New Police Checkpoint

On Friday afternoon, we were stopped for 3 hours while we were driving back from Linxia to Xiahe. This new checkpoint is located right at the place where Linxia and Xiahe meet, along the main highway.

Here's the story as I wrote it for my family back home in the States:

We had been gone for 2 days visiting a good friend in a town about 100 kilometers away from where we live in Xiahe. Today at 2:30 pm we managed to head out of town on our way home. It is about a 1 hr 20 minute drive under normal conditions.

At 3 p.m. we were stopped at a police checkpoint located right at the border where our prefecture meets the prefecture that we had been visiting for 2 days. Checkpoints have become a way of life since the Tib-et-an riots that happened back in mid-March, so this was nothing new. However, this was the first time since March that there had been a checkpoint at this location. Most of the time we were able to drive straight through on home without being stopped at all.

I was first asked by the police (and the military guards standing with him), "where are you going?". I replied that my family and I were "Going home". I then explained that we lived in this prefecture and that we were allowed to be there, even though other outsiders are currently banned from entering.

They seemed content with my answers and all seemed well, until we were told that we would need to wait for approval from "up above". They were not referring to a messenger from heaven, but from a particular office in the police department. They had made a phone call and were now waiting for a response saying that yes, we could continue on our journey. And thus began our afternoon sitting on the side of the highway, with my 2 1/2 year old boy, 15 month daughter, and 5 month pregnant wife, and the testing of my patience.

You have to understand that I could have done these guys' jobs better than they can. I know how their local government works better than they do, and I knew that we had permission to do what we were doing, even if they didn't. They kept referring to local government bureaus that really don't even exist, and how these people had to approve for us to travel on home. They were doing all they knew how to do, but therein lay the problem. They didn't know too much!

So we waited, and waited, and waited some more. My kids played in the gravel, chased chickens at a nearby homestead, tried to eat some of the gravel, screamed a bit, ate some peaches, chased chickens a bit more ... for 3 full hours, from 3 pm all the way until 6 pm.

Finally, after I made numerous phone calls to people in the local government who I thought DID know how things were supposed to work, the necessary approval arrived and we were 'free to go'. And just in time! We were just getting the kids washed up to get ready to head back down the highway to get some dinner at the last restaurant we had passed.

It was another hour or so to get home, which made the total trip time right at about 5 hours... to travel 100 kilometers! I hope that we don't have to go through that again... especially for something so harmless as trying to get home to put the kids in bed!

(I don't recommend trying to visit Xiahe right now, either from Linxia or from Tongren. There are very strict checkpoints with police and military on both routes. It looks like it is going to be very tight here until after the Olympics are over, at least.)