to do a bad job of tailing us from 300m back.

Between breakfast and the phone calls and lots of apologizing to the hotel owners that they had done nothing wrong, we also get a visit from a plainclothes woman with the Exit and Entry Administration. She must not have watched any of the previous night's bodycam footage, as she clearly wasn't expecting "I am currently lecturing you. I do not give you permission to interrupt me to ask questions which I deem irrelevant. You will get a chance to ask me questions only after I am done determining to what extent you are failing to follow your own laws," or "you do not have permission to take video of us on a personal device," and she left quite soon after arrival⁷.

At least with all this going on we don't need to find something to occupy us while the world warms up to biking temperatures. 

Notwithstanding the Obvious Military Facilities (all of which are marked⁸ on Open Topo Maps) that we're not dumb enough to linger near or take photos of even when they are located opposite a particularly interesting historic hill fort, the road up to Sanchai is a lovely ride. National Road of the sort old enough to be lined with mature trees and unimportant enough in traffic terms to have never been expanded beyond a couple of generous lanes and some big hard shoulders, it runs down the center of a broad crop-filled valley where the arrival of a "moderately prosperous society in all respects" has been gentle enough to preserve a substantial amount of 19th and 20th century architecture and construction habits.

The truck infestation starts at Sanchai with an east west corridor that's not that much wider than what we've just been riding on but is occupied by about 1000× as many vehicles (or at least 1000× the gross vehicle weight).

We know we can't ride this. Attempts at hitchhiking however result in the discovery that none of the trucks think this is a Place to stop and refuel, that the vehicles on the huolala cargo service app aren't interested in picking us up to take us 60km west, and that most of the scheduled coaches either don't run that way or only run that way once a day, in the morning. 

Sanchai Town is still in Wuzhai County and even if Wuzhai is going to be hearing a lot more from us in the near future, we have to at least try to follow the order to leave.

Just as farm trucks and cargo vehicles can get in trouble for having passengers outside the cab, coaches aren't supposed to let any kind of large luggage or cargo into the passenger compartment. So, given the vans (too far) and taxis (too big) that wouldn't drive us, it's entirely possible that the scheduled coach with room for only one bike in it's undercarriage luggage compartment would not have agreed to let us on if it weren't for the boys in blue showing up shortly before he did. 

I kind of wish that they'd shown up later rather than earlier as, separate from my favorite "taxi" service not charging for the privilege, a police SUV would have taken us on the substantially less terrifying expressway as well as providing plenty of opportunity to dig for information.

But, showing up when they did at least confirmed that, even at their level of bumfuck nowheresville, they also think Wuzhai County is Closed to foreigners. 

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¹ That's the past tense of hangry, right?

² I over ordered more delivery food than either of us would normally be able to finish. M found herself completely unable to eat at all.

³ When you phrase "I'm going to report you" as "either you are failing to follow central government directives regarding not telling foreigners or hotel industry operators that hotels don't have the qualifications to host them or you are failing to follow basic regs for secure areas and our presence here indicates a level of dereliction of duty which I am obligated to report" the smelly, dusty cyclist in the weird clothing is suddenly a lot more trouble than she was five minutes earlier.

⁴ Even if one of the cops showed us photos on his phone of the family with kids who were "much more reasonable about listening" to total bullshit than either of us when the police came to their hotel at 9pm and made them leave a few months ago, the limited amount of research I've done online about Wuzhai seems to indicate that their Closed status is so top-secret the county tourism board forgot to tell the English-language booking platforms not to list or sell local hotels and attractions.

⁵ This is because the only people who engage in espionage are foreigners (who look foreign) and the only time it is possible to engage in espionage is at night†. 

† As the sun had not yet set when we biked past the military airport that looked exactly like every other military airport I've ever not taken photos of while biking past, the light was too good for pictures.

⁶ Bearing in mind that—other than the List published by the Qinghai PSB and distributed round to all the hotels and hostels in Xining†—Closed Counties don't go out of their way to actively list their status, when Snowflake and I were heading in the direction of one in 2016, we didn't even make it across the county line on account of the police waiting for us at the intersection with a pick-up truck that mysteriously had sufficient bungee cord tie downs for two bikes.

† I'm reasonably certain that this has less to do with the number of Closed Counties in Qinghai, the amount of self-guided tourism in Qinghai, or the periodically changeable nature of Qinghai's List than it does with the relevant departments realizing that many of the foreigners who need removing from someplace they didn't realize they weren't supposed to be are prone to being an absolute pain in the ass about it.

⁷ And by "quite soon" I literally mean less than five minutes from knocking on the door to stomping off in a huff.

⁸ Didn't check the other maps, but the airport was definitely large enough to show up on commercially available satellite view.