No hotel for foreigners

I agree with Carinae. There are plenty of other places to discuss politics.

Bittermelon, do you agree that the topic on which you are currently commenting is in fact an explicitly political one? If so, how do you exclude politics from it? Indeed how do you have ANY kind of robust discussion of travel in China while wholly excluding politics from it?

No. It's not explicitly nor implicitly political.

By removing posts that do not answer the OP's question.

Restrictions on who can stay at a hotel in China is certainly an issue that touches on politics. What's underlying these restrictions is the Chinese state's attempts to monitor and control what people in the country do, and I can't see how you can separate that from politics. There are many discussions about travel in China that can't be had without touching on politics. It is impossible to have a meaningful discussion about travel in Tibet and Xinjiang at the moment without mentioning "politics".

No politics on any of the country branches has always been in the Terms and Conditions of posting on TT. Something agreed to by members when they sign up.
Its posts #s 56 and 57 that probably raised the red flags. I doubt it was the 545 posts before that.

Sassy, bittermelon. ;) But I suspect that if you if cannot see the phenomenon of an increasingly authoritarian government refusing to allow foreigners to stay overnight in a town, even to the point of, as in the OP's OP, simply turfing them out onto the streets late at night, as political, it's likely not worth having the discussion with you -- there simply isn't enough eye-to-eyeness there to engage with.

I wonder: when you say that there are other places to have a discussion of the politics of travel in China, where do you propose that people do that, exactly? My lament here isn't really about this post, you see, but about what the Thorn Tree has become. Like most of the LP brand I know it's atrophied considerably since the NC2 acquisition (and likely will continue to until the company manages to offload the brand onto another buyer who will hopefully run it better), but for all the old Thorn Tree's flaws (and there were many), it was genuinely a place for travellers to TALK -- maybe the place for it on the internet, which is a genuinely big deal. To see it as it seems to want to be now, so small and sanitised and afraid of the bigger and more difficult issues of travel, I feel is really a huge loss to the travel community. And though that's a community that, again, has its flaws, it's also a rich and important one that I don't feel deserves to be censored or stifled by milquetoast corporate policy or by the inability to see travel as the fundamentally political act that it often simply is.

Look, homie, my goal is not to engender bad feelings or strife here, or to dwell in such feelings by endlessly litigating something that, as above and in Giora's comment, I think we will simply not see eye to eye on. But travel is political, my friend, and travel in China is very much political, and if you spend time in Xinjiang or Tibet especially the politics of it are something you simply cannot, and indeed should not try to, escape.

Even if people do not see eye to eye on an issue, I believe that a respectful and open discussion about it is not only healthy, but in fact vitally important. And this, the Thorn Tree for all its many flaws, used to be the place for it. It's sad to see it reduced simply to a bulletin board for 'travel tips', because it really has the potential to be so much more. In any case, I sincerely hope that you are well, and that you can see this exchange as one conducted in good faith and without rancor. Thanks! =)

This topic has been automatically locked due to inactivity. Email community@lonelyplanet.com if you would like to add to this topic and we'll unlock it for you.