September 11, 2018
I1-8: Beijing to Gaoyi 北京市→高邑县
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Happy happy. Joy joy.
I'm going to start biking again tomorrow!
I very nearly missed my train to Gaoyi. In fact, if I hadn't already picked my ticket up in advance in Shijiazhuang, the delay which I would have had by running by the ticket windows would have been enough to cause me to miss my train. As it was, by the time I got to the correct waiting room at Beijing West Railway Station, although ticket checking hadn't started yet, people were already lining up waiting to go through to the platform.
I nearly missed my train because Myf and I went to the Foreign Languages Press to have a coffee and a chat with the English department editor who I've done some truly fascinating work for. I've also done some astonishingly boring work for him too. However, unlike the tourism or golf related translation or really anything for any of the corporate clients, the astonishingly boring work I do for the Foreign Languages Press at least leaves me feeling smarter when I'm done.
It also gets my name in interesting places that look really impressive in a work portfolio.
It probably won't be out for another three or four months but I'm really looking forward to getting my contributor copy of A Brief History of the First Forty Years of China's Reform & Opening Up and Modernization Drive.
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From Beijing to Gaoyi on the train was just under two hours. In 2002 and 2003, when I lived in Shijiazhuang (35km north of Gaoyi) my near weekly trip to and from Beijing took three hours. It seemed like I could always find someone to talk with and my very first self-created sentence of Chinese words—as opposed to pre-learned stock phrases—was something I came up with on the train to Beijing.
我 普通话 小
I Mandarin small
Ungrammatical but concise, to the point, and ultimately an accurate representation of my Chinese level at the time.
The West City Hotel 西城宾馆 (0311-84061558), where I left my bike, refused to take payment for storing my bike for a week. In thanks, I still gave them one of my leftover 10,000₫ notes and two of my souvenir pennies with holes drilled in them. Much to my surprise, when handing them over, I discovered that one of the pennies was Canadian.
I can't say whether or not Zanhuang [赞皇] will still be a hassle about accepting foreigners to stay as I not only don't plan to stay in Zanhuang, I don't even plan to pass through Zanhuang Town. However, based on the 2012 experience, I'd like to point out to any odd ducks who are reading this who think they might come traveling around here, this hotel is only 8 or 10km east of Zanhuang, and exceptionally comfortable at CNY 80 per night for an ensuite room with central air.
Unpacked and repacked everything in a hopefully balanced way, handled some work emails, got a few more pictures ready for upload, and got all my devices charged. And, tomorrow, when I wake up, I'm going biking!
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