Chinese has a proverb "挂猪头卖狗肉" (Hanging a pig's head but selling dog) that never really made sense to me since dog is currently and traditionally was more expensive than pork.
In the morning, on my way out of town, I accidentally found out why the police in Ciwu have told the small hotels that they can't have foreigners. While looking for breakfast after crossing the main road I found a large sign with a sketch map of the tourism area. It wasn't much of a sketch map nor much of a historic tourism area (certainly not enough of one to encourage people to come from other places and intentionally spend the night in Ciwu) but it was a recognized tourism area nonetheless.
With the exception of the entire province of Ningxia, my experience indicates that the worst places for being told "no foreigners" are the places that might have foreigners. And even with my unreasonably having a pleasant (well, for me at least) conversation with the police almost every evening that I was in Ningxia and most of my evenings in Gansu, the ease of dealing with the situation was always directly proportionate—in the wrong direction—to the likelihood that they'd ever in their lifetime seen a foreigner.
Most of the characters were illegible but I was able to crowdsource the reading as "紧跟华(国锋)主席 进行新长征" Follow Chairman Hua (Guofeng), Proceed With the New Long March". Seeing anything for Hua Guofeng is very rare.
Bend over backwards friendly and helpful in the middle of nowhere versus actively being a pain in the ass in the cities.
And heaven help you if there's a youth hostel nearby to where you want to stay. Because the "no foreigners allowed" vocalized by every small hotel within a kilometer radius of the international hostels is universally caused by them having previously dealt with those foreigners who, for some reason or another, were kicked out of the hostel.
I had my breakfast noodles and coffee at a noodle shop close to the entry to the old town. The noodle shop closest to the entrance only had dog meat and cautiously made sure that I knew in advance that I didn't want to eat there and that there was somewhere else I'd rather eat instead.
Fed and hydrated, I checked out the old town and was singularly unimpressed. There were one or two particularly old buildings that, had they not been locked up tight, potentially could have been interesting, or could have been like wandering into someone's private living room (which I've accidentally done on more than a few occasions).
Excellent breakfast noodles at a place selling "Ciwu Handmade Noodles". Unexpectedly, Ciwu Noodles continued to be a thing for the next 30km
The Chinese above the door seems to indicate that this was a power plant. Lacking a smokestack and being in a relatively flat area (so not hydro), I can't imagine how.
I detoured to check out this temple which the door dog was determined not to let me visit. Even though his leash gave me room to get by, I decided not to antagonize him.
South along the main road for a good long while, everything from the paper maps to Google and AMap calls it the S103 but the stone markers that China puts by the side of the road to tell you what road you are on and what kilometer you are at are calling it a national road. They're also so new that most of them are still wrapped in plastic for transport.
For most of the way, it's just unexciting the way that national roads are unexciting. Sometimes it gets busy with vehicles, sometimes not. Sometimes it goes through towns, sometimes not. Mostly it just goes and goes and goes. And goes.
I try a couple times to make a turnoff and explore and see if I can quietly parallel the big road along the older small roads through the villages that—especially in the flat areas—line both sides of the road, but, for the most part, this fails. Many of the villages, both the ones I poke my nose into and the ones I don't, all seem to have one or two or three old buildings but there's not enough through-road-ness to make it worth all the wiggle zigging and getting on and off the truck road.
Of course the resurfacing and hot asphalt was while I was going down what should have been an epic downhill.
I imagine that the original Road must have been a lot less straight and must have gone through each of the villages here and back and there and over which is why the current Road is able to so neatly go straight down the middle without leaving a wealth of obvious scars in the form of demolished or bisected buildings.
It's easy riding with the flatness of main roads (even when I have terrain to deal with) and the width of the shoulders/scooter lanes, but it's not fun riding or interesting riding and it's certainly not something I'd recommend to anyone else.
Really the only thing that makes it the slightest bit worthwhile is the knowledge that if I don't have a handful of days of flat easy riding to bash myself back into shape before I get to the mountains, the mountains won't be any fun at all.
I finally find a way that takes me through some lovely countryside alongside a reservoir while only adding 5 or 6 additional kilometers to my day. There's another 6 added after that to head to a larger town when I get in contact with the lone guesthouse shown on AMap and discover that they are a bit too luxurious for my budget.
I regretted taking the obvious pedestrian path almost immediately but continued anyways. On the plus side, I now know that my current rig is light enough for carrying up stairs cyclocross style
According to the inscription stone, it was built in 1995 at the same time as the nearby bridge and road to commemorate the people who contributed to the building of the bridge and road.
From the inscriptions, it looks like approximately 200 individuals and organizations pooled money together to build this bridge and road. As China gets richer and the roads don't need to be a joint effort of the community, these sorts of stones are becoming more and more rare.
All in all, nothing particularly exciting happened today.
I had some truly delicious bowls of noodles. I was mistaken for Xinjiangren only three times (one person asked me directly if I was from there, two asked if I had biked "all the way from Xinjiang"). Other than the one who was at my hotel in the morning filling out the paperwork that went with a photocopied passport instead of a proper registration on the computer which I could have used if they'd let me, I didn't speak to a single Man in Blue. My first hotel let me behind the counter to register myself with no complaint and even asked me to teach her how it was done for the benefit of future guests.
However, all in all, a pretty uneventful day.
I am absolutely in love with this traditionally styled building the approximate shape and size of a roadhouse where travelers would have slept
The above picture is for sale on RedBubble. If you think it's cool or you want to otherwise support me, please consider buying it (or something else) from my shop.
Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles) Total: 536 km (333 miles)
