Three Guanyins in a small roadside temple. They look very similar in style to the ones I saw near here six years ago but, unlike those, they are made out of cement instead of a mix of mud and straw plaster
I didn't especially like Zanhuang in 2012. I didn't like it very much when I was circling the town looking for a place to stay. I didn't like it when the very nice hotel ayi walked me to the police station to register and the police not only flat out insisted that I wasn't allowed to stay anywhere in town but also refused to offer or accept any solutions (until, some five hours in, I threw a temper tantrum and informed them I was going back to my hotel). And I didn't like it when, the next morning, I couldn't find a good place to sit and eat breakfast.
Petrol stations are one of those things which I started taking photographs of for no particular reason, and which I now have a substantially large collection of
Initially, I wasn't going to take pictures of the petrol stations on this stretch of road as they really weren't that extraordinary in size, shape, name, or style
Therefore, when heading towards Zanhuang from Gaoyi this trip, I figured I'd have a much better time of it if I simply avoided going into Zanhuang altogether. The S393 goes north by northwest before turning west in order to avoid a short stretch of mountains. However, there is a gap located at the center of the mountain range and that gap was perfectly placed to drop me on the road to the Zhiping Temple Stone Pagoda [治平寺石塔] that had been one of my nicer detours back in 2012. I had especially liked the vehemence with which the caretaker of the nonexistent temple had spoken of the people who had destroyed the site (both the Japanese devils and those Eighth Route Army bastards) at least a decade before he was born and I kind of thought it might be neat to go visit again and talk to him again.
Unfortunately, I got myself lost. Not just a little bit lost, magnificently lost. So lost I ended up on dirt farm roads which for some reason, despite being single-tracks, were still being used very dustily by motorized vehicles that weren't tractors.
Southern China has lots of water. Northern China is at risk of desertification. The North/South Water Project is a ginormous irrigation project bringing water from southern China north. This is one of the aqueducts for one of the canals.
I never did find my way all the way back to the pagoda in question. I got relatively close before giving up but, at the time that I gave up, AMap was saying I still had 3.8km of roads to make it to the pagoda and even though it wasn't yet 10am, I was already in a race against the sunset.
My three potential stopping points for the night (at 50km, 60km, and 70km) are all townships [乡] rather than towns [镇], county seats [县], or cities [市]. That's a fairly important distinction as townships are small enough that they might not have even the lowest class of low class hotels and I'm not carrying either a tent or a sleeping bag with me on this trip. The last of the three, Zhangmo [獐獏], was someplace I had stayed in 2012 so even if AMap only showed a lone guesthouse, I knew it probably had not just one but two places because it had had two.
I think this was a concrete producing area rather than a mining area but in any case it was a nasty, dusty mess.
This remains one of the most peculiar wall paintings I saw all trip (and all year for that matter) as it almost seems to have been printed on to the wall.
However, I also remembered myself being tired and cranky and worn out by the time I got into Zhangmo and I'd already started off some 15km, a bit of dirt singletrack, and a minor mountain range earlier. Continuing to wander around to look for a stone pagoda that I'd already visited once before seemed like a bad idea. Besides which, I was looking forward to seeing what sort of developmental changes six years of the "Chinese dream" had wrought on Zhangmo.
The answer was: apparently nothing.
Although it's looking kind of rattytatty, this temple is only a few years old
The lack of change to have not taken place in Zhangmo over the past six years was made even more apparent as the Xingtai Green Taihang International Road Cycling Race had passed through this region a little over a month ago and a large amount of the area where I was riding had been aggressively prettied up with wildflowers and decorative fences and freshly painted walls. Even though the race route went right through Zhangmo, albeit briefly, Zhangmo apparently didn't have the money to spend on such fripperies.
Within minutes of joining the route that the bike race had used, as I was stopped by the side of the road to take a photo, someone stopped and asked to take a photo with me. By the time I made it to Zhangmo, I'd lost count of the surreptitious photo takers. Only one person went so far as to actually wave me down while I was in motion to ask if they could take a photo with me.
Fresh pavement and easily maintained yet nice looking mix of non-wild wildflowers
My choice of lodging once I reached Zhangmo was either the place I spent the night in 2012 (for which I paid CNY 10 + an additional CNY 10 to use the bath house) or the place I chose not to spend the night in 2012 because they had wanted to charge me CNY 40 for what was ultimately about the same quality of lodging.
Being not winter and therefore not having the boiler running as well as a so-so attitude towards maintenance, the place with the bathhouse had dropped their price to CNY 8. It was tempting. Very tempting. I haven't stayed in a place that cheap since I paid for all four beds at a truck stop near Baoding in 2008. Just to be able to tell people I stayed somewhere that cheap in 2018 would have made it worth my while.
However, as there was no Temple Fair going on to push up either prices or the demand for beds, the place I hadn't stayed in 2012 was willing to charge me CNY 20. On the one hand, this means the second place cost more than twice as much as the first place. On the other hand the second place was $2.95 and the first place was $1.18. The second place also had amenities such as WiFi, a cold shower where I could get the worst of the road dust off, and bedding that appeared to have almost definitely been washed some time in the past month.
Last time around, the physical structure of these little shrines was in somewhat better (but not great) condition while the statues that weren't as yet uncovered were mostly in worse condition
