D3: 定兴 → 清西

September 20, 2024

It's cloudy when I get up, raining when I leave. By all rights, anyone sensible would immediately look out the window and say "guess I'm working on Dr. M's book today."

However, on top of my known proclivities for not being sensible, my hotel room is mehtacular, and—even knowing that "no foreigners" doesn't usually¹ come from a place of xenophobia—I have zero desire to give these people more money than my initial paid-for reservation.

On the way out, the same lady who pulled "we have no vacancies" on me as well as "we aren't licensed" and "but you might not like the room," asks if I'm actually going out in this weather. Surely I'd rather stay another night?

I was amused by the name² of this Sex Toy Shop

All I'm thinking is, given that you seem to own this place named Marriott, how many people have you inconvenienced over the years with your ignorance³? And, are you going to pull this shit again in the future?

I say nothing. Just head out to the donkey burger place that's been recommended in the comments section of the previous night's video⁴.

It is immediately understandable why it was recommended. But, even with taking the time to make a video of me very much enjoying a second one (and after having had my morning oatmeal no less!), there's a limit to the amount of dawdling I can do, and I'm off in search of the Yicihui Stone Column.

Casualty of second round simplification or local variant? Seen multiple times today

A war memorial to the soldiers and generals who put down an uprising in 527, it's been inscribed as a National Key Protected Cultural Heritage Site since the first batch of sites were listed back in 1961. As a result, given the way that the government likes to do things, it ought to be a whole heckin' lot more than a column under a weather shelter.

But, unless you count the pair of stelae commemorating the Shunzhi 7 (1651) and Tianshun 3 (1460) reconstructions of a temple that's no longer there⁵, that's really about all there is. In the meantime, the rain has gotten both heavier and colder and when I stop biking, I stop making warm, so I leave pretty quickly along a road that no one in their right mind would walk a bicycle down but which has to be better than going back out to the truck route⁶.

There are many puddles. Most of them don't have require me to get off my bike and walk through calf deep water.

Most of them.

I stop for lunch at the first restaurant on the G112. It gets me warmed up enough to be cold enough to shiver when I go back outside and I pull off at the next gas station to layer up with everything I can easily pull out of my bags. This isn't much but it's enough to make the shivering stop.

From there on in to Yi where I'm heading for the bike shop. In this city—although I always end up stopping at the XDS, because XDS are supposed to be the better choice in places this size—Giant is the place to be. They sell me a patch kit, a multi tool, and a carry bag that I can jury rig on to my rear rack (and which will provide useful in the next Repacking) for 50y.

Stele from the reconstruction of the temple that isn't there

My last two times in Yi (2022 and 2018) involved the police and the Foreigners Issue and I'd really wanted to see if the city had gotten better, but I'm cold and cranky, I haven't gotten enough kilometers in for the day, and it's early enough that "but why don't you go somewhere bigger" is the sort of stupid justification that's going to fall out of someone's mouth, and I just don't want to deal with it.

So I ride another 15km to the Western Qing Tombs and, instead, stay at a rural guesthouse where distractions like my needing to dry my passport keep us from remembering to register me, and the other guests share their dinner⁸ with me.

Is it time for my annual joke about traditional concrete roads made of water and mud?

¹ Even at the height of Covid restrictions, when nutters on the street were yelling at random foreigners that this was our fault, it was more likely to be a case of "your lack of a Chinese ID card means you fall outside the realm of things I know how to do, and I don't want to get blamed for doing things wrong" than it was a discrimination born of hatred.

² "一套" can mean "a complete set of", so "我们有一套" could be "we have a complete set of relevant products." However 套 is also one of the words for condom, so it means "we have a condom."

On the old main road heading in the direction of the Tombs

³ It is always possible that active misinformation on the part of her local police is behind her not knowing relevant policy. Given some of what I've previously experienced in this general region, it's even quite likely. It's just that, instead of leading with the "I'm not allowed" excuse beloved of people who actually believe they aren't allowed, she led with "no vacancies," and that reads to me as: not only have I failed to check the details on the incoming reservations that I confirmed, I also can't be bothered to listen to you say 'I have a booking.'

⁴ One of the keys to going viral, which I'm not usually willing to do, is to make a video of a foreigner eating a Beloved Local Dish. Extra bonus points if the foreigner doesn't like it or has never tried it. I have tried it, I do like it, and 524 comments later, I'm beginning to understand that I wasn't remembering wrong about it tasting a lot better.

Ear piercing, hair straightening, hair perming, beauty treatments, shoulder massage, moxibustion, adjustment of the monthlies⁹

⁵ And which a cursory bit of research seems to indicate was already Not There by the Chinese Civil War.

⁶ Major improvements in road safety, vehicle safety, driver skills, and the amount of dust, dirt, and pollution kicked up by trucks merely make me willing to tolerate the truck roads when I have no other choice. A bad choice is still another choice.

⁷ Haikou has a place called Steelbridge Town located next to the bridge the Japanese built across the Nandu River. So, it makes perfect sense that this village be named Stone Column.

I could be on that road. It's wider, and flatter, with more hillcuts and better grading..... it also has trucks

17th or 18th century gate leading up to the Manchu ethnicity villages whose main role until the end of the Qing Dynasty was to ensure the upkeep of the imperial tombs

⁸ In return, I give them the pack of leftover Very Expensive Cigarettes I nicked off the table at one of the Gansu banquets.

⁹ Abortion has been widely accepted and openly advertised as abortion my entire time in China, so there shouldn't be any need for a coded "women's services provided" from the era† this building/advertising dates to.

†Architectural style and materials put this building as being built sometime in the 90s. The window stickers material, style, and fading place it as early as 2000 but no later than 2010.

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 248 km (154 miles)

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