T-4: 天水 → 伏家

September 12, 2024

Our self rotating lazy-susan is powered off of a USB power bank

After a breakfast buffet with more than the usual complement of things that I'm willing to eat this early in the morning, we're off to Maijishan. Both a 5A Tourist Site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it's the only place we'll go this trip that is actually an active¹ tourist site.

So active in fact that it's got shuttle buses you have to stand in line for, food stalls in the parking lot, site relevant souvenirs, and one of my superfans approaching during the TV interview at the end. He's not the first superfan I've had the opportunity to meet, but he's my first ever "in the wild" unexpected meeting of someone truly excited to see me and not just in a "wow a foreigner" or "wow an internet influencer" but "wow, it's Marian!"

My tolerance for taking photos with strangers has skyrocketed since it changed from "because foreigner" to "because specific foreigner"

Horses or coolies providing you with an option other than your own two feet are the number one marker of a Major Site

He knew that I like coffee, that I'm afraid of biking through tunnels, and that I'd been sufficiently affected by Typhoon Yagi that I slept in a hotel on Saturday night.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again, but being recognized by strangers who know you is simultaneously the coolest thing ever and really, really weird.

Maijishan is a very whelming place. The art and statues almost have the opportunity to be overwhelming but the number of people, the width of the stairs and walkways hanging off the cliff face, and the need to keep moving else you'll cause a traffic jam demotes it down to merely whelming.

Most of the visible to tourists caves at Maijishan are like this

However, there are some which we can look at without having to make a special effort

On account of a translation² I'd done last year for one of the researchers³ there, I'd specifically requested the opportunity to visit Cave 127, all without knowing it has the best preserved frescoes at the site and is one of the ones that the general public has to both reserve in advance and pay a lot extra to visit⁴. That would have been the icing on the cake that elevated my day all the way up to amazing except that all the other things that happened were So Damn Cool, it faded away to a mere appetizer.

Leaving Maijishan for Li County, despite my many efforts to convince them that we really ought to visit Yanguan Town and the Salt Well Temple because, from 2021's Bike Tour, it 1) is really small, 2) doesn't suck, 3) has cool historical associations⁵, and 4) is in a town where I like the police, we drove right past it on the expressway and on to the Li County Government Reception Center for a big, fancy lunch with people like the Director of the County Propaganda Department, Secretary of the County Committee, and the County Commissioner.

I had a specific reason for taking her picture and it wasn't just because she's beautiful...I just don't remember what it was. Something the docent said about her posture maybe?

Maiji Big Buddha like most of the pieces around here is straw and clay over a framework of wood on account of the stone being too fragile

The County Commissioner is one seat over from me

Figuring that the cops from the 2018 Tour episode of "Rescuing My Sorry Ass When I Did Something Stupid" weren't the sort of people to go reporting up to high level officials that they'd impressed me enough that their photo had been one of the ones used in the Washington Post article about cycle touring in China, I made sure to let all the bigwigs know this; and the County Commissioner goes:
"Did this happen in 2018?"
Yes."
"And did you continue onwards to Daqiao Town in Xihe County the next day?"
"Yes."
"I thought so."

Because he'd been the Mayor of Daqiao at the time and, although he'd never met me, or seen photos of me, he knew who I was.

Later on, in the comments of the video I took in the county's surprisingly amazing Qin Culture Museum⁶, someone who is not one of my followers asked "did you ever once bike from Pingnan in Guangxi to Tonghe Town? Like a really, really long time ago."
"2008 and 2020 from Pingnan to Tonghe, and 2012 for the other direction."
"I was a kid at the time. So, 2008."

Original bronzes in the Qin Culture Museum

I've previously had randoms online find and send me photos they took with me 10 and 15 years ago, but I'm usually posting from the same general geographic region as our original encounter. So, this, plus meeting the superfan and the county commissioner had me dancing on air.

To end the day, we drove south and east about two hours, to the distillery in Hui County that has no right to be listed as a 4A Tourist Site and where they turned me away from visiting on my 2021 Tour because of "the worsening Covid situation" 2,500km away.

The guest dining room in the distillery may be the gaudiest building I've been in this decade

Bearing in mind, this is how they bottle their $200 28-year-old baijiu

We won't actually visit the distillery until the next morning, but we will get checked in to the "hotel" rooms in one of the two staff dormitory buildings and get taken to a very expensive banquet in their astonishingly gaudy reception hall. I will then worry lots of people by insisting on my ability to walk back on my own without getting lost⁷ and, furthermore, appearing confident enough in my Knowing Where I'm Going that I make it almost all the way there before a very worried security guard who was extremely certain that Something Might Happen to Me insisted on joining me with a flashlight.

¹ I think there were a dozen or twenty visitors to the Li Family Ancestor Temple who were unaffiliated with us and visiting while we were there, but all the other sites probably couldn't even reach 200 combined.

² An Analysis of the Plant Imagery in the Nirvana Sutra on the North Wall of Maijishan Cave 127

Why are they so obsessed with negative oxygen ions?

For one thing, the pair of 14 storey hotel/dormitory buildings were the only two buildings on campus that were more than 3 stories tall, and they were both next to each other.

³ Who I didn't get to meet because, in response to yesterday's visit from the man himself, her department head decided to have a morning meeting on Implementing the Spirit of Xi Jinping Thought

⁴ Each of the special caves is around USD 30 per person.

⁵ Du Fu wrote a poem about it

⁶ To be perfectly fair, while it was from the perspective of praise that I think the translation is better than the Palace Museum, it's also a serious criticism of the translation at the Palace Museum†.

† Something which I'm willing to do not because I've been there recently but because I have a friend who, upon seeing what a Worker Who Thinks They Speak English did to her translation, asked them not to tell anyone she worked on that exhibit.

⁷ Two turns over maybe 1.5km

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