During the time I was in Gansu in 2021 the entire foreigner component of the Registration System was "404 Page Not Found" and every night started with the police. 

One of those shift captains from one of those nights left the police six months later, moved to the coast, and started a logistics company. On account of my habit of "networking like a fish breathes water," although they were hardly big clients or anything like that, I'd already sent business his way by the time he'd been there half a year¹. 

I hadn't originally been planning on going through the city where he now lives but I decided that my plotted out route through the fiddly twiddly mountains was too much and, even before being near an appropriate train station at the right time had become a concern, had been taking a somewhat less ridiculously not-a-straight-line route than I'm usually known for². 

After a lovely, cool day where the rain never rained on me (but was heavy enough to cause some pretty extreme flooding in places shortly before I arrived at them), I found the location of his offices, parked my bike, and got taken out to a very protein heavy all you can eat meal at a Chengdu-style "cook your own" bbq.

He'd heard the tiniest little bit from me about the foreigners and hotels issue. Mostly in the context of how I'd been impressed with him and his fellow officers at the small town precinct where he'd worked and the generally good feeling I'd gotten about the public security culture³ of the prefecture-level city⁴ his hometown is located in, but also in the context of my trying to decide whether or not I should file a complaint about last night's police as they'd (no surprise) refused to show up and say "go away" to my face and I didn't have badge numbers or really anything useful.

As the dirt-poor mining town where he was a shift captain was capable of figuring shit out, he wasn't having the easiest time understanding that the more foreigners a place has, the more likely it is that foreigners will have issues receiving basic services⁵. Part of this is the usual Chinese unwillingness to believe that More Developed and Advanced Places have very real problems that Backwards and Undeveloped Places don't, but mostly it's because he's a former police officer and it's downright fucking offensive to him that the problem foreigners have with hotels in urban areas is one which is caused by police who don't want to deal with the potential risk of something foreigner related causing a headache for the police ... cause police should never make illegal, verbal orders.

They're police. Police—especially grassroots level officers like the civilian police assigned to precinct houses—are the most basic unit of law enforcement. They are the foundation upon which a strong country governed by the Rule of Law is built. They can't just go around willy-nilly making illegal verbal orders as a way of avoiding possible inconveniences!

Of course, that's exactly what the problem would be when Mr. Not-an-Officer took me—with no online reservation and no advance phone calls—to the hotel closest to his company offices.

Heavily diluted by water and glasses of lemon fizz, I had a single beer with dinner. Also, I'm expecting this. So, I'm very chill 

He's two thirds my weight, had at least three beers, and I've got just the tiniest suspicion that he may have been hoping to try to join me in my room after I was checked in⁶. So, he starts out not chill⁷ and gets progressively more worked up as things just won't go the way they are supposed to go.

If his police station's concession to my being a foreigner was to make the effort to ensure that I stayed at the hotel in town with plumbing⁷ (in order to be nice to me and put their best foot forward), how dare urban police in a foreign-centric trading hub in one of the most developed parts of the country be explicitly giving instructions that make things harder for foreigners?!

Worse than that, they're claiming it's national law! National fucking law. As bloody if.

After phone calls to the local precinct house by both the hotel owner and my former police officer didn't work, I pushed to be allowed to call 110 (the 911 equivalent). Neither of the men wanted me to do this cause calls to 110 get recorded at the municipal-level. My companion might be seething furious at the local precinct house, but he once wore a blue tunic and he knows that excessive emergency calls really fuck up a jurisdiction's numbers, and he isn't quite angry enough to want to hurt his brothers.

But his brothers aren't cooperating, and aren't cooperating, and aren't cooperating. 

So, I call.

This a) bypassed the local precinct house, b) recorded this as an Incident for Statistical Purposes, and c) coincidentally led to police that were unaffiliated with the local precinct being dispatched to my hotel to handle things.

Upon arriving, these police were of the opinion that there are quicker and easier ways to solve "Marian Getting A Room" that are not Making A Point⁹.... but, they also took our side against the local precinct house. 

The hotel—like all hotels in Zhejiang—has the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Bureau's Hotel Guest Registration System. The system has a menu item marked "foreigner". Ergo, just enter my info into the system and badda bing badda boom, I'll be able to stay. It's that simple.

It's not that simple.

Even with these police in the lobby, the hotel owner isn't doing something he's been given explicit instructions to not do without first getting approval from his local cop shop. They're called, again, brought up to speed that I'm still in the lobby and that I've now got additional forces on my side. But, the person from the precinct house who is on the phone still wouldn't budge on the idea of a hotel owner who hadn't been "trained by them" at operating the foreigner component of the registration system being allowed to register me. At the same time, I also wasn't trained by them so letting me go behind the desk and just register myself was a totally unpossible occurrence.

Eventually, the compromise was for the hotel owner to drive to a so-called "Foreigner Approved Hotel" within his police's jurisdiction, pick up one of their front desk staff, and bring them back to register me.

Only then was I able to go to my room. 

Alone, as the case may be.

--

¹ I'm also sufficiently impressed by his attitude over how things went during my visit that he's going to be getting a lot more connections from me and my connections.

² Which is not to say that I'm engaging in the shortest distance between two points or anything like that, just that I'm not making hundred kilometer zigs to the north followed by hundred and fifty kilometers zags to the south.

³ Just as "if the first hotel gives you trouble, the fifteenth will also give you trouble" is a good rule of thumb, it's also the case that if one of the counties in a given prefecture has "obviously caused by the police" problems, all of the counties in that prefecture will. 

⁴ Translator Rant #27 "市 does not mean city"

⁵ I have a friend in Hangzhou who, after six tries, gave up on ever getting the Covid vaccine. 

⁶ I wouldn't have exactly been against this happening

⁷ Finding himself in the middle of a Situation without a bodycam to succinctly and easily record what was going on was an obvious factor contributing to his discomfort, and pulling his phone out to record didn't help 

⁸ A hotel without plumbing had been one of my available options.

⁹ The place down the street that Hotel Owner wanted to send me to was apparently a whole 10y more expensive than his place.