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China's ongoing failure to give long term foreign residents ID numbers¹—especially as more and more computer systems and apps both require Real Name Verification and can't figure out how to program it for people with names longer than five characters or with non-permanently assigned passport numbers—is my current Major Gripe.

Easiest way to solve the hotel problem? Give me an ID card that looks and acts like something a front desk worker recognizes. 

Easiest way to let a cop penalize me for running a red light²? Give me an ID card.

Easiest way for one of the share ebike companies to buy short term insurance for me? Give me an ID card.

Easiest way to make sure I've paid my taxes without having to do substantial manual checking that all information relating to my 24 letter name has been entered the same across multiple systems? Give me an ID card.

Easiest way for Epidemic Prevention and Control to find me when I'm a close contact of a Covid patient³? Give me an ID card.

No one knows why my Real Name Verification with China Rail stopped working last spring. I've been deleted from the system and reintroduced more than once. I've gone to ticket windows with my passport to have them try from their computers, talked to customer service, uploaded pictures of me and my passport again and again, tried changing how or if my name is capitalized and where are the spaces are, and it's still a no go. 

Which, in addition to the QR ticket code just not showing up at all and my needing to go through the manual service line at every station, also means that I can't choose my seat.

Doesn't matter so much on the high speed, but on a sleeper train, not choosing a bunk defaults you to the cheapest and least desirable top bunk. 

Even though the oldest train cars have lots of convenient hard points and nice big ladders, getting up there on a moving train is at lot harder at 43 than it was at 23.

Since I'll be on this train for two nights and a day, I'm lucky, at least, in that the bottom bunk people on this train (unlike the one from Wubao to Beijing) are the kind of friendly folks that don't mind their upstairs neighbors coming down and sitting on their beds.

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¹ Even worse than merely failing to give us a unique 18 digit ID that passes checksum is that every foreigner who was ever employed in China after 2016 has already been given one on their Employment Card and they haven't integrated this otherwise useless number into anything other than that one system.

² Not that I'm in the habit of doing this or anything else that gets traffic fines, but at least in Haikou, t unless you are driving a car, they literally have no way of fining a foreigner.

³ I'll try to remember to cross link this later on, but, in 2022, I missed out on an episode of being quarantined because—even with me proactively volunteering my information as a traveler in multiple municipalities and across provincial borders—I swiss-cheesed my way through every system and they didn't catch up with me until the evening of the last day I was supposed to be locked up.