D49: Wangsong Town to Anpu Town

March 24, 2018

I don't think I've ever seen quite so many different varieties of pickled spicy things on a table before

This is my seventh night back in China. At the speed I'm going, I expect to be back in Haikou in two days—three at the most. So far none of the hotels I've stayed at have registered me. I've volunteered to register myself. I've even been behind the counter and sat down at the computer once. But I haven't actually been registered. That one hotel that let me behind the counter had an ancient computer that was crazy slow and when it froze, she told me "never mind". No one else has even wanted to bother with turning the computer on and the few hotels who called their local police just photographed my passport and sent the picture off to the police instead of letting me properly register myself on the system the way I'm supposed to.

Triple A road service Chinese style. I especially like that the big rig didn't have any kind of blinkies or flares or don't drive here signs, so he just grabbed a bunch of brush off of random trees instead

The student driver learning to drive in this truck (which is conveniently labeled STUDENT DRIVER) was terrified to be driving near a bike

This is all fine and well in the short term and it would still be all fine and well if I were on a tourist visa. However, I'm on a residence permit and I recently left China; it is not at all fine and well if I get back to Haikou and, when I go to register with them, my local police find no registrations in the computer since re-entering China. I will be fined for breaking the law regarding registering (within 24 hours of arrival for urban areas and 72 hours for rural). I'm a repeat offender; I've already been warned before (multiple times); I've even been fined before. If I don't get a registration into the computer system between now and my arrival in Haikou, I'm looking a minimum CNY 500 penalty.

So, more than anything else, today's goal was to get to a bigger town and stay at a more expensive hotel (even though I don't love those) and insist that I absolutely must be registered. That way, if I can't find a place that will register to me tomorrow night or the night after, I'll be safe.

I was impressed that the people writing this particular DO NOT LITTER sign included some nice "you're an asshole and your whole family should die" language but I seriously could not understand why multiple signs along this stretch included "dead pigs, chickens, or ducks" as things that you shouldn't leave by the side of the road.

Somewhere a pencil pusher noticed that most fatal coach accidents happen at night. I think it was the small mountain roads in remote areas that first started banning nighttime buses. The ones where the roads had lots of curves and steep drops and things like that. Then, the expressways. Now, it's just about everywhere that doesn't allow coaches between 2am and 5am. That bus I took back to Hanoi would have been a real no go.

People who used to read my journals back when they were on crazyguyonabike (or at a future date when they've been ported over to CycleBlaze) know that I have a love/hate relationship with hotel registration and situations involving local police and hotel registration. I do my best to handle things so that they never get to the point of being a confrontation because I honestly hate confrontation. However, once they become a confrontation, I love the drama of it and they (with "they" being some combination of the hotel staff and the local police) hate it.

I've been told "you can't stay here" by police in at least half a dozen provinces as well as the coast guard, the public security bureau, the tourism bureau, and the foreign affairs office. To date, if it's gone so far that the officials have gotten involved and told me "you can't stay here", I have actually not stayed there ummmm... never.

What's a hotel like this doing in the middle of nowhere?

For the safety of life and property of all, strike down illegal behaviors like the private manufacturing of fireworks!

A Mr. Zhang, Mr. Li, Mr. Zhao, Mr. Wang and 6 others from Maobo Village, Longtan Town were arrested and will spend 15 days in the county lock-up for illegal manufacture of fireworks (Announced by the Longtan Town Committee)

(I don't count the time that I got turned away from an entire region that I later found out had Mao era post-nuclear apocalypse Beijing-government-in-exile underground bunkers. Cause it wasn't like they told me "you can't stay at this hotel". The cops were actually waiting at the intersection heading in to town with a convenient pick-up truck able to haul two bicycles and two riders to somewhere else.)

Prior to my hotel argument this evening, today wasn't entirely uneventful. It's just that it wasn't especially eventful when you compare it to my evening. It's hardly the first time I've gotten a key to the room without the full and willing approval of the hotel staff, but this may be the first time I've won an argument—any argument—by taking off my clothes (though I'll have to check with my parents on that, they've got a better memory than I do for things I did before my fifth birthday).

It might have been a very flat day but it was a very long day too. The parts where I ended up on the National Road basically had no traffic (because of ongoing road repairs) but the road was trying really hard to be in as poor a condition as yesterday's torn up road and only not succeeding because the road was so wide and there was so much of it that I could usually avoid the bone jarring thumps and bumps.

There was a lovely temple where I stopped for a quiet lunch of bananas and other snacks from my handlebar bag which then turned in to a discussion with locals when they showed up to set off fireworks and beat drums and try to invite me to dinner.

Then, because I didn't want to be on the National Road, I followed AMap's advice and ended up on a dirt trail that took me across a rickety wooden bridge that was coincidentally the same rickety wooden bridge and dirt trail Tennessee and I achieved in 2014 by a combination of satellite view, guesstimation and asking locals for directions to something we knew had to exist.

Coming in to Cheban Town, something sharp sliced through the tread of my rear tire and, moments later, when I was sitting down to a bowl of wontons, destroyed it with a tremendously loud boom. Leaving Cheban Town, it feels like the seawall road made up for being flat by having an aggressive headwind.

Me, I wouldn't feel comfortable driving across something like this...

Apparently there was a real bridge at one point

And finally, in the dying light of a gloomy day, so that I could make it to the big town with the big hotels and the certainty that I would actually be properly and legally registered tonight, I had 6 kilometers of sand trail because the shortest most direct route to the big town is not always the easiest one and the stupid GPS doesn't know the difference.

It wasn't a fabulous day but it wasn't a bad day either. I think my favorite part was probably very early on when I saw a village which had been renamed from 要婆岭村 (Want Wife Ridge Village) to 要扶岭村 (Want Assistance Ridge Village). The changed character isn't even pronounced the same.

I got into town, found myself a lovely dinner (stir fried eggplant and pork), found myself an amazing massage, and started wandering around looking for hotels. And not really finding any. Apparently all the young people in this town have cars with backseats or something and no one's cousin ever visits from out of town. Not that I wanted that kind of hotel on a night when it was becoming increasingly important that I absolutely must get properly registered in the computer system and soon. But, yeah... there was practically nothing.

Found a place that was much too staidly old and nice looking for my usual tastes (it had a parking lot and an attached in-house spa that is probably a brothel) but which would do. Only CNY 98 for a single as well. Of course, they wouldn't take me up on my offer to show them how to register me on the computer and insisted on calling their boss instead. Who, of course, said "no". Who said "this is different and different is scary and tell her to go somewhere else" and I didn't mean for things to turn out the way they did, but they did.

Long before the yelling started, but long after I was behind the counter, the boss challenged me to show him how to register a foreigner. Because of course it's impossible. Because his hotel can't take foreigners. Because it's not allowed and you need to go. So I showed him how to register me. Took longer than it usually does since it wasn't a version I'd previously used of the software but I had it all filled out except for the room number and you can't save the registration without a room number. Which he, of course, refused to give me.

An almost Vietnamese approach to rubbish disposal along the riverwall

When you get to the point of an argument of this nature where the person you are arguing with has checked your other computer for a valid room in her price range and filled in the room number on her own without your permission, you really ought to lock the desk drawer with the key cards.

The police were here by that point and, unlike any previous situation where hostile hotel staff called the police, they were refusing to acknowledge that my successfully registering myself on the Provincial Public Security Bureau provided online platform meant that Mr. Bossman had no idea what he was talking about. Instead they were taking his side by insisting it was illegal for me to stay here. Not "here" this hotel. "Here" this town. Because it's a town. Not a city. And towns aren't places that foreigners can stay.

Don't worry though, they could get a pick-up truck and drive me and my bike "20 minutes" (more like 45 according to AMap) to the big city just north of here where there would be hotels I could legally stay at. I really hate it when people just make shit up. Especially policepeople. And being driven most of a day's ride in the wrong direction up a road that I know from personal experience will be unpleasant to bike back down is not my idea of a solution.

I think they were intending that this bridge be wider

"No thank you. I'm already registered in the system. It's already been correctly saved and sent off to the Provincial Public Security Bureau. Everything is done correctly. All he needs to do is take my money and give me my keycard."

Louder and more argumentatively stubborn about things than I'd like for proper winning of arguments but I've played this game before and they haven't. Beginner's luck may be a thing but the more experienced player usually wins. Even if they've ever encountered a foreigner trying to stay at a hotel in their town prior to tonight, the chances that said foreigner put their foot down and simply refused to accept being moved along are somewhere between slim and none.

So long as I avoid any actual insults and stick to firmly insisting that they need to try following their own laws, they can't really do anything about me being a smug bitch. I wouldn't recommend trying these tactics on sensitive topics like who the Senkaku Islands belong to, the rights of ethnic minorities who have been arrested for political reasons, or government corruption in eminent domain land use cases but I'm not that lofty or high minded a righteously honorable individual. I just want a damn hotel room.

Triple checked which room number I'd assigned to myself and made sure that it was, in fact, an empty one that was the right price. Waited until no one more than half my size was in reach to stop me, yanked open the desk drawer that had already been confirmed to have key cards in it, pulled out my key, and announced that I was putting my money in the till (which also hadn't been locked). Then I walked out from behind the counter, pulled my pannier and handlebar bag off the bike, and went looking for my room.

I've never had good luck at places big enough to have parking lots

The hotel manager was pissed. "Where do you think you're going? Stop. Give me back my key card. You can't do that!"

I put my stuff in the room then went back for my bike. The cops, who were still telling me I couldn't stay here and that it was illegal for me to stay here and that I needed to leave didn't actually prevent me from putting my bike in the room. The security guard made a weak attempt to stop me but he lost the game of chicken well before I even touched him. The hotel manager just spluttered loudly and kept insisting that I needed to give him back his key card.

Now, they were trying to get me to leave the hotel room. Which started with as transparent a ploy as I've ever seen to get me to put my key card in the electricity slot by the door (so they could take it). We talked in the dark for a while with me refusing to either leave the room or take the card out of my bike shorts. They rehashed their arguments (it's illegal, you need to leave). I rehashed mine (no it's not, no I'm not). As an appeal to authority (my favorite logical fallacy), I even pulled out my phone and pulled up a picture I have of the translation credit I got on a book published by the central government and written by Deng Xiaoping's son.

As these things go, it's a surprisingly interesting book

"Look guys, I know the law for foreigners a whole lot better than you do. I've been to almost every province in China. I've done work for multiple provincial governments as a translator. I do work for the central government as a translator. You don't know what you are talking about. Whether or not you agree, my money for the room is in the till and I'm registered on the system. You can go now." The somewhat condescending shooing motions with my hands were probably overkill.

Of course, they wouldn't leave. I didn't expect them to leave. So I started unpacking. Told them that it had been a long sweaty day and I wanted to take a shower. Gave them the option of closing the door and leaving before I took my clothing off or after. Up to them to make a decision but I'm taking my clothes off in the next five minutes. Because I'm spending the night here, in this town, at this hotel, in this hotel room, on that bed and when I say "you don't have a choice in the matter" I really really mean you don't have a choice in the matter.

Bear in mind that even though they were trying to get rid of me, I started with most of the cards in my hand. Even if manhandling a foreigner weren't something which would look really bad to the watching public, it would look terrible on their paperwork. Now that I've pulled out my phone and shoved proof of my connections with very very very important people in their face, I've basically taken all the cards, most of the tokens, and the dice.

Figuring that they would still be in the room after my shower, I went so far as to unpack my cotton civvies to put on before I went in the bathroom. They banged on the door a bunch and told me to come out but they stopped banging when I turned the shower on. "I'm going to take a shower now. Please be gone by the time I'm done. I like to go to bed early." I called out from the bathroom.

It wasn't even a very long shower but they apparently decided that they had more important things to do. Maybe they got through to a higher up who told them to pull their heads out of their collective asses or maybe they got a call to go deal with someone breaking a law that actually exists; don't know, don't care. The important thing is they left. So I bolted the outer door, put my key card in the electricity slot, and went back to finish my shower with the lights on.

Today's ride: 96 km (60 miles)
Total: 2,669 km (1,657 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	4
Comment on this entry	Comment	4

Andrew FatseasHilarious.
I assume you must have pleasant interactions with Chinese people sometimes, otherwise I can't see why you'd want to live there.
Reply to this comment
6 years ago

Marian RosenbergTo Andrew FatseasThe majority of my interactions with Chinese people are pleasant. Otherwise, as you mention, why would I want to live here.
Reply to this comment
6 years ago

Victa CalvoMarian, that is a great read and you are a real hoot! I wouldn't be in the least surprised if they don't have posters of you in all of the hotels across China with a note to not mess with you and just give you a room.
Reply to this comment
5 years ago

Marian RosenbergTo Victa CalvoIt's actually gotten to the point where I rarely get into hotel disagreements and, if I do, once I let them know that I *know* how to register myself and can do it for them, things are resolved with nearly no fuss.

This past trip, particularly while in Ningxia and Gansu, I got to the point where I was starting my evenings out with a visit to the local police station so I could threaten them and bully them until I was kicked far enough up the chain that someone admitted I could be registered.
Reply to this comment
5 years ago