D2: 固安 → 定兴 (双语）

September 19, 2024

What's wrong with this photo? 这张照片有什么不对劲的地方？

O & A do this thing with their munchkins called "High, Low, Gruffalo" where they have to tell Mom and Dad what one thing happened today that was awesome, what one thing happened that was not awesome, and what one thing happened that was weird.

O & A会和小宝贝们玩一个叫“开心事、烦心事、怪事儿”的游戏，孩子们得跟爸爸妈妈讲讲今天发生的一件很棒的事、一件不怎么样的事以及一件奇怪的事。

Today's high had to be the discovery of a new function on AMap where, if a driver coming up behind me is currently using AMap to navigate, and he is either going substantially faster than the road's average speed or the road is narrow, my GPS interrupts my music to warn me.

Today's low was definitely the chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberries. I'm not sure how it's possible to include actual freeze dried strawberries in something marketed as "chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberries" and get it that badly wrong, but even if I wasn't expecting the so-called "dark chocolate" to be high quality, I wasn't expecting anything this bad.

今天的很棒事必须是在高德地图上发现了一个新功能----如果后面有司机正在用高德地图导航，并且他的车速比道路平均车速快很多或者道路比较狭窄的话，我的导航就会中断我的音乐并发出警示。

今天的不怎么样事绝对是那些裹着巧克力的冻干草莓了。我不太知道怎么能在打着“裹着巧克力的冻干草莓”旗号的东西里加入真正的冻干草莓，却还能搞得如此糟糕，但即便我原本没指望所谓的黑巧克力会有多高品质，也没想到会差到这个地步。

Rural Surrealist Trompe L'oeil 乡村超现实主义错视壁画

Spot the problems with this "seatbelts and helmets" poster by the local Traffic Police 找找当地交警出的这张“安全带与头盔”壁画有多少问题

Today's weird was coming to a small intersection on a rural trunk route where a solar-powered-traffic light on wheels had been installed, the intersecting road had zero traffic, there were no obvious traffic cameras anywhere, and everyone including the ebike¹ in front of me stopped at the red light and waited for it to turn green.

Although it's definitely not as bad as it once was, once I passed out of the Gaobeidian² area, traffic started to become the kind of crazy that is more in line with my memories of what Chinese traffic used to be like back when I was a fresh off the boat too afraid to cross the street if other people weren't crossing at the same time.

今天的奇怪事儿是，在一条乡村干道的小路口，那里安装了一个带轮子的太阳能交通信号灯，与之相交的道路上根本没有车辆通行，周围也看不到明显的交通摄像头，可包括我前面骑电动自行车¹的人在内，所有人都在红灯前停下来等绿灯亮起。

虽然情况绝对不像以前那么糟糕了，但我一驶出高碑店²地区，交通就开始变得那种乱糟糟的了，这更符合我记忆中当年初来乍到、刚到中国时的交通状况，那时我胆小得很，如果没有其他人同时过马路，我都不敢自己过。

The morning started early enough that—had I not exploded my luggage all over the room the night before as part of trying to figure out where everything was and where everything actually belonged—I could have been on the road by 9am. The aftermath of the luggage explosion, plus the waiting for the courier to come pick up the newest round of stuff being mailed to Hainan³, plus breakfast and coffee, plus some work for the media center, and a little light video editing, means that I wasn't on the road until after 11am.

早上出发的时间本可以很早，要是我前一晚没有为了弄清楚每样东西放在哪儿以及它们到底该放哪儿而把行李在房间里翻得乱七八糟的话，我本可以在上午9点就上路的。收拾行李，加上等着快递员来取新一轮要寄往海南的东西³，再加上吃早饭、喝咖啡，以及为媒体中心做的工作，还有稍微做了点视频剪辑，这一切意味着我到上午11点后才上路。

They just stopped and waited for the light to change 他们就停下来等着信号灯改变。

Gaobeidian preparing for an international event 高碑店正在筹备一场国际活动。

What rural Chinese traffic is supposed to be like 中国乡村交通本该有的样子。

I'm in a not terribly exciting part of Hebei. Luckily, since it's only the second real day of the Tour, I'm sufficiently happy to be on the road that I don't care about the lack of anything interesting⁴.

Hungry for lunch by the time both 10km and noon rolled around, I pick a restaurant as much on the basis of it being the first place I've seen open as I do because it has a lot full of vehicles. In terms of flavor, this was a Big Win. In terms of getting served by staff who were mentally unprepared for the possibility that they could understand me, and who have lots and lots and lots of other customers who wanted to spend a lot more money than me... not nearly as winning.

我在河北一个没意思的地方。幸运的是，由于这只是此次骑行之旅真正意义上的第二天，能在路上骑行就让我挺开心的了，所以我并不在意这一点⁴。

骑行了10公里后，也到了中午，我饿了，想找地方吃午饭。我选了一家餐馆，一方面是因为它是我看到的第一家开门营业的，另一方面也是因为它的停车场停满了车。就饭菜口味而言，这是一次大成功。但从服务的角度来说，他们压根没料到自己能听懂我的话，而且店里还有许许多多比我消费高得多的其他顾客，所以在服务体验上就没那么好了。

After lunch, I moved from the big provincial road to a much smaller county one. On the one hand, it was nominally more interesting (which still wasn't very interesting). On the other hand, it meant that the shoulder was narrower and the trucks a lot closer to me.

I suspect that, if the not-very-international event hadn't been going on, the ride into Gaobeidian City would have been horrible. As it was, however, the traffic cops were out in force, and were both preventing trucks or other large vehicles from using more than a couple of the roads I traversed and were organizing tow trucks to remove parked vehicles from the shoulders.

午饭后，我从宽阔点的省级公路转到了一条窄得多的县级公路上。一方面，名义上来说这条路更有意思些（不过其实也没多有意思）。另一方面，这意味着路肩更窄了，而且卡车离我也更近了。

我猜想，如果不是那场没什么国际影响力的“国际活动”正在举办的话，骑车进入高碑店市区的过程会糟糕透顶。然而，实际情况是交警们全员出动，既阻止卡车或其他大型车辆使用我所经过的好几条道路，又组织拖车把停在路肩上的车辆拖走。

Breakfast oatmeal and the last of the free pour overs 早餐燕麦片和最后一杯人家送给我的手冲咖啡。

High protein milk from the convenience store where I got dinner⁵ last night 昨晚我买晚餐⁵的那家便利店卖的高蛋白牛奶。

First donkeyburger of 2024, it was a bit dry but comments on the video are going to send me to check out someplace that's supposed to be better. 2024年的第一个驴肉火烧，有点干，不过视频下的评论会指引我去更好的店。

The not-very-international event was one of the reasons I decided to continue from Gaobeidian on to Dingxing. This particular area of Hebei is one where I, and lots of other people I know, have lots of experience getting into heated conversations with people in uniforms on the topic of... you guessed it... foreigners staying in hotels. And, as none of the places in my price range were coming up listed 'foreigner friendly,' I thought the same period of time as an event that has them deploying the police to keep trucks out of the city is a bad time to be Different or Demanding, even if what I'm demanding is that the people whose job it is to make sure that the law be followed, know the law⁶ and fucking follow it.

那场没什么国际影响力的“国际活动”是我决定从高碑店继续前往定兴的原因之一。河北的这个特定区域，是我以及我认识的很多其他人常常会和穿制服的人就……你猜对了……外国人入住酒店这个话题激烈争论的地方。而且，由于在我骑行中可接受的价格区间内，没有哪家酒店显示是“对外国人友好”的，即便我所要求的不过就是那些职责本是确保依法行事的人，了解法律⁶并且自遵守法律而已，我觉得在举办活动期间，他们会部署警力不让卡车进城，在这个时候特立独行或者提出要求不太合适。

Dingxing had other advantages as well. Such as the first place that I randomly picked that looked okay from the pictures being one named Marriott.

(Obviously, I don't actually mean that it was a Marriott. I simply mean that it was named Marriott.)

定兴还有其他优势。比如我随机挑选的第一个从照片上看还不错的地方，名字叫万豪。

（当然了，我并不是说它真的是万豪酒店，只是说它叫这个名字）。

Especially since I almost always book online these days, it's been literal ages since I've had a hotel try to tell me that they had "no vacancies." Needless to say, this worked as well as any other tactic which gets tried on me (i.e., not very well). I could have called the OTA on account of it being a "refused booking" and could have done the whole "forced upgrade thing" but, even if my specific terms and vocabulary have changed dramatically since the May and July Announcements, I've got lots more experience at calling the police.

尤其因为如今我几乎总是在网上预订酒店，已经很久很久没有遇到酒店跟我说“没房了”。不用说，这种做法跟其他对付我的招数一样（也就是没什么用）。我本可以因为这属于“拒绝预订”而联系在线旅行社，然后来个“强制升级”那一套，不过，即便自五月和七月的相关通知发布后，我的具体用词和用语有了很大变化，但我在报警这事上有更多的经验。

Copy of the famous rainbow in (I want to say) Chaoyang (but I might have the district wrong) outside the Gaobeidian Waterproof Materials Building 高碑店防水大厦外抄袭的（我想说的是）朝阳区（但我可能把区名弄错了）那道著名彩虹。

International Door & Window Technology Building and Scientific Cooperation Base 国际门窗产业科技合作基地。

I can't decide if the translator who came up with this name deserves an award or a punch in the nose 想出这个双关名字的译者是该得奖还是该挨揍，这很难评。

I'm pretty pleased with how that phone call went as—unlike either Chengdu or Beijing Daxing—the people on the other end were clearly aware that Announcements Have Been Made and they are supposed to be followed. In theory, someone from the local police station was going to come to the hotel and show the front desk lady how to register me but, by the time she left the front desk to go to the bathroom, he hadn't arrived yet, and I had finished all the work that could be done on my phone, and... well... leaving me alone or unsupervised when I'm bored is never a good idea, and then she called them back and they were all "mmmhmm, fuck off⁷."

我对那通电话的沟通情况挺满意的——不像在成都或者北京大兴那样，电话那头的人显然清楚已经发布了相关通知，而且他们理应遵守这些通知。理论上来说，当地派出所会派人来酒店，给女前台示范如何给我办理入住登记，但是等她离开前台去洗手间的时候，那人还没到，而我已经在手机上做完了所有能做的工作，而且……嗯……在我无聊的时候把我一个人撇下或者没人看着我，这向来不是个好主意，然后她给他们打电话说我已经到前台后面自己为自己登记，他们却一副“嗯嗯，别烦我们了⁷”的态度。

I didn't see anyone until after I came back from dinner. Dressed in plainclothes and smoking a cigarette outside the entrance, he didn't identify himself as police, but he was pretty clearly waiting for me, and he definitely knew more than your average Chinese person about topics like visas and how employment status can be tied to one's ability to stay in the country.

So, I casually name-dropped the hell out of that conversation. Never in the "I'm important" bragging sort of way that makes people rightfully want to kick you down a notch. But, instead the bitching about my job (which I love) and how much it sucks, and why I'm glad to be on vacation kind of way that doesn't give them an opening.

直到我吃完晚饭回来，我才看到有人来。他穿着便衣，在入口外面抽烟，没有表明自己的警察身份，但很明显是在等我，而且他对于签证以及就业状况与外国人在中国停留的情况挂钩等话题，明显比普通中国人了解得多。

所以，在交谈过程中我有意无意地提到了好些相关的人和事。绝不是那种“我很重要”的自吹自擂式的显摆，那种方式只会让人理所当然地想把你打压下去。而是抱怨我（其实挺喜欢）的工作有多糟糕，以及说明我休假的原因，这样不会给对方留下什么把柄。

Finally! The road to a moderately prosperous society in all respects... 终于还是碰上了！小康路……

First "dangerous bridge" of the Tour 此次骑行之旅遇到的第一座“危桥”。

First advertisement on curing bed wetting⁸ of the Tour 此次骑行之旅看到的第一个治疗尿床⁸的广告。

And if I happened to mention the Ministry of Tourism or China Daily... well, that was just commiserating with someone who clearly has government experience and also obviously understands why someone would dislike the mountains of red tape involved in getting money out of places like that.

Just before I bowed out to go up to the room and put my phone on charge, we ended the conversation with his trying to let me know that the hotel just wasn't aware of current policy, and—because I really am a bitch—my responding "I know. I hate it when local relevant departments fail to fulfill their responsibilities at disseminating information."

要是我碰巧提到了文化和旅游部或者《中国日报》……嗯，那得是个有政府工作经验、也很清楚有人会讨厌从那些地方申请经费时要面对的一大堆繁琐手续的人，那么只是和我同病相怜罢了。

就在我准备告辞回房间给手机充电之前，我们快聊完时，他试图让我知道酒店只是不清楚现行政策，而我因为是非常惨的人回应道：“我知道。我很讨厌当地相关部门在信息传播方面没能履行好自己的职责。”

¹ I'm in a part of China where ebikes don't have license plates.

² Where, admittedly, they are having some sort of 'not especially international' big international event that had the traffic police out in force.

¹我所在的中国这个地区，电动自行车是没有牌照的。

²不得不承认，这里正在举办某种算不上特别国际化的大型国际活动，所以交警都全员出动了。

First person using the road to dry crops 此骑行首次在马路上晒农作物的人

Nowadays, pretty much every home in this area has its own bathroom. This is a change from within the past decade. As a result, many small rural hotels still feel the need to actively advertise that they have bathing facilities, and, in some cases, that their primary winter business is owning a large hot water heater. 如今，这个地区几乎每家每户都有自己的卫生间。因为这是过去十年内的变化，许多乡村小旅馆仍觉得有必要大力宣传它们有洗浴设施，而且在某些情况下，它们在冬季的主要生意就是靠一台大型热水器。

When the village chief started singing⁹, I realized that "I can't carry a tune in a bucket" wasn't really an excuse for why I wasn't letting them drag me up on stage 当村长开始唱歌⁹的时候，我意识到“我五音不全”并不能真的成为我不让他们把我拽上台的借口。

³ Mostly books this time, but also some tea, and the t-shirt that I forgot to wash last night, because ... seriously ... there is no need for bike clothing + four t-shirts†.

† There's this otherwise quite interesting returned urban student in Hainan who has set up a cool rural revitalization project which I've long wanted to visit except that he absolutely reeks of BO and bad breath. I wasn't at all surprised when he commented on the picture on my Moments of me with all my luggage that "you really don't need more than three shirts when you go on a business trip."

³ 这次主要是寄些书，也有一些茶叶，还有我昨晚忘了洗的T恤，因为……说真的……没必要带骑行服再加上四件T恤†。

† 在海南有个挺有意思的返乡大学生，他搞了个很酷的乡村振兴项目，我一直想去看看，可他身上有股浓烈的体臭和口臭。当他评论我发在朋友圈的带着所有行李的照片，说“你出差真的不需要带三件以上的衬衫”时，我一点都不惊讶。

⁴ And given how eclectic my definition of interesting is, if I say an area has "nothing interesting," it really doesn't have much of anything at all.

⁵ A bag of Doritos, and a milk that I mixed with the purple taro protein powder that I'm trying to finish off.

⁴考虑到我对“有意思”的定义是很宽泛的，如果我说一个地区“没意思”，那它真的就是没什么值得一提的东西了。

⁵昨晚的晚餐是一袋多力多滋薯片，还有我把牛奶和我正想喝完的紫薯蛋白粉混在一起喝了。

Whether it's real or a scam, this seemed a very weird place to post lonely hearts looking for love. 不管是真的还是诈骗，在这个地方发布征婚寻爱信息看起来都很奇怪

⁶ I was messaged out of the blue today by someone who has been a WeChat friend of mine since the days that WeChat scraped your phone contacts to suggest people that you might want to add. However, in all that time, we have never once communicated. He had seen my "I'm in Hebei" post on Moments and, if I was going to in Shijiazhuang, wanted to invite me out to dinner. We both remember our first and last meeting (in 2012) quite well, though for different reasons. Him, because his police station didn't know that foreigners could stay, and me because it was the first time I flipped my shit at the police. And now, I'm really wondering if the totally pain-free check-in I had in that county in 2022 was at all related to the impression I made on him and his colleagues.

⁶今天有个人突然给我发消息，他从微信还会扫描手机通讯录来给你推荐可能想添加的好友那时候起就是我的微信好友了。虽然有那么多年作为连接人，我们从来没有交流过。他看到我发在朋友圈的“我在河北”的动态，如果我要去石家庄的话，他想邀请我吃晚饭。我们俩都对我们第一次也是上一次见面（在2012年）记得很清楚，不过原因各不相同。他记得是因为当时他所在的派出所不知道外国人可以入住，而我记得是因为那是我第一次冲警察发火。现在，我真的很好奇我2022年在那个县入住时完全顺利的经历是不是和我给他以及他同事留下的印象有关。

⁷ Their specific vocabulary, which I could hear over the speaker phone, wasn't quite that rude. It was rude, just not that rude.

⁸ This ad is centered on Hebei and is rarely seen outside rural Hebei. There's also a very common ad to cure stuttering which has spread throughout the rural parts of northern China. To add to the weirdness, they are all local places, not a chain.

⁹ I was enticed over by the sound of drums and dancers

⁷我通过免提电话能听到他们的具体用语，其实没那么无礼。

⁸这个治疗尿床的广告主要在河北地区出现，在河北农村之外很少能看到。还有一种很常见的治疗口吃的广告，已经遍布中国北方农村地区了。更奇怪的是，它们宣传的都是当地的机构，并非连锁的。

⁹我是被鼓声和舞者的声音吸引过去的。

Large empty roads with wide shoulders 路肩宽的大马路。

Having mud spatters or a weird load obscure your license plate number is not an allowable thing in China 在中国，车牌号码被泥巴溅到或被其他东西遮挡住是不允许的。

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 190 km (118 miles)

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