D5: 王安 → 来源

September 22, 2024

Considering that I was knackered enough to not bother with flipping the breaker when I used the hot water long enough that it overloaded the circuit, and then fell asleep while my watch was charging, I shouldn't have left today.

However, if I didn't leave, I'd be lying to the police officers that I'd justifiably¹ been a raging bitch towards and one needs to strike a delicate balance in these matters, especially when the people who have watched you Rage at Authority are saying things like "[they] admire your bravery."

Also, she wanted to talk Hare Krishna stuff at me.

Suddenly feeling the need to add this to the category of Weird Things I Go Out of My Way to Take Photos of ... this is not the first, or the second, or the thirteenth time I've seen a combination "hairdressers" and "driving school"

A very overgrown Rural Safe Electricity Usage poster series that is all recognizable art which I already have better copies of. Shadows made it mostly unpictate-able

And freedom of religion is a touchy subject with people whose belief in the idea that they are being persecuted is substantially stronger than the reality of no one else they know cares enough to want to join².

Wonderful breakfast of sweet potatoes from her kitchen garden and red bean porridge from beans that she grew, I really want to know what Husband does for an income because, like Ballerina Farms³, the quality and size of the living room and kitchen furniture, her hometown being over 1,500km away in Chengdu, and her hobby of making candy⁴ with all local all organic ingredients only add up with her claims that they are "just poor countryside folk" if you've never spent any time around poor countryside folk⁵.

Barely made it out of town when I stumbled across an early 70s bridge that practically demanded a "Marian Reads Things" video where I got to try out the new selfie stick/tripod I had been pressured into buying and to decide that it's hard enough to get the phone in place and unstable enough that I still prefer using my hands.

Even if they were built on to the outside as an after thought, most private farmhouse style hotels do not have elevators.

One "protect the motherland," one "government power comes from the barrel of a gun," and one sunflower motif are all that's left.

While I like the ability to hold the phone farther away from me, and I think it produces better-looking video, I also find the setup unbelievably awkward and annoying, and I find that the tripod is unsteady and prone to fall over.

A few more distractions in the form of getting pictures of the multiplicity of clearly open guesthouses that a) weren't on Maps, and b) which the police had told me don't exist, and then still more distractions because the area heading out of Wang'an is littered with the corpses of restaurants and shops that once existed when this was still a trunk route (and I never even passed through the center of town) and I love all the funky, outdated architecture.

Spent a while wibbling at the intersection heading towards a Bethune Memorial that might have actually been where he practiced surgeries but it was 4km away and not guaranteed to be open, so I kept going.

Four more hotels (three open, one closed)

A restaurant that was on a road that is no longer important; blue glass windows⁶ put it as probably being between 1994 and 2004.

Abandoned Gas Stations of China (and, I'm only just now realizing, also part of my Counterfeit Sinopec Series)

An especially gory 2008 Traffic Safety PSA by PICC

From there to Laiyuan, I struggled with a whole 250m of elevation gain over 30km, found every possible excuse I could to stop and rest (err... I mean edit videos or work, yeah, that's what I mean), got lost on a blissful bit of countryside road that was supposed to shortcut me to where my post restante packages⁷ had been sent, and—with night and temperatures having already fallen—I booked a room under my English name at the closest hotel-that-clearly-has-an-elevator and got to yell at the cops for a second night in a row.

In past years I would have forced them into letting me register. With the new Announcements and a better understanding on my part of Consumer Protection Law, I instead gave the cops and the hotel the option of "my legally staying here" or "the original hotel footing the bill of my going someplace three times more expensive".

They took the latter...

Not bad for 298y. Even less bad for 99y.

It currently has 24,000 views, 296 likes, 159 comments, has been saved 5 times, and has been separately forwarded to the county, municipal, and provincial tourism departments.

I suspect, even with the mosaic'd out faces, by the time their bosses see the video, they will regret their choice.

¹ It wasn't even like I was using my helmet cam to film them, or as if I was the slightest bit subtle about doing things like reading their badge numbers out loud for the camera when they blurted out whatever it was (I don't feel like rewatching) that got me to positively bellow "your duty as an officer of the law is to serve the people, it is not to lie to them"

² - Is China tetchy towards religious expression of all kinds?
- Yes.
- Does China actively put road blocks in place that make it so you have to really want to be religious?
- Also, yes.
- Are they beating people up for having religion?
- No.
- Was anyone stopping her from having Chinese-language copies of the Bhagavad Gita in her hotel rooms?
- Also, no.

They really want you to know what kind of corn they are growing

³ A particularly vile tradwife content creator in the US

⁴ Which she had purchased a machine for packaging.

⁵ I'm really all on about the footnotes today but the sofa in her living room was on par with the cost of everything in the living room of the moderately well off Manchu-ethnicity guesthouse owner from the night before; who had moved to her husband's village near the Qing Tombs from a far distant 40km away; as well my Hare Krishna guesthouse owner had an American sized refrigerator, and the TV wasn't just enormous, it also had a curved screen.

⁶ Since things in the countryside are always behind urban fashion, it's much easier to determine an early boundary than a later one.

⁷ More power banks and some gas bottles for my stove

Four posters, two of which I have (with better art) and two that include text I've never seen.

Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 348 km (216 miles)

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