D16: 万镇 → 白云山

October 6, 2024

Taken from high above and verrry zoomed in, two old men on an oxcart

Dr. M and I have a disagreement about an English language neologism. As someone from the UK, she obviously has more authority than I do, but I'm not quite sure.

Is the collective noun for the sort of Livestreamers who wander around in public an "embuggerance" or is a "twat" as in "one twit, two twats"?

As previously mentioned, the hotel we spent the night in is a wannabe bougie¹ boutique-type place in the yaodongs that used to host the local government offices. They're the constructed sort rather than the type where someone burrowed into a hillside but they've all got the single big window at the front and the arched interior ceiling/wall.

Mocking Dr. M for saying that she never gets flat tires wasn't enough to dispel the curse and, today, she got a flat on the new tube in the new tire. And, the new tube is so narrow, we can't get my patches to stick...

Luckily, we happened to see her old tire/tube in the tip on the way out of town and were able to patch that tube

Our next attempt at improving our luck will involve a burnt offering²

One row has been made into dining and cooking facilities, two are hotel rooms, and the other two have been made into a small museum on local revolutionary history.

I don't remember if the twats harassed us during the earliest round of coffee on the open terrace overlooking the village (and a large, unlovely bypass bridge). I know that by the time they came by to look at us in the private gardens shared by each pair of yaodong in our row (still obviously in pyjamas, still obviously ungroomed or ready to face the outside world) they needed to be firmly and repeatedly told off and told to go away.

Because, of course, a Revolutionary History Museum is the place you expect to find a three footed Han Dynasty³ pot.

Ignoring for a moment that both men in the diorama have identical hands⁴, the level of realism on these soldiers is mind blowing

They also needed to be told not to follow us into or around the museum and that we weren't going to sing on camera (or at all) for them.

I'd had my usual⁵ morning oatmeal while we coffee'd but Dr. M's stomach was still in that place where nothing short of fluffy buttermilk pancakes drizzled with golden syrup and accompanied by clotted cream and fresh blueberries was going to make her want to eat before noon.

As the person responsible for us doing far shorter distances than she's used to on her own, it was therefore my responsibility to make sure we had enough pannier snacks like mini chocolate bars and beef jerky.

I'm far too pleased with myself for noticing the Journey to the West theme before Dr. M did

But, unless it's a small winding thing that goes up a mountain, the idea of a road in China where you can go 20+km without seeing anywhere to eat is so alien to me that it just didn't occur to me.

Around 4pm, with nothing but the red dates that everyone kept offering us, we finally found a roadside village on the approach to Jia County. They were getting ready for a Temple Fair which meant that we should have had lots of fun distractions while also being the kind of distraction that people talk about for years (remember that time the touring cyclists⁶ came?).

Unfortunately, there was a twat of livestreamers with meter-and-a-half tall poles with frames for multiple phones at one time and they would not leave us the fuck alone.

I shouldn't laugh but that's one seriously goofy looking Qilin

The breaking point came when—having decided that foreigners eating lunch required extreme close-ups of the food entering their mouths in the exact same way that food enters the mouths of normal, non-foreign people—a dozen locals⁷ had pushed in the livestreamer-created crowd to see what everyone was looking at.

You would think that picking up my bowl of noodles, turning my back to the crowd, and hunching over my food with one hand in front of my face would have seeped through the wall of ignorance and bad behavior but it only resulted in someone coming round the table to look at me from that side.

Our first run in with the Temple Fair Livestreamers at least had them asking us to take our pictures⁸

The red faced drunk guy was kind of rough with the people he wanted to have in the photo with us, but not so bad towards us

Needless to say, we did not stay for the rest of the Temple Fair.

Ten kilometers later, having calmed ourselves with amusing obelisks⁹ and poorly written wall slogans about eradicating illiteracy, a restaurant owner asked if she could take a photo with us, and (after asking for permission) Dr. M got up and hugged her.

Then, unless you count the part where I dropped my bike on myself¹⁰, we had a nice, easy check in at a hotel just outside a large tourist site.

Is it still a cenotaph if it isn't a grave?

Nothing quite like an "eradicate illiteracy" wall slogan with the equivalent of speeling errors

¹ Given the hell† that I would have unleashed on the owner for the number of already broken or improperly‡ installed things, it's probably a really good thing that Dr. M picked up the bill for this set of rooms.

† Taking into account our different countries of origin, we are roughly equivalent on the social class side of socioeconomic backgrounds. However, I grew up with a lot less money, and even if both of us will walk off in disgust over a 25y charger cable that becomes 35y when it's time to pay, I get a lot angrier than her over "quality" prices not equalling "quality" services.

One of the problems with spending time around Dr. M is that you suddenly find yourself noticing the quality of the rock face

Hunger is pretty much the only reason we stopped watching them quarry rock with insufficient safety gear

Nice square blocks, you can do things with rock that cuts that clean...

‡ In addition to the already mentioned electric short in my shower, there was a motion-sensing gate alarm that verbally welcomed every puff of wind with a tinny "欢迎光临恭喜发财," and the combined lack of bathroom vents and S-traps in the drains when installing the wet rooms at the back of our caves meant that the sewer gas build up overnight was on the edge of "pass out and knock your head on the floor" levels of lethal.

² If I recall correctly, this Primal Wear jersey was bought in 2006. I've only recently lost enough weight for it to fit badly, it's a ¾ zip, and the seams are literally rotting.

³ 200 BCE to 200 CE, and the Expert Opinion† is that "stuff like this is super common around these parts"

† Dr. M

⁴ Complete with the same half moons on their fingernails

⁵ It's not only a good steady source of energy, it ensures that I have a crap while I've still got Known Quality toilets.

⁶ Bonus points for the touring cyclists being foreigners but even when it's not foreigners, the out of the way places I like to go will still tell me† about the time five years ago that they got some folks through on mountain bikes or the like.

As the Yellow is not a navigable body of water, we're a little confused

However, our desire to be "not confused" lost out to our desire to "not climb up bluffs"

† Sometimes, they'll even manage—without the slightest degree of awareness that I'm me—tell me about me.

⁷ It's possible, even likely, that the livestreamers were locals themselves, but they were younger and we're therefore held to a different standard of behavior.

⁸ For some reason though, even though the part of the village where we first saw them set up was about a kilometer (10 minute walk versus our 3 minutes biking?) from the area with the food and stuff, they decided to follow us.

Our road has acquired traffic. We are not happy.

⁹ Glory to the Roadbuilders!

¹⁰ With no obvious reason for why she picked me instead of Dr. M as the two of us took our bikes down the ramps to the left and right of the stairs, the Front Desk lady (who may have weighed as much as my bike) started by trying to be helpful with me. Then, after she had already acknowledged my warning and had mostly moved out of the way, I thought to show her what could have happened and pretended to wobble like someone losing control... at which point, I promptly tripped over my own feet and dropped the bike on myself.

Today's ride: 42 km (26 miles)
Total: 988 km (614 miles)

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