D19: 陵水 → 林旺

March 1, 2024

The new gasket wasn't quite a perfect fit. So much so that it apparently fell out in the sink when I washed the mokina and was left behind

Even moreso than the cycling, but tied in to the cycling (and not counting the past few years as a short video creator), one of the things that I'm best known for is as "the foreigner who argues with and about hotels." In fact one of the earliest still online¹ (and paid for) articles I wrote back in 2012 is on the topic of small hotels in China actually being allowed to take us.

As the vast majority of today's cycling was just pretty combined with pretty dull in the form of resort roads of the "500m of scenery and landscaping stretched across 100km of coastline" type, and as one of my formative moments in the transformation into both being the kind of person who yells at the Chinese police over their temerity in allowing their misunderstanding of their own laws to inconvenience me and being the kind of person who advises other people on how to handle Situations happened eight years ago in the city I'm in right now, I thought I'd write about that.

I've never seen fish tank gravel used in an ash tray

You would think they would have a painting with Hainan scenery rather than Guangxi

But first, a timeline of events ...

Timeline

2002.8 Arrive China

Around 8 hotels in 4 cities in Beijing, Henan, Shaanxi, and Shandong

2003.9 Foreign Affairs Officer at the school I'm working at has a meeting and tells us foreigners that the "law is cancelled" and, so long as we register, we can even spend the upcoming National Day Holiday staying in friends' apartments.

Around 2 hotels in Beijing

2003.12 Now former employer takes me to Beijing to catch a flight. They try to get us rooms at the Municipal Guesthouse for our danwei² but the front desk is having none of letting me stay there. Foreign Affairs Officer goes quietly apoplectic, writes down names, makes a few phone calls, and we then check in at a hotel that cost more per room than his salary.

The intraprovincial bus station is on the right. The hotel from 2016 is on the left. I had left my parents sitting in a shop while I went to find a hotel and organize rooms.

Paid cash for two rooms. Then left and got my parents. We were back no more than 5 minutes after I had paid for the rooms. Now faced with three foreigners and passports, the Front Desk freaked out and tried to give me my money back.

Around 50 hotels in 40 different towns and cities in Hainan, Shanghai, Guangdong, Sichuan, Hebei, Beijing, and Qinghai

2008.5 On my first Tour, a guesthouse owner who wants to follow the rules takes me to the local police station in rural Guangxi to register. They don't know how to do it. They can't make the computer work right. But they are super friendly and helpful and even end up buying me my first ever Real Map.

Around 50 hotels in 50 different towns and cities in Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi, Hubei, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shandong

2008.8 In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics plus this particular city in Hebei always being trouble as a foreigner (though I don't know that), I suffer over twenty rejections in a row. This eventually leads to a friend whose husband is active duty military illegally³ taking me on to base to crash in their living room.

I start with a "I can help you" that turns into my sitting behind the desk without permission playing a game of keep away on the keyboard. The room keys had already been laid out during my going to fetch Mom and Dad, so, by the time the police arrive all three of us are registered to the rooms I've paid for.

Roughly an hour after we were in our rooms, my Dad and I go out to get food. Coming back, I noticed a colored plaque on the wall (at that time partially blocked by a decorative tree) recognizing this hotel as the Provincial Tourism Development Commission recommended hotel for foreigners for downtown Lingshui

2008.8 First encounter with the computer registration system. At a guesthouse that cost 2y per bed!

Around 30 hotels in 20 different towns and cities in Beijing, Hainan, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Shandong

2012.4 Rejection by a hotel on the first night of my second big Tour leads to visiting the local police station of the small city I'm in in rural Beijing. "What law?" they say "That's been gone since forever!"

5 or 6 hotels in 5 or 6 different towns all in Beijing and Hebei

2012.4 Owner of my guesthouse wants to follow the rules. Thinking it will be easy, she takes me to police station to register. Instead the police spend hours trying to convince me I can't stay in their county. They, of course, refuse to call Foreign Affairs or Exit & Entry. Eventually, I'm cold, hungry, and pissed off and I throw a temper tantrum. Suddenly, I can stay in my chosen room.

A street full of mostly modern shophouses

A matchmaking service that charges 520 (theoretically sounds like "I love you") to find you a spouse

Damaging or stealing telecommunications cable or electric wires is a criminal offense. From the early 90s based on the police officer's uniform.

Around 50 hotels in 50 different towns and cities in Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, and Chongqing

2012.6 After two cheap hotels told me "no", a manager of a relatively expensive hotel in suburban Chongqing honest-to-goodness assaults me because I'm unintentionally keeping customers they intend to serve away from the Front Desk with my insistence on asking the price of rooms. (I'm not joking. Thinking they hadn't realized I was speaking Chinese, I'd been repeating the question "how much does a room cost?" and he tried shoving me out the door.) Police get called by me. I get paid compensation for my now cracked phone screen and am given a room somewhere even more expensive.

The old road that the Tourism Highway has replaced is, in my opinion, much prettier

Around 20 hotels in 20 different towns and cities in Chongqing and Guizhou

2012.7 Visit to a police station in Guizhou to try to clear things up regarding the hotel I want to stay at calling them and being told "no" results in the police being unable to find any documentation of any rules. While finally checking-in after hours of this farcical nonsense, I flip my shit and yell at the one officer: "You are a member of the People's Police Force, you're duty is to SERVE THE PEOPLE, it is NOT to LIE to them. Now, shut your mouth!" and, to everyone's surprise, they all meekly shut up.

The still under construction Li'an International Education Pilot Zone

I knew I was close to the Monkey Island tourist attraction, but I didn't realize I was going to see monkeys!

A research project collecting notification of canceled laws and regulations can't find the October 2003 thing that I specifically remember, but gets something from every province except Xinjiang and Tibet, and dates the start of the end of foreigners being restricted to certain hotels to the mid-80s.

Also, around 30 hotels in 30 different towns and cities in Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Fujian, Shanghai, and Xinjiang

2014.3 That time the Coast Guard got involved. Because, um, reasons? Small port town in very rural Guangdong, traveling with a Chinese person, and the people who came to the hotel (after our stuff was up in the room) were both very definitely the Coast Guard and very put out by my Chinese friend asking them impertinent questions like "by what authority were they sticking their nose in to on-land matters." They rapidly left when he offered to call the police hotline and ask them if they had any restrictions we ought to know about.

Rewilded mangroves and a boardwalk with only one access point from land (about 3km away by road)

Nice fresh paving that, unfortunately, does not lead me to any way of accessing the boardwalk

Around 25 hotels in 25 towns and cities in Guangxi and Yunnan.

2015.4 First time having the police called on me for bad behavior. Came after over a dozen rejections (including small hotels, chain hotels, and luxury hotels) in downtown Beijing after midnight and I had hit the point of "sell me a room to sleep in, or I sleep on your sofa." I won when, after the police arrived and were insisting "it's the law," I pulled up an article—dated 13 years earlier—on the Beijing PSB official website which unequivocally stated that the law in question had been cancelled.

Around 70 hotels in 70 different towns and cities in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Hainan. This includes the time spent traveling with a Chinese citizen who, for complicated reasons of mostly living outside China, doesn't have a Chinese ID card, and my getting really really good at using the registration system.

These barrel rolling jets are almost certainly from the same base as the one where the Hainan Incident⁴ took place

A monkey sitting next to a sign delineating the boundary of the monkey preserve.

2016.4 My elderly parents, a pair of already paid for in cash rooms, and a Provincial Tourism Development Commission recommended hotel for foreigners, what could possibly go wrong? My first time taking the computer away from the front desk staff and sitting down and registering myself without permission. Police were called. Including an English speaker who ended up sitting with my parents and chatting with them because "I'm not needed here, she seems to know what she's doing."

Around 80 hotels in 80 different towns and cities in Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Beijing, Shanghai, Hebei, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, and Chongqing

2018.4 My first time taking a key and going to my room without the full agreement of the hotel staff, or the police (who were already in the lobby by that point, and arguing with me that just because I had successfully registered myself on a provincial system that they had dared me to prove the existence of, that didn't actually mean that foreigners in China were allowed to stay outside of cities).

Boat across the harbor to Xincun Town. I can't help but notice how clean the water is compared to when I used to come here in 2009 for SeaTurtles 911.

I once stayed in that monstrosity by Wyndham for some event that I wasn't paid enough for attending

So, as you see, by the time Covid rolled around (and I found out that people other than touring cyclists⁵ were regularly encountering "No Foreigners Allowed" and had been encountering it since before the whole freaking out that we were disease vectors), it wasn't anything new to me to be putting my foot down and saying "sorry, no, not going to accept that."

Particularly during Covid times, I found myself more and more skipping over the pleasantries of trying to fix things without yelling because I knew that yelling was a surefire way to get the higher-ups involved and that once the higher-ups were involved the answer was always "why are you arguing with her?" However, I've since come to the conclusion that this kind of bad behavior is only acceptable if the only goal is a room for one night and, as my ultimate goal is to never have to deal with this shit, I mostly⁷ don't do that.

Enough pedestrians on this bit without a sidewalk that they've roped off a half lane for them

Sharing this photo with the person who I thought I was going to visit with in Dadonghai (near the Deer Looking Back Park on the sign) was how I found she'd moved to Shanghai last month

As for today's ride, well, as I've already mentioned, it was mostly ResortLand of manicured landscaping interspersed with similar shops and shopping centers. With the exception of the first bit, where I rode through the Li'an International Education Pilot Zone and down to Monkey Island, it was also pretty flat.

While in ResortLand, there were a few times I rode along with other people who either caught up to me or whom I caught up to and had a bit of conversation regarding where I had come from and where I was going. But, even though I saw a good handful of Obvious Touring Cyclists⁶, they were all heading the other direction with exhausted expressions that didn't call out for more than a wave and a whoop hello.

Does this come up in English for anyone else?

A causeway that I've got to admit is probably nicer to ride than the National Road to the north of here

Got into Linwang just as it was getting dark enough to start thinking that I might want to pull out my headlight to augment the light from the streetlights, and found that my efforts to deliberately not book in at the same hotel as last year on account of it being a second floor lobby were in vain as this hotel is also a second floor lobby.

¹ "Still online" being an operative phrase here as there was a period in late 2008 and early 2009 where I was writing fluff for a since defunct travel website.

² Government-owned organization or "work unit"

³ Yes, his chain of command knew about it. That doesn't make it any less blatantly illegal.

This bus stop is named Nameless Bus Stop

I had to catch my breath for a good five minutes before going behind the front desk and registering myself

⁴ Wikipedia Link

⁵ i.e., people that don't smell bad or travel to weird places

⁶ Still mostly of the tourist variety rather than the explorer type, but all individuals and mostly riding bikes that looked to belong to them rather than to be rented

⁷ Sometimes I still make the mistake of trying to check in at a nationwide chain hotel when hungry or tired

Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 1,184 km (735 miles)

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