January 18, 2016
Through Baishidu to Yizhang
a bus to Linwu
It's around 11 o’clock by the time I cycle into Yizhang. That’s eleven AM, which is pretty good going for me.
This is partly because I get an early start from Litiangxinag.
This is due to the electricity going off in the hotel very soon after I wake up at seven, so it makes sense to hit the road. There's really nothing else for me to do but ride.
The main street is busy with vegetable sellers and breakfast places, and the young lady selling warm soya milk raises her eyebrows when I gulp down five cups of the stuff, while other people have various facial expressions when they see my bare legs, ranging from shock and horror, to bemusement and bewilderment. Everyone else is wrapped up in woolly hats, scarves and down jackets for the wintry morning.
I'd expected a climb out of town, but it's surprisingly downhill for about 5km. Not seriously down, but enough to keep me at around 25km an hour, with my tyres zipping along the smooth tarmac surface of the S324. Nice.
The wind isn’t as chilly as previous days and the first upward incline that appears does so only after some 15km of big-gear cruising.
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The town of Baishidu comes and goes without me easing off the pedals. It's like back in 1934, when advance teams of Reds took the town on November 9th and 10th, defeating a 200-strong force of KMT soldiers. It was over in a flash.
At the time a railway line was being built and the overworked labourers were given food and clothing by the Reds, which persuaded many to join the march as it continued heading west at speed. A couple of days later, and only just over a month after leaving Yudu on the beginning of what became known as The Long March, advance teams of Red soldiers entered Yizhang and recruited over 500 more new soldiers. Some of the rich citizens were killed and inmates incarcerated in the local prison were freed.
It was around that time that Nationalists soldiers had begun massacring any Reds or collaborators they could find back in Ruijin. The number of dead is said to number in the hundreds of thousands.
It’s not clear where the Reds actually marched in this area, but there just isn’t very much to stop for along the S324, and when I see a sign for Linwu at the edge of Yizhang, I make a left near a gas station.
If only I’d known.
The idea of jumping up the road by bus goes through my head.
That left turn takes me into a new area of Yizhang, where tall buildings are shooting skywards. It's all kind of soulless, with nothing actually complete. There are no people walking around.
After veering around the town’s periphery in a large arc for 30 minutes, it seems like a good idea to ask someone where the bus station is. It's not good to generalise, but I realised a while ago that younger people are the ones to seek out if you don't speak Chinese.
The guy I ask is in his early 20s and looks intelligent, and it isn’t a huge surprise when he replies in English. He studies at university in Beijing and as others have dome before him, offers help by escorting me to the station and after 20 minutes we'e at the very junction where I made that left turn around an hour ago. The bus station is right there. Jeez.
My bus is one like you get to ferry you around airport terminals. It seats 20 people, with single seats along one side. The driver shakes his head when he sees my bike, but is sympathetic.
It's great to have Mr. Intelligent here, as he translates and explains the score. The driver is more amenable after I offer to pay for an extra seat to accommodate my bike, and helps wedge my panniers and front wheel into the rear hold, while I slide the bike inside the bus, which is thankfully only half full. Effectively paying double doesn’t exactly break the bank because the pair of tickets for the 90-minute trip only set me back 22rmb.
This saves me riding over 60km along a stretch of road that has become boring. The hills climb for a couple of kilometers and are repetitive, not to mention a bit of a slog. Adding to the general malaise is the fact that the countryside is nothing to write home about, with a lack of rustic villages and slices of rural life. Houses are the unimaginative, standard units that are clad in glazed tiles. Another deciding factor is the volume of traffic is such that the absence of a shoulder became an issue. I'm not going to miss anything along this part of the journey.
On board, it's my lucky day as a graduate student on the half-full bus can also speak good English. This guy is also willing to help and after we've stopped on the edge of Yizhang to let a load of people pile on to the bus, overcrowding it, he grips my bike for the rest of the journey as I'm stuck by a window with a young mother and her toddler sat in the adjacent aisle seat. I actually nod off for a while.
Once we get off in Linwu, Mr. Helpful is eager to show me where a Cultural Revolution slogan is that I want to see, and he says he’ll also take me to a decent hotel. Once we’ve walked to the latter and booked in, he organizes a motorbike taxi to ferry us both to the neighborhood where the old building is - with large characters painted along one wall.
The two of us sit pillion while the man in front careers down narrow passages where my knees are in danger of scraping the walls. He honks and swerves. It's good fun. It lasts five to ten minutes and the cost is a very reasonable 6rmb.
It's just as well I've taken screen shots of the wall from a Web site, but without Mr. Helpful it would be pretty hard to find. It's located in a labyrinth of narrow alleys.
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Reds marched in to Linwu on November 14th and they all left on the 20th once Nationalists troops started to attack. There's no real evidence of their stay so my sightseeing is done.
I’ve been riding each day now since arriving in China, and have traveled a good distance, but the speed with which the marchers went is mighty impressive. And they couldn't hop on a bus when they felt like it.
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 982 km (610 miles)
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