> dragging my heavy baggage one place to the next for half a day being rejected all over Beijing
Yep, one would think that for a government that cares so much about their image they would avoid visitors having to go through this nonsense.
For budget travellers to Beijing -- 如家 accepts foreigners last I checked. 7天 used to but they don't anymore as of a couple years ago.
Re:Airbnb S-1
by powerapple on Thursday November 19, 2020 @04:18AM
(#25147673)
There were two system in the past: hotels for foreigners, designed to take passports and hotels for citizens, taking only IDs. There has been recent national system upgrades, now Chinese can use passport as identification (although still not universally). Since last year, you can use passport to check in high speed rail stations (maybe still not all of them) without queueing up in exchange for a real ticket. The direction is clear. It is a big IT system with different departments, I can imagine the problem will be gone in the future.
If China really cared about their image they wouldn’t be doing all the things they try to hide.
Of course the wealthy here would never know, most places priced in the top 20% expensive accept foreigners. I was a poor student and also worked as a teacher($400/mo) looking for midrange accomodations, not to spend a month's pay on a weekend trip