The first step in remediating flaws is to recognize them. Embrace them, accept them, own them. Flaws that you pretend do not exist cannot be fixed.

I have a great many flaws. Quick to anger, I hold on to grudges for years. Perhaps it's a quirk of living in an "expat" environment¹ for as long as I have, but I had enough experiences where people (or categories of people) who got forgiven for mildly transgressive behavior didn't go on towards being better that I stopped forgiving earlier and earlier and earlier. 

The paths of thought I wandered down towards having this on my mind are twisted, convoluted things that start with a morning knock on the door of my hotel room. 

I'd already been up and moving around for about 30 minutes at this point so there's no question that the people on the other side (or at least the people who called the people on the other side) waited until I was up to come on over.

They are rude. Insufficiently chastised by my yelling at them through to door to give me five whole minutes to finish putting my pants on², they didn't do anything in particular that gives me cause to make a Complaint. I mean it's rather obvious—considering the hour of my arrival, the number of people that didn't see me arrive, and the number of hotels in China where I haven't had the police come by in the morning—that the "concerned community member" whose call prompted them to check my ID is either the hotel owner or a next door neighbor.

And it's also obvious that it's not about me being foreign but is instead about me having enough Middle Eastern DNA that I look like a ethnic minority of the Islamic persuasion. 

I'm not sure what pisses me off more in these episodes, that the other party starts by treating me like someone far below them or that the conception of our relative social status does a sudden 180° the moment they realize I am in fact a foreigner and they go from stern stick-up-the-ass to sweet ass-kisser in the blink of an eye.

But, here and now, and in response to the here and now, there's nothing I can Complain about and nothing a Complaint would do. I recognize this. 

Although I did not (yet) Complain, that is not the case with the Police who got on my nerves in Zhejiang. It's just that because I didn't get in-person Real Name Verified before I left the province, there are extra hurdles to my doing anything about it.

Not that long ago, so long as I got a place to sleep, I was satisfied with my results. I bitched about things. I told stories about things. But I never Complained. Winning in the here and now was enough. 

But, just as I've come to recognize that I can't do anything about the deep set societal flaws that this (and every society to some extent) has with regards to racism or religious bigotry, I've also come to realize that every successful Complaint is a baby step in the right direction, and it's worth my time—weeks after the fact—to make sure those Complaints get filed.

And this morning's police with their coming by to check my papers on account of the merest possibility that I might be the Wrong Kind of (Chinese) Person in an episode that I can only ever bitch about but not actually do anything about has reminded me to make sure, once the Tour is over, that sternly worded letters to Zhejiang have to get written.

Starting the morning with another fucking flat tire and issues where my pump doesn't want to push air in to the tube faster than the air wants to keep leaking out, after running the battery on my pump dead, I get patched and topped off at a nearby ebike shop.

I then have a decent enough, intermittently rural, ride where - as per the usual - I change my destination more than once. 

Coming in to Jianhu as the sun is setting, I am plagued with swarms of midges that seem determined to either fly right into my eyes or my mouth. They are also attracted to my nose. As I am currently breathing with both my mouth and my nose, at least two or three of them make it down into my lungs and set off some vicious coughing fits.

I chose Jianhu because, back in Taizhou, the bike shop owner was certain that the sub-50y hotels around these parts are fine for a touring cyclist and, unlike the other counties nearby, Jianhu had enough sub 50s that I wasn't scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The extra I paid for the a/c remote and also to do my laundry brought me up to 59y but he was right. It was eminently acceptable. So acceptable in fact that, faced with a very large volume of work the next day, I kept the same room instead of moving someplace a dollar or two more expensive.

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¹ By which I explicitly mean a place where people come from other countries to work for periods of less than 5 years, often without making any effort to integrate into the local culture.

² After the third time they knocked and two previous "give me a moment to get dressed".