T-6 & 5: 陇西 → 武山 → 天水 (双语) - Autumn Allegro in Asia - CycleBlaze

September 10, 2024 to September 11, 2024

T-6 & 5: 陇西 → 武山 → 天水 (双语)

Botanical Garden 植物园
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After checking out of our hotel, the first full day starts out with a thoroughly unexciting visit to a jade factory cum outlet store¹. Or maybe it was a very unexciting visit² to a botanical garden focusing on the collection and propagation of herbs that probably have medicinal properties³.

Luckily, this is followed by the Li Family Ancestral Temple, where—in wandering away from the docent and translator and most of the media—I stumble across two late 16th century frescoes that were discovered behind a layer of clay during renovation work in the early 90s. There's also, with the help of someone who works there, a pair of 18th or 19th century rafter paintings. 

从酒店退房后,第一天的行程满满当当,先是去了一家玉石加工厂兼直销店,整个参观过程乏味至极¹。或者一个同样也是无聊透顶²的专门收集和培育可能有药用价值的草药³的植物园,。

幸运的是,之后去了李家祠堂,在那里,我脱离了讲解员、翻译以及大部分媒体人员,偶然发现了两幅16世纪晚期的壁画,这两幅壁画是在90年代初的修缮工作中从一层黏土下面被发现的。而且,在一位工作人员的帮助下,我还看到了一对18或19世纪的椽木绘画。

Formaldehyde preserved specimens 福尔马林保存的标本
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Jade 玉石
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I'm failing in my role of seriously listening and nodding and smiling where the cameras can see me, but my video is currently at 119,821 views, 1,256 likes, and 236 comments on Douyin⁴ so no one is complaining.

I'll spend all of the visit to the big convention center type place that used for sales of TCM-type products looking at my phone either editing my videos or doing work related to reporting on the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi so it makes even less of an impression that it otherwise might have.

我没能好好履行自己的职责,没有做到在摄像机拍得到的地方认真倾听、点头微笑,不过我发在抖音上的视频目前已有119821次播放量,1256个赞,还有236条评论,所以没有人有怨言。

在参观那个销售中药类产品的大型会展中心式场所期间,我都在看手机,要么在剪辑视频,要么在处理有关台风摩羯灾后情况报道的工作,所以这次参观给我的印象比原本应有的印象要浅一些。

The new hotel, either overlooking the upper reaches of the Yellow River or overlooking a very loess colored tributary of the Yellow, is about 30% more expensive than our first night's lodging. Officially foreigner-friendly by their listing on the booking apps and a poster on the wall, they provide us with the first paper registration forms I've seen at a hotel this decade. 

我不清楚新酒店是让顾客要么俯瞰黄河上游还是俯瞰黄河的一条黄土色的支流。绝对是黄色的一条河。价格比我们第一晚住的地方贵了约30%。从预订应用上的标注以及墙上的海报来看,这里对外国人很友好,但是他们还给我们提供了我近期十年在酒店见到的第一份纸质登记表。

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Buddhas 佛像
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A lukewarm water heater and a bathtub that takes over 30 minutes to fill round out my reasons for why I much rather be staying someplace much smaller and much cheaper. They will, however, have some excellent yogurt at the breakfast buffet. 

Day Two begins with a scheduled visit to the Shuiliandong Tourist Area. It's marked on my Great Map of All the Things so, even though it's not super close to any of my previous routes for a ride through Gansu, I must have encountered information about it somewhere along the way and decided it would be a worthwhile destination. 

这不是很热的热水器和要一个花30多分钟才能放好水的浴缸,让我更坚定了宁愿住在小很多且更便宜的地方的想法。不过,他们的自助早餐会提供一些美味的酸奶。

第二天一开始是按计划参观水帘洞旅游区。它在我的“万事全图”上有标注。所以,尽管它离我之前穿越甘肃骑行之旅的任何一条路线都不是特别近,但我肯定在沿途某个地方了解到有关它的信息,并认定这地方值得一去。

A mixed Taoist/Buddhist site with some enormous 6th century low-relief carvings of the Sakayumi Buddha and two Bodhisattva, Shuiliandong seems like it would be very inconvenient to visit when transiting an area by bicycle so, even if there's far too much rushing to the next Photogenic Point, I'm very happy. 

水帘洞是一个既有道教,又有佛教的景点,有一些公元6世纪的巨型浅浮雕释迦牟尼佛像和两尊菩萨像。骑自行车途经此地去参观似乎会很不方便,所以即便行程安排得很紧凑,要匆忙赶往下一个适合媒体拍照的地点,我还是挺开心的。

Arhat Cave 罗汉洞
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The Big Buddha 大佛
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He's apparently famous for his mustache 听说这尊大佛以其胡须而闻名。
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President Xi is in the area, visiting the place we're supposed to be visiting in the afternoon, and completely messing up our schedule. As a result, we end up at Daxiangshan where I probably would have been a lot more impressed by the Big Buddha had it not come after the Buddhas at Shuiliandong, the lack of toilets on top of the mountain, or my stomach's sufficiently forceful rejection of one of our recent meals that, when we get into Tianshui, I go straight to the room and don't come out again until breakfast.

习大大正在这一地区,视察我们原本下午要去参观的地方,这完全打乱了我们的行程。结果,我们最后到了大象山。要是此前没看过水帘洞的那些佛像,要是山顶上有足够的厕所,要是我的胃没有对我们刚吃的那顿饭产生那么强烈的排斥反应,我可能会对大象山的这尊大佛印象更为深刻。

我们一到天水,我就径直回了房间,直到吃早餐才出来。

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¹ Although there is no forced shopping, getting "taken to the jade factory outlet store" is a trope in Chinese group tours the way "the butler did it" is a trope in murder mysteries. Prior to this, I had—possibly on account of my not generally participating in mass tourism—somehow managed to never go to one.

¹ 虽然不存在强制购物的情况,但“被带去玉石加工厂直销店”在中国的旅行团中是一种常见的套路,就如同“是管家干的”在谋杀悬疑故事中一样的桥段。在此之前,可能是因为我通常不参与大众旅游,所以从来没去过这样的地方。

Nice safe stairs 好看又安全的楼梯
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With nice safe railings 美观稳当的栏杆
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City view 城市景观
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 ² I'm not intentionally throwing shade at the places we visited. Most of the time when I'm bored out of my skull by something visited on a media trip, it's because this isn't the way I would choose to experience this particular place.

² 我并不是有意要贬低我们去过的地方。大多数时候,当我在媒体之旅中对参观的某个地方感到极度厌烦时,那是因为这不是我会选择的去体验这个特定地方的方式。,

³ One of the reasons I'm so down on TCM is because of the resistance to using scientific methodology to find out what is or is not actually effective.

³ 我非常不看好中医的原因之一是,中医界抵制运用科学方法来查明哪些疗法有效、哪些无效。

⁴ My WeChat Channels followers are a very different crowd and I've only got 1,400 views over there

⁴ 我的微信视频号粉丝是一群很不一样的人,同样的视频我在那上面只有1400次观看量。

Relatively modern Taoist building 相对现代的道教建筑
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