As far back as 2018–when my breaking the social contract of how to act was a lot less nasty than it is these days (due to everything from baseline stress levels to the realization that 'nasty' is way more efficient than 'nice'), the hotel owner was in absolute awe of my ability to look a police officer in the eye, tell him "not only are you are wrong, you will admit your wrongness and then you will do things my way" and subsequently have both him and the plainclothes PSB officer who showed up mid-altercation crumble beneath the piercing stare of my Jedi powers–I was noticing a trend where people who, mere moments before, had been practically dragged kicking and screaming into being forced to serve me generally tended, as soon as the troubles were over, to flip over to liking me and wanting to know all about me and whether or not I like China.

From inviting me to family breakfast the next day to insisting that I don't leave before I've been given a bunch of bottled drinks, these weirdly positive 'next step' interactions far outnumber the times where they sullenly make it clear that they are not at all pleased that I've had the fucking gall to use actual knowledge of the law to insist on my being treated like a normal person. Which is not to say that those don't happen. Because they definitely do.

This is most often the case when the place that has been made to serve me is someplace that's supposed to have Actual Service Standards. The five star hotel in Chengxian, Gansu where the PSB picked up the difference between "what I wanted to pay" and the cost of "where they wanted me to stay" was utterly vile to me over my refusal to acknowledge that a 35,000 yuan bicycle belongs inside my hotel room rather than outside in their parking lot. Similarly, the time in 2015 when I arrived 45 minutes behind Myf at the expensive hotel he'd picked for us to find him ripping the Front Desk and hotel Security into shreds with his highest-class "I grew up inside the 2nd Ring Road¹" Beijing accent because, having left his loaded bike with the Concierge when he went upstairs to check out room types, they'd moved it out of the lobby to "somewhere else" and they initially hadn't been sure to where or by whom.

However, it is also the case at places like last night's where the beginning, middle and end of the standard of service they provide is "we exist".

How dare I call in advance, check prices, confirm with them that I met all local epidemic prevention and control requirements, book a room, and then expect to actually be allowed to pay for and stay in that room!

How dare I yell at them in front of their neighbors to the point that the police showed up and then have the police take my side!

This put a certain level of gray into my mood that may or may not have contributed to my taking a good 15km of riding and a long descent before I noticed that yesterday's "hmmm... maybe I ought to top my tires up" had been caused by air pressure finally getting low enough that I was putting a lot of unnecessary effort into forward motion. Noticing that and fixing that probably added a good 2kph to my overall speed and, along with things like the free bottle of water from the guy who saw me working the hand pump or the shop that let me use their compressor for free, brightened my mood considerably. 

Preferring a coastal town with an obvious "Ferry Here" point over a return inland and the National Road, I set Tyra to researching where and when the ferry ran. The eventual answer that it stopped running last year didn't actually stop me from going to the seaside town anyways as it was a good 10km closer, had many many many more hotel options, and for substantially cheaper than the National Road. 

At 70y for a 'mountain view' (they gave me a sea view anyways) versus 120y on the main road, if I ended up having to spend the next morning negotiating a fisherman into taking me across the bay and I spent 50y or less, I would still come out ahead in every respect (including getting an awesome story).

 ¹ The nonexistent 1st Ring Road is the moat around the Forbidden City.