D41: 甜水堡 → 洪得

May 26, 2021

It's just a blinky tail light, I swear.... get your mind out of the gutter

Given the number of times throughout the course of the day that the County Public Security Entry & Exit Administration contacted me to find out where I was, and how and where my day was currently looking likely to end, and to remind me—again—that my first stop of the evening should be the local police station so that they could directly register me, it would have been very nice if she'd told the local police I was coming.

Is that so much to ask?

One of the eleven beacon towers I saw today

There was a frightfully bad wind while I was still in the hotel room making coffee and it was even worse once I got outdoors and went upwind in the direction of the police station because they'd asked nicely when they called last night to have photocopies of my passport ¹ and, being as a general lack of foreigners currently running around in China makes it even more important that I be a Representative that people positively remember, I didn't see any reason to make the hotel owner do it.

Couldn't find anyone in the office area of the police station and then, when I went back out into the more public area where I probably should have started, it was both the wrong part and there was a power outage.

Preserve harmony, sweep away corruption, strike with the fist of justice

National Anti-Desertification Preservation Area Boundary

The etiquette of masking up amuses me no end. The female officer I was talking to was unmasked; the random old man who I gave my chair to at the counter was unmasked; the male officer who came to get my passport from me and who had been in my hotel room the previous night was initially unmasked but he had a fresh crisp mask on when he came back from photocopying to politely hand me my passport with both hands and to talk to me about road conditions.

Wind continued to be very strong as I made my way out of town. Being as it was a tailwind, it was mostly unnoticeable unless I stopped to do something like take video of a fort, then it was crazy just how much the air was moving.

Approaching the day's first pass, the wind became even more noticeable going from being a helping hand pushing me up hill to my needing to dismount on a switchback because I couldn't move forward and up and against the force of the air all at the same time.

Had to walk this switchback because of the wind

Although the G211 National Road currently runs more along the valley, this section of road which used to be the main road not too long ago was so thickly dotted by watchtowers and forts it was obvious that it had been the main road for a very long time. Especially as the only road² heading south past the township of Shancheng (Mountain Fortress) is the one that runs through the valley, I'd love to know why it's only been barely a decade that the main road between the fortress towns of Sweetwater and Mountain has done so.

Probably not the easiest thing to find out though.

Looking down at the under construction expressway

Stopped to climb on a watchtower that was next to the road and was desperately tempted to just take a piece of figured brick that was lying exposed on the ground but I couldn't overcome my training as the kind of kid that went to Archeology Camp (more than once) and settled with taking photos of it.

If you zoom in, you should be able to see another beacon tower over top the blue roofed building

Just before what the GPS told me was the Site of the Shancheng Battle, there was a fortress-like building or compound with some roundels on the outer walls of the sort that might have gotten Big Character Announcements back in the 50s and 60s. I was as sure of this as the actual site of Some Important Civil War battle I never heard of as I was of it not looking particularly open, so I didn't stop.

Getting to what the GPS actually called the Site (but still 3 or 4km north of what the street sign called the Site and a dozen kilometers from Shancheng), there was absolutely nothing to be seen but some rammed earth walls in not very good condition.

To further confuse things, this is very definitely Baoning (Preserve Peace) Fort

Warring with myself, and convinced by the terrible wind that I may as well explore since today was otherwise going to be short, I left my bike and let the GPS take me into the middle of a field. From there I could see a rather uninteresting looking little temple which a walk over to confirmed as being uninteresting. There are many places where poverty and local culture and religion intersect in interesting ways and this bare walled shrine was none of them.

However, there was a belfry next to the shrine.

And in the belfry, there was a bell.

A glorious cast iron bell from the 8th year of the reign of the Qing Emperor Qianlong.

A glorious, impossible museum quality cast iron bell that somehow managed to survive the Great Leap Forward's smelting down of all things iron (including farm implements and cookpots) in the attempt to meet production quotas for backyard steel.

Just sitting there in the belfry next to the shrine at the back of some fields in an abandoned fort.

My traditional character knowledge is poor and my classical Chinese worse. I can mostly pick out words like "the Great Qing" and the name of the fort

Even moreso than climbing up on top of a watchtower, my day was made.

Lunch in Shancheng at close on to 4pm, I decided that the town was small and boring looking and that I was so far away from 50km for the day that I may as well try heading down to the truck route to see if the wind was still terrible at the bottom of the valley. After all, nothing would be stopping me from coming back to town if I didn't like the conditions I was faced with.

Approaching Shancheng, there's a beacon tower and what looks like walls that once crossed the road

However, scary as the big rigs were, and strong as the wind still was, it wasn't gusty anymore and it was all tailwind so I felt reasonably safe getting on the truck route that I was going to have to do at some point no matter what.

Per common sense as well as the repeat reminders from the woman at the PSB, I started my night at the local police station. Walking in to the office as someone was cleaning up after what must have been an interesting event involving a butcher's knife and the most gloriously overripe watermelon³, everything came to an awkwardly confused pause as they had no apparent idea what I was doing there but when fed the prompts of "Authority greater than you told me to do this, then this, then this other thing" did just that.

I then followed them to a hotel much nicer than what I would have chosen on my own, checked in, and collapsed.

On the one hand, visiting the police station to start off my evening REALLY annoys me. On the other hand, I'm capable of realizing the long term positive benefits of having the police want to take selfies with me because they like me

The fake roses on the beds were a cute touch that did not seem to have been added to the room on my behalf

¹ If I were getting registered on the registration system, photocopies wouldn't be necessary

² I'm not counting the modern within the last five years railroad or the currently under construction expressway

³ There was red juice everywhere

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 1,448 km (899 miles)

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