March 5, 2016
Near Peitan - An Ancient Village
cold riding on X634 & X661
My Casio says it ㄛs gone ten. Twelve hours is how long I’ve been in bed. Outside is the kind of weather that would make a man’s dick shrink to the size of a Presta valve and my hotel room isn’t much warmer, even with having the heater on all night.
If the day’s ride is going to be as big a slog as the previous one, I'm in trouble and it’s not a good sign when Robert Johnson’s haunting 'Crossroads Blues' is going around in your head…
I’m standing at the crossroads… I believe I’m sinking down...
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A bowl of noodles with a fried egg on top from the first place I come to on Gutian’s main thoroughfare – the X634 – perks me up. The street is one long market and totally buzzing, with vendors doing a roaring trade. All kinds of fruit and veg are on offer and this being the eve of the Chinese New Year, everyone is getting ready for the annual family gathering and big dinner.
I just buy a couple of bananas and about 10 kuquat, which are small orange-like fruits you can eat whole, skin and all. The vitamin C will help out in this chill.
The day’s ride starts off with a gentle climb, which kind of warms me up - but not much. I don my Gortex jacket over my fleece after 10 minutes. Fortunately the crest comes after a mile, and then there's a glorious descent which lasts almost 10km and has me speeding at 50km/hr, numbing my hands, nose and toes.
The monochrome landscape has that wintry look, but there's little traffic and the concrete surface is good: this road being prefixed with an X had me thinking it's going to be rough and bumpy.
Before noon I'm riding through another busy market which has taken over the X634. It seems interesting. Locals are curious.
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You don’t get to see where your meat comes from in the West, but here it's laid out for all to see on the road’s surface. A cow is being butchered, with its body still warm as swirls of vapor rise off the open carcass; only the intact tail and large ribcage makes its former self recognizable amid the bits of intestine and organs strewn about. There isn’t much left of it, but the butcher is using a cleaver to cut off various remnants.
The X-road meets up with the G319, which isn’t too bad, but by the 40km mark, a cup of tea appeals and when I glance inside a small unit, a place which looks like a shop-cum-living room, it seems like a good chance to get one.
Two old-ish men and a woman are sat on low bamboo chairs around a small table. The shop itself doesn’t amount to very much. The walls definitely need a coat of paint. A motorbike takes up a big chunk of the space. There's a simple cabinet which acts as the counter and on display is a pathetic range of items – around 10 cans of drink, a couple of plastic bags of peanuts and some packs of cigarettes. It’s like they’ve taken retailing to its minimalist possibility. On a good day, they could sell out in an hour. However, they're drinking tea, so it's easy to explain what I want.
There's an air of bemusement, but I get offered a bamboo chair and the main man keeps refilling the little china cup. It's a nice interlude, albeit a little bit surreal: it feels I’ve gate-crashed, but have gotten away with it. They won’t take any money for the tea when it's time to get back on the bike.
The sun comes out around three o’clock. It'd didn't look like it would ever do that. The temperature doesn’t really change, but it just makes what's left of the day seem a whole lot better. Colour appears where before it didn’t exist.
The first turnoff for the old village of Peitian appears, but there's a memorial for The Long March further up the G319.
Prior to the start of The Long March, one of the Red’s main bases was the town of Chanting. To help protect it, up to 6,000 Communists were based around 80km to its south, near the village of Songmaoling. As the Nationalists advanced in their Annihilation Campaign, fighting intensified and on September 23rd 1934, Songmaoling and its environs came under relentless attack. The bombing lasted a week. Around 4,000 were killed in Wenfang, a village a few kilometers to the east. A memorial is nearby and the place is officially referred to as a starting point for The Long March.
Google Maps gave me the impression it's only a few hundred metres away from my turnoff north, but it turns out to be about 5km. Worst of all they are uphill.
The sun is disappearing by the time I get to the entrance to the memorial and my heart sinks when a workman tells me the route up to it is blocked. In sight is a metal gate barring entry, but he says I can walk past it.
The narrow route is a total mess, with grit and stones covering its surface. In a couple of places mudslides have spilled right across the road forcing me to clamber over up, only to see a tall monolith of the memorial surrounded by scaffolding.
It’s regarded as a starting point of The March because the Reds who survived held a rally on September 30th in a temple in Zhongfu, a little to the west - now reached along the highway (through a long tunnel which starts near the memorial) before the soldiers retreated north to Changting.
It's a chilly drop back down the wide road, but fortunately a smaller one – the X661 – also goes north to Peitan, so I don’t have to ride the whole 5km back before making a left.
After riding up the 6km up the X661, a decent looking hotel appears and that's good enough for me. The old village can wait until tomorrow.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 215 km (134 miles)
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