D11: 张坊 → 易县

June 11, 2022

Key Cultural Relics Protection Area, no overweight vehicles allowed

Crossing through the semi-permanent Police Check structure on the Beijing side of the Beijing/Hebei border, I am not as "in control" or "self aware" as I ought to be and I get a bit stroppy and indignant at the officer telling me about the situation on the other side before I realize that he's warning me to be prepared as numerous counties and cities on the other side have recently made national news for their approach to straight up ignoring the National Health Commission's orders on not restricting the movement of people who have not come from risk areas.

Crossing through a structure that clearly started life as a Weigh Station perhaps 20 minutes later, the people coming through are more or less equally divided between obedient "following epidemic prevention and control rules is my duty" and angry "dude, did you not talk to me already 17 times this week?" Shocking as it may be to people who are used to hearing about how often I get into arguments with Authority, but I fall into the first category.

In terms of following rules, I'm somewhere between chickenshit scared and a bootlicker. Give me clearly defined rules to follow and I'll follow them. I'll not just follow them, I'll help ensure that other people in my cohort are also following them.

I am aware that this part of my attitude towards rules and societal roles is my white East Coast Jew privilege speaking, but I have almost never been confronted with a truly annoying (let alone horrible) rule that the enforcer was actually allowed to be enforcing and that same privileged societal upbringing that causes me to almost automatically follow the rules also causes a knee jerk reaction in terms of refusing to follow illegitimate orders.

Immediately undeleting this photo after I left is not, so far as I'm concerned, breaking the rules

There's the expected confusion over my inability to have a Hebei Health Code or to put my name on anything their databases will associate with my local NAT but, having dealt with this before getting the asterisk on my Travel Code, I know what to suggest and, with far too much gratitude towards me for not being a bitch to them and for having a solution to a broken system that isn't their fault, the idea of a photo is passed up the line and back down again with incredible speed.

I've already been swabbed at this point by a tech whose specialty (seen on other people as well) is to suddenly dart in mid-word which would have really bothered me if he weren't one of the very few that hasn't made me gag. With a surprising amount of good humor, he thus reenacts my swabbing for the camera.

There's more faffing about after I've been swabbed as every single piece of potentially pertinent info that can be collected on me is collected against the possibility of them having missed something and not wanting to get anything wrong but it's the bureaucratic frustrations of everyone involved being equally annoyed and not any one person being a twat.

Finally free, I have the best cycling day since I crossed into Beijing and had the weight lift off my shoulders of having to deal with Hebei's stupid broken system. Now, the weight of having to deal with both reasonable and unreasonable epidemic control measures has been lifted. If they would treat the Municipality's districts (which are entirely separate cities, metropolitan areas, and their suburbs) as separate places, there would be no call for rural Fangshan to still have all their side roads and villages closed off on account of Covid cases 150km away.

Family planning makes for excellent children

It's been a very long time since this road was closed (and never officially reopened)

One of three (that I saw) gates to Eastfort Village. It either wasn't here or wasn't in such good condition last time I came by

First real stop is the 1736 Tomb of Prince Yi of the first rank. I first stumbled across this site by accident when Snowflake and I were lost in 2016. Came back in 2018 and loved it all the more for the opportunity to just appreciate it without her asking me questions that the merest moment of self reflection would have realized I had no way to answer, and this time was here specifically to take video.

This was followed by an early Tang pagoda which I liked in 2012, was under renovation in 2016, and which I felt had had the soul drained out of it in 2018. To read the newly erected sign about the restoration work (which still isn't great but which Shaanxi has taught me could be so much worse), I am willing to accept that a partial collapse in 2014 is the reason for how and why it was renovated, and I guess it really isn't as bad as all that that they've covered the bricks with plaster.

When I was with Snowflake, I didn't believe the modern sign that said this ran for the next multiple kilometers

You have now entered a surveillance area. Protecting cultural heritage is everyone's responsibility

Then side roads, back roads, dirt roads, and wrong roads because I don't feel like taking the hilly approach into Yi County, because there aren't any hotels showing up on Maps on that road until I get to the city, and—even if they don't stop me—it's still itchy in the back of spine uncomfortable to ride through the center of an unmarked military area where they practice with tanks and artillery.

I did not want to enter Yi. I knew it was going to be annoying and I explicitly didn't want to go. However, when I tried at 40km to visit a local police station (because of that damn health code issue) so I could stay at a rural hotel, they were closed for the weekend and I couldn't bring myself to waste resources by calling Emergency Services over something as stupid as this.

Last time I was here, these were nearly falling over

Not only is it not at the top of a mountain, the person who stopped me from going down that road at first wasn't an Epidemic Prevention and Control volunteer, he was someone who wanted a picture with me

We'll call that Police Station Number Zero.

Number One came 5km later. It was just at the very edge of the where countryside turns into city. Although there was clearly a hotel to be seen across the street from the station when I left, the officer inside said that his station wasn't responsible for hotels and he sent me downtown.

Number Two was technically the downtown station, except they weren't, because they were a semi-demolished pile of rubble. Coming out the alley behind what wasn't their entrance in an attempt to find a way in to where maybe I could ask someone, I saw Number Three.

Not that I'm going to admit it, but I might be lost

A former People's Cooperative turned into a scrap metal recycler

This was a community policing corner set-up. They also weren't where I was supposed to go but they could point out on Maps where the "new station" is.

Number Four assumes that he actually picked the right spot and not the nearby offices of the County PSB who sent me around the corner to Number Five.

Listening to the workmen who said the police were in there and ducking beneath the ladders in the entryway, the on duty officer told me I didn't have a problem and didn't need his assistance. Whipping out my phone to record him saying this and getting him to say "just go to the hotel" must have caused him second thoughts as I didn't even make it back to the labyrinth of power tools blocking the exit before he decided maybe he ought to check if I actually did need some kind of document from him to be able to check into a hotel.

Hebei has the distinction of being the only province where I've captured advertising about preventing bed wetting. It's also number one in ads for stuttering cures and vitiligo treatment.

Shortly before I had this late lunch, I got my first "did you ride all the way from Urumqi" of the trip

I swear I didn't intentionally make my new Form look like shit before waterproofing it

By the time I'd waited for his answer, I'd already booked a cheap place a kilometer away, only to be told I had to go to the Foreigner Hotel. In 2018, in Yi, they won that argument because I wasn't in a mental state that was capable of telling the police "you're wrong" and it's a shit hotel that's stupid expensive for what it doesn't offer.

Having already been caught on video making a fool of himself once, he was quick enough not to say "laws and rules" when there was any chance I might be recording, only that this hotel has been chosen because they have staff who speak English (they don't) and therefore it would be easier for foreigners to communicate than at a normal hotel.

Black smoke emitting vehicles will be fined if they enter the city

But, he (and his backup) wouldn't back down. They even got the owner of the hotel I had paid for to come to the police station and offer to pay the difference in room costs which got me even angrier on a day where I was already channeling cold fury.

At some point before they accepted that I could go to her hotel, a very smartly dressed plainclothes woman officer who had missed most of everything piped up that if I had come from Beijing, all of this was moot as I should instead be sent to the Quarantine Hotel. She slunk off never to be seen again when I started reading content from the bookmarked National Health Commission articles about local governments not being allowed to impose additional quarantine requirements on people coming from low risk areas. Didn't even give me a chance to pull up the list of medium- and high-risk areas.

24 Hour Automatic Court Services. I have so many questions.

Finally, they accepted that I could go, at which point the hotel owner discovered that I don't have a Hebei Health Code and my NAT proof is a photo on my phone of my being tested and—just as I had specifically requested when I first got there—she was going to need some sort of document from the police saying that this was okay.

I'm not sure but I think the police dislike me even more when I win by not raising my voice.

A photo for the hotel owner to show that she got the paper that looks far less official then my Form direct from the police

Today's ride: 54 km (34 miles)
Total: 685 km (425 miles)

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