D13: 五寨 → 府谷

October 3, 2024

I, uh, may have mentioned a certain fondness for really poorly executed art.

Somewhere in the cacophony of hanger¹, arguments, yelling, stress responses², and us being downright insulting³ to both the uniformed and plainclothes officers that showed up, Dr. M remembered them saying that our next destination, the county town of Kelan, is also Closed.

The phone call which determines that Kelan is at least as "Closed" as Wuzhai⁴ will force us to turn north towards the town of Sanchai and the truck route, but it is hardly the morning's only phone call.

After they first patched me through to the Public Security Bureau for the wrong province (Shaanxi versus Shanxi), and then patched me through to someone with the right province but who had no idea what I was talking about when I said "Closed County⁵," the National Immigration Administration hotline turns out to be kind of useless.

A pagoda in Wuzhai. Having promised Public Security that we would leave the county before tonight, it's too recently and nicely built/rebuilt for us to want to do more than grab a photo from the outside.

I do not have enough pictures of me riding

"12345," the general municipal services complaint line is better. At least, they are able to get us through to a county-level official who confirms that they definitely believe themselves to be "Closed," that they're really sure documents (which they can't show us) that prove their "Closed" status exist, and that it's perfectly normal to allow foreigners into an area while also preventing them from staying in that area overnight⁶.

Also according to him—despite them having things like vans and pick-up⁷ trucks with which to quickly and easily remove us from their jurisdiction—it's also perfectly normal as an honest to goodness actually restricted access Closed County to let us continue biking through their county without so much as setting a single car to do a comically bad job of tailing us from 300m back⁸.

A photo of a spray painted sign "by the way, you shouldn't go down this road" is as close as I'm willing to get to photographs of Places I Know I Shouldn't Be

At first we thought he was Really Friendly. Then, we realized he was really really drunk.

Between breakfast and the phone calls and lots of apologizing to the hotel owners that they had done nothing wrong, we also get a visit from a plainclothes woman with the Exit and Entry Administration. She must not have watched any of the previous night's bodycam footage, as she clearly wasn't expecting us to be lecturing her.

Seeming to think that she had the right to interrupt us and ask us questions, she was also stunned by: "Did I give you permission to speak? You will get a chance to ask me questions only after I am done determining to what extent you are failing to follow your own laws," and "if you want to take video of us on a personal device, you have to ask first," and she left quite soon after arrival⁹.

At least with all this going on we don't need to find something to occupy us while the world warms up to biking temperatures.

Notwithstanding the Obvious Military Facilities¹⁰ which we're not dumb enough to linger near or take photos of even when they are located opposite a particularly interesting historic hill fort, the road up to Sanchai is a truly lovely ride.

Interesting pagoda decoration in the center of local rooves

Looks very similar to the pagodas found in Tang Dynasty grave goods

A National Road of the sort old enough to be lined with mature trees and unimportant enough in traffic terms to have never been expanded beyond a couple of generous lanes and some big hard shoulders, our route north runs down the center of a broad crop-filled valley where the arrival of a "moderately prosperous society in all respects" has been gentle enough to preserve a substantial amount of 19th and 20th century architecture and construction habits.

The truck infestation starts at Sanchai with an east west corridor that's not that much wider than what we've just been riding on but is occupied by about 1000× as many vehicles (or at least 1000× the gross vehicle weight).

We know we can't ride this. Attempts at hitchhiking will, however, result in the discovery that none of the trucks think this is a Place to stop and refuel; that the vehicles on the Huolala cargo service app aren't interested in picking us up to take us 60km west; and that most of the scheduled coaches either don't run that way or only run that way once a day, in the morning.

I'll give you three guesses (and the first two don't count) as to what they grow around here

Sanchai Town is still in Wuzhai County, and even if Wuzhai is going to be hearing a lot more from us in the near future, we have to at least make a visible effort to try to follow the order to leave.

Just as farm trucks and cargo vehicles can get in trouble for having passengers outside the cab, passenger vehicles aren't supposed to let any kind of large luggage or cargo into the passenger compartment. So, given that both the vans (farther than they want to go) and the taxis (too small for two bicycles) won't drive us, it's entirely possible that the scheduled coach (who only has room for only one bike in his undercarriage luggage compartment) would not have agreed to let us on if it weren't for the boys in blue showing up shortly before he did.

I kind of wish that they'd shown up later rather than earlier as, separate from my favorite "taxi" service not charging for the privilege, a police SUV would have taken us on the substantially less terrifying expressway as well as providing plenty of opportunity to dig for information.

Trying to get a picture of some 19th century constructed yaodong in the center of a grouping of rural houses

But, showing up when they did at least confirmed that, even at their level of bumfuck nowheresville, they also think Wuzhai County is Closed to foreigners.

¹ That's the past tense of hangry, right?

² I over ordered more delivery food than either of us would normally be able to finish. M found herself completely unable to eat at all.

³ When you phrase "I'm going to report you" as "either you are failing to follow central government directives regarding not telling foreigners or hotel industry operators that hotels don't have the qualifications to host them or you are failing to follow the most basic regulations for secure areas and our presence here indicates a level of dereliction of duty which I am obligated to report" the smelly, dusty cyclists in the weird clothing are suddenly a lot more trouble than they were five minutes earlier.

After taking a moment to confirm that there didn't appear to be any antennas or other military-shaped things nearby, this Great Wall Beacon Tower needed to be inspected

Don't you love when the info sign is on the wrong side of the barbed wire?

⁴ Even if one of the cops showed us photos on his phone of the family with kids who were "much more reasonable about listening" to total bullshit than either of us when the police came to their hotel at 9pm and made them leave a few months ago, the limited amount of research I've done online about Wuzhai seems to indicate that their Closed status is so top-secret the county tourism board forgot to tell the English-language booking platforms not to list or sell local hotels and attractions.

⁵ Was I using the wrong vocabulary word? Or, is the provincial level office that a foreigner would apply to for permission to enter a Closed County unaware that there are counties in their province which are claiming to be Closed?

When a Mommy Truck and a Daddy Truck love each other very much ....

⁶ This is because the only people who engage in espionage are foreigners (who look foreign) and the only time it is possible to engage in espionage is at night†.

† The sun had not yet set when we biked past the military airport that looked exactly like every other military airport I've ever not taken photos of while biking past in the daytime.

⁷ Bearing in mind that—other than the List published by the Qinghai PSB and distributed round to all the hotels and hostels in Xining†—Closed Counties mostly don't go out of their way to actively list their status, when Snowflake and I were heading in the direction of one in 2016, we didn't even make it across the county line on account of the police waiting for us at the intersection with a pick-up truck that 'mysteriously' had prepped sufficient bungee cord tie downs for two bikes.

It was also about this time that the paving went to shit

Sanzhai's Finest reporting up the line that there are foreigners wandering around town

† I'm reasonably certain that this has less to do with the number of Closed Counties in Qinghai, the amount of self-guided tourism in Qinghai, or the periodically changeable nature of Qinghai's List than it does with the relevant departments realizing that many of the foreigners who need removing from someplace they didn't realize they weren't supposed to be are prone to being an absolute pain in the ass about it.

⁸ I've had the police waiting at the county line to confirm that I had left the jurisdiction (Hebei 2012), I've also been noticeably tailed before (Guizhou 2020 and Gansu 2021). Nothing about those situations even holds a candle to the sensitivity of "theoretically being inside a restricted military area" and yet, here we were, being told that we were totes for real in a restricted military area, and they couldn't be bothered to see where we were going or what we were doing.

Handicapped bathroom in the Fugu Bus Station

⁹ And by "quite soon" I literally mean less than five minutes from knocking on the door to stomping off in a huff.

¹⁰ Didn't check the other maps, but all of them were sufficiently marked on Open Topo Maps that we can easily avoid them.

Do we look like the sort of people other customers should be trying to order food from?

Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 802 km (498 miles)

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