D20: 东仙坡 → 高碑店

October 14, 2024

As far as I'm concerned, one of the greatest benefits of cheap hotels is that you can get rooms that don't have windows. Being as Dr. M made the choice to take the hanging daybed on the glassed in verandah at the Yaodong hotel because of her need to wake up to daylight, it would seem that this (obviously far more sensible) point of view is not the only one which exists.

Before you tell me they blackout curtains are a thing, I would like to remind you that I'm mostly in the poor parts of rural China and they are not a functioning thing which exists at the kind of cheap hotels I prefer to stay in (by which I mean that if they exist, they are so tatty as to no longer keep out all the light). Additionally, they only help with light and have no bearing at all on sound.

In the less than 50 years since his death, Mao has already been adopted into the Chinese pantheon of folk heroes who are venerated for good luck and good fortune

Oddly enough, this 1960s 伟大领袖毛主席万岁万万岁！was clearer on my phone when taking video than it was either as photographs or with my eyes.

Hand carved (with power tools), this is a fairly large example of a Taishan Stone conferring the protection of the folk hero Shigandang upon the residents

Past experience tells me that it's possible for enough firecrackers to be set off to be heard from inside a windowless room, but it's not easy; and other morning noises such as trucks or markets are effectively non-existent. My brain is in bike touring mode so, as long as I don't overtire myself, I'll still be up by ten past eight, but it's because I want to be up.

Gray weather that might be more on the fog side of things than the smog side of things makes immediately going outside look sufficiently dubious that, with the permission and assistance of the hotel owner Mrs. Dai, I shoot a staged "Checking in While Foreign" video which is basically just us reenacting the highlights of the previous night complete with moving a fire extinguisher out of the way¹ to give me bike parking.

I liked my dinner enough the night before to return there for breakfast but they aren't open yet so I have a trio of pork stuffed mo² instead.

I actually liked these pork mo better than the previous evening's donkey ... and I really like donkey meat

The quest for the Mystery Noise (which has since come back) resulted in the discovery that my bottom bracket was loose. Although this town's Xidesheng were uncharacteristically useless at "mmm, yes, that's a wobble, just ignore it and it will go away," their Giant was also uncharacteristically good at fixing something that wasn't their brand.

First detour of the day is a site that memorializes a massacre that took place early on during the War Against Japanese Aggression. I'm fussing with my phone making sure that I've got all the shots I want and trying to decide how much I want to try for a "reading the inscription" video on account of my not really wanting to puzzle out the unpainted shallowly carved white text on a white stone when the Village Secretary shows up for a chat.

He says he's seen me before on Douyin. He also plays for me a voice message of someone on WeChat telling him "that foreign girl who bikes around China looking at historical stuff is in our memorial park! Go talk to her."

Which is how I end up with a digital copy of the inscription instead of having to work it out myself³.

If he hadn't given me the inscription on the back, I was going to voiceover the (easily google-able) poem on the front

An apartment building with solar panels installed over top of every air conditioning unit

I shall assume that the people providing free winding cloths also sell coffins or something like that

Mr. Secretary and the grandpa who comes over to chat with us while he's chatting with me are a wonderful bit of the kind of niceness that spurs me to continue creating videos and a counterpoint to the nastiness that will happen with the day's other video.

Taken about five hours later and also in the Marian Reading Walls category of things, I had just finished up everything including subtitles and music and was looking at Maps on account of my having used to enough daylight that a faster route into town made sense when a pair of elderly druncles⁴ arrived to start demanding I produce my ID and tell them what I was really doing in their village.

Being as they were the fourth or fifth round of people to stop by while I was Doing Things On My Phone and all the others were pleasant, friendly, just making sure that nothing was wrong with me, and agreeing that the cool thing I'd found really was an unusual thing to find in 2024, I kind of expected the same.

All the other locals who interacted with me in any way were totally awesome

Given the state of the jersey, it wasn't as if it was hard to tear

Don't post advertising on our village walls

Yelling at the top of my not inconsiderable lungs to "get your fucking hands off me" while walking my bicycle through them in a game of chicken that only ended because it was clear to both of them that continuing to physically refuse to let me leave might result in falling on his ass, I would have called the police on them except for not actually knowing the name of the village where I was and not having any useful signs within my field of vision.

The worst part of being assaulted wasn't the probably new (or at least larger) hole in the right hand pocket of my 17 year old Marco Polo Discovery Channel jersey but the fact that I couldn't defend myself. Not because I have no martial arts or self defense skills⁵ but because, at 20kg heavier and 20 years younger, unless one or both of them had some secret kung fu skills that weren't at all apparent in the way they were moving, fighting back would almost certainly mean causing serious injuries and I didn't see a "Foreigner Beats Up Old Men" scenario ending well or cheaply.

I am hoping that this is simply a misplaced marker stone and not an actual historical site

An oddly bright children's playset in a brown landscape. Also no obvious reason for why there would be such a large playset inside the fenced in area.

When I got there, was the traffic in Gaobeidian absolutely horrible? Probably true. Were my nerves so jangled that I didn't have the mental cycles available to merge or dodge? Also probably true.

Ate a pork stuffed mo, a pork and pickles stuffed mo, and two⁶ eggplant stuffed mo before heading to my hotel where the Front Desk's attempted "but we don't have the license" went over like a concrete balloon.

No raised voices or anything like that but also no willingness to accept anything other than complete capitulation on my part. "Yes, you can." "I don't care who told you what." "Figure it out."

¹ This has the added benefit of showing off that her hotel is stocked with obvious fire extinguishers to a degree that speaks to either having personally experienced a fire or having a firefighter as a relative.

Long straight rural roads with fall colors

² Think pita bread

³ It was only two paragraphs† and my not having read it was mostly about the annoyance factor.

† However, the shortness of the text and the prominent mentioning of 29 people (including two Party Members) being killed leads to my being quite rationally angry at the primary school teacher in a commenter's story of going there as a class on Tomb Sweeping Day and being told a fairy tale about 500× as many deaths and a tree that has survived being damaged because it was watered with the blood of heroes.

⁴ Portmanteau of "drunk" plus "uncle"

⁵ This is actually a deliberate life choice

⁶ The second one was merely good. The first one heavenly. I suspect the actual difference was how hungry I was.

Meaning "National Matters," I thought this town had an interesting name

Been a while since I've seen one of these assholes' graffitis. At least on this occasion, its just a power pole and not someone else's temple.

I'm a little confused as to the importance this local clinic puts on "will help the milk come in" for nursing mothers (two out of the four large signs) but, okay...

Presumably a temple of some sort. It was right after the incident with the drunkles and it was starting to get dark, so I wasn't really up to exploring.

Today's ride: 51 km (32 miles)
Total: 1,318 km (818 miles)

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Mark BinghamUfda! What a day!
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