D20: 樟湖→黄田

October 26, 2019

I got a doll sized bike helmet for my monkey

The day before yesterday, when I was looking at where I was likely to go after Nanping, I thought I would aim to make it to Huangtian. Part of my reasoning behind picking Huangtian was it's nicely being in the middle of things and also having a number of lodging options - one of which, I shall refer to as the Narriott.

They actually named themselves 万豪酒店 which is the official Chinese name for Marriott hotels. Except for, you know, them not actually being a Marriott. And the owner / family of owner type people that were hanging out in the main lobby when I got there all being absolute twatfaces.

Having not made it to Huangtian yesterday (because I went all wiggly wobbly through the beautiful countryside), I did a bunch of calculations last night between my working on Corporate Client's horrible no good make my brain hurt tourism related stuff, and unless I want to pull a really long day in there somewhere, I am still going to go to Huangtian.

Great big waterfront temple in Zhanghu decorated with the design philosophy of "less is less".

It's all very well made and skillfully put together and really quite hideous

I've discussed this with content with Corporate Client. They agree with me that their client really needs to just pay someone to rewrite everything and not be paying them what must be a truly prodigious amount of money for translation (on the basis of knowing what I get and knowing how many other layers are involved). But the client won't.

Just so you know, sometimes that really atrocious translation is the best possible result from really bad copywriting. It's not bing, it's not googlish, it's not even baidu, it was never any good in the first place and there's only so much making a silk purse out of a sow's ear that can be done when the client brief is a combination of "translate everything" and a refusal to fix (or even acknowledge) source text errors.

Going to Huangtian is okay though, cause it looks like it'll be small farm roads almost the whole way, and it'll be a nice short day that will get me in early enough that I can easily finish up the last little bit of this job for Corporate Client before I go to sleep.

Usually the faces are much less lively than these

Even the attendants have recognizable expressions

I suspect that they were all made by the same person at the same general time

I imagine that, if someone really wanted to do so, there could be dozens of research papers into the revitalized folk art of modern Chinese temples

Okay, so it's not small farm roads the whole way. It's a National Road. One which seems to have been very thoroughly upgraded to just a bit below the 'expressishway' I encountered in Jiangxi. Except that this bit of truly amazing civil engineering stops about three kilometers after I cross the bridge and turns into the little windy farm roads the maps had promised me. All while continuing to claim to be National Road!

There's almost no traffic of the four wheeled kind though this is apparently because of a Dangerous Bridge at the halfway point. According to the sign it has "hidden safety issues" which drivers need to be aware of and which is why trucks and the like should just stay away. This is apparently a separate issue from the very obvious safety issues of the small roads with their blind curves and constant steep ups and downs through villages and tiny settlements that are almost thinking about being towns.

I wonder what happened to the original statues. Or if, when they decided to do this renovation, it was one of those places that just had strips of red paper indicating that "This is The Seat of XX God". I feel like any place that was able to go this far over the top with decoration must have had statues before these ones.

As this power tool carved column wrapped around by a twining dragon shows, technical skill and artistic skill are not the same thing.

Of the places to stay in Huangtian, my choices are the Narriott (where they are, as mentioned above, rude twatfaces who refuse to even consider letting a foreigner stay and who also lie to me about being full), a somewhat nicer looking small hotel that apologizes about being booked solid for the wedding party across the street, a closed place that still exists in Maps and still lets me make an online booking that I then need to cancel, a dodgy looking nightclub, a place whose listed phone number goes to the neighboring restaurant and who want a ridiculous 128元 a night (in the countryside!), and the Bates Motel.

(There's doesn't seem to be a serial killer lurking about but that's clearly just an accidental oversight on their part.)

Grandpa Bates across the street from the bus station charges me 80元 which is apparently the going rate for the luxury standard room according to the sign downstairs. I decide that whatever I could bargain him down on on the price of the room, he clearly needs it more than I do. Also, I'm tired out from the day's ups and downs and the trying not to argue with the twatfaces at the Narriott.

Bridge across the Min on my surprise National Road

Completed in December 2017, this section of upgrades is 2.47 kilometers long, 7 meters wide, and cost 139,845,960元 (about USD 20 million).

At that curve there, it rather abruptly stops

The secretly Dangerous Bridge that caused the warning sign about the time I crossed the Min. It was built in 1992.

I do demand to get a power strip that I'm not afraid will set the building on fire.

The longer I stay in the room, the more convinced I am that I should have perhaps gone back and argued with the Narriott. But I'm already in the room and I've already paid, and I've got work to do so I work, and I do my best to go to sleep despite not having showered (as the shower in my room was turned off because it leaked and the shower down the hall with "hot water" is barely a trickle from the tap), and it is what it is.

I did get some really nice scenery all day.

Today's ride: 27 km (17 miles)
Total: 1,298 km (806 miles)

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