D23: 雄安新区 → 高阳

October 17, 2024

Why does no one ever do a sound check before these things?

I'm pretty sure I breakfast on oatmeal in the room. Enough days have gone by that I don't actually remember for certain. In any case, I've stayed at enough hotels in this price bracket to know that anything they have available to eat downstairs isn't going to be anything I want to eat.

Considering how happy I am to eat noodles and a fried egg from the sketchiest of market stalls, it seems counterintuitive that even the second-tier five-star international hotels I've been staying at more and more often as part of media work don't have breakfasts that I want to eat. However, as anyone who works in hospitality will tell you, although buffets provide an apparent cornucopia of options (and associated cornucopia of wasted food), they are used by large hotels because they are one of the cheapest possible ways to make and serve food.

No matter how ugly the kitchen is at a market stall, or how blackened the wok is with smoke and grease, the egg that was fried to order 35 seconds ago is going to taste better than the one that was made ten minutes ago by someone who is frying twenty eggs at once using those cute little heart-shaped "perfect sunny side up egg" thingyhoojers. It won't be swimming in grease; it won't be dry; the bits that are supposed to be crispy will be crispy; and the bits that are supposed to be runny will be runny. This is just a basic fact of life.

Not wanting never very good sliced white bread that's been gently warmed by something pretending to be a toaster (and that may or may not have the option of being accompanied by packets of jam or low-quality butter), I find that the chafing trays full of fried noodles which once had some chopped meat waved in their general direction also appeal to me about as much as the slicced seasonal fruit or the hot milk made with half-strength reconstituted milk powder.

So close, so beautiful, come spend the weekend in Hebei!

Contrast this with the known quality of oatmeal and flavor d'jour (which, this year, has almost entirely been milk powder and raisins, instead of anything fancy) that I've got in my panniers and it's easy to understand why, if I ate breakfast at all, I ate it in my room.

Heading downstairs, I'm met by a somewhat chaotic scene that's about 85% high school students who probably have no experience traveling in large groups and 15% adults who have embraced the mantra of "when in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."

It's immediately apparent to me and the bus driver that there's no way in hell my bike is going to be fitting in the under bus luggage compartment. If this had been looking like an event that I really, really wanted to go to, or if anyone other than the woman who had tried so hard to guilt me into sharing a room with her the night before hadn't been the first person to say to the bus driver "it's fine, she can put the bike in the aisle," I might have tried to put the bike in the aisle of the bus.

As it is, although I am uncertain how firm the traffic police are on the "no mixing cargo with passengers" rules or if bicycles even count as cargo, the bus driver and I exchanged silent glances that showed that—even with only having met him a few minutes before—she'd also managed to do something to get under his skin and we both blamed "regulations" for why this was absolutely something that simply couldn't be done¹.

This propaganda poster has an illustration of a propaganda poster

I still joined the event for the morning's activities including a number of episodes of Standing In Front of Things Being Photographed, a Tree Planting, a Display of Incredible Skills related to the event, a Display of Incredible Skills with no relationship to the event, and some displays of decidedly not incredible skills.

If I was in Hainan on a similar bus heading to a similar selection of Places and Things I Don't Find Interesting, I would probably be more proactive about trying to correct or educate the people on the bus who were making snarky comments, but the nominal amount that I cared (which wasn't much in the first place) was highly discounted by the fact that this would mean talking to teenagers.

Steep road ahead, North China Plain edition

One of the things anyone going on a junket has to realize is that the other people you meet at the event is the reward for attending all the frustrating and cringeworthy stuff that makes the organizers happy.

This is why, even when there's no chance of us going anywhere that's new² for me³, I still go on the trips in Hainan and get photographed "having a good time."

But, no matter how interesting the brain games club they belong to is, I don't need or want or have any interest in networking with high school students from California or their teachers. I've also been put in the awkward position of the manager⁴ of the person who invited me along having decided for some very complicated reason that their boss should be told that she is the person who invited me and it's just a totally random coincidence that I happened to discover after the fact that she's coworkers with someone I've known for 20 years.

I assume they are local mascots of some kind

Knowing that I'm going to be leaving shortly after lunch, I manage to make it all the way through the Opening Ceremony without telegraphing to the world that I Do Not Want To Be Here. However, this is primarily the case because someone sent me work that allowed me to both ignore the ceremony and the snarky comments the high school students (who have not yet learned to feign polite interest) were making⁵.

Going our separate ways after the meal, I am completely unsurprised to discover that a place nowhere near anything and named "XYZ New Area" has all the charm of suburban Shenzhen. The bike paths are reasonably well maintained though, and were built with a good buffer zone between them and the car road so I'm able to get lots of distance at a very good pace.

Roughly once a kilometer, the bike path would do this for no apparent⁶ reason

This is good because tomorrow's weather forecast calls for cold rain and I really want to get down to the interesting places where I know what's cool before the TV crew arrives.

¹ Given how often I grouse about hotels blaming their not wanting the hassle of checking a foreigner in on nonexistent special regulations, I am absolutely 110% aware that I'm being a hypocrite. But, I like, really really realllllly didn't want to.

² Oh look, it's another Long Table Banquet in Maona Village, again.

³ Being allowed to stand on the tracks and watch the train get disassembled to be put on the train ferry is worth at least three more visits to Binlanggu and Monkey Island.

Someone spent the Public Art budget at 798

⁴ Yes, the same woman who tried to guilt me into sharing a hotel room with her

⁵ Didn't help that these comments were all either things I agreed with them on or things that would have required a twenty minute lecture to correct

⁶ Someone in the WeChat group suggested it might be caused by a failure to put in expansion joints

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,485 km (922 miles)

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