D26: 定州 → 正定

October 21, 2024

Am I aware that "no photos" is born from "no flash"? Yes. Did I sneak photos of this temple with my film SLR in 2003? Yes. Were there dozens of people taking pictures with their phones? Again, yes. However.... the sign is right there and—unlike the museum—they didn't ask anyone for permission.

Because it has such a big bathhouse on the first and second floors with such a huge boiler, the hotel rooms in last night's hotel don't even have proper showers installed, let alone hot water heaters.

I am, after the fact, to vaguely understand that the long padded benches in the locker room are actually the cheapest possible overnight accommodation you can get in northern China; and, that I probably could have gone downstairs after we finished filming at 11:30, but the public areas sounded like they had gone silent. With this being only my third ever time staying in a bathhouse¹, I didn't really know what the protocol is and decided against it.

Except for the whole part where I don't want to bother with the additional editing work that would come with having one of these, these are really cool

The physical toll of the preceding day's very nearly 100km plus the mental toll of "just act natural" for the same action I'd already repeated twenty times also meant that—after I pushed the furniture back to its original locations—I just didn't have the spoons to do anything other than a shockingly cold sponge bath of the stinky bits and a crawl into bed.

So, of course, within 15 minutes of my going unconscious, a rightfully hysterical someone who needed comforting called me.

As a result, come far too early o'clock this morning, I was a shambling zombie when I went downstairs to show the film crew that their brilliant idea of me disassembling my bike and putting it in their rental car (that had barely been able to fit four people plus the not yet unloaded portion of camera equipment on the way to dinner) wasn't going to work².

You don't have to be very good at Tetris to realize the bicycle isn't going to fit in this car.

I believe an "I told you so" is in order

I was still a shambling zombie during the discussion over why us going to the bus station and filming the perfectly normal bike touring experience of me getting my bike onto a passenger coach didn't fit their vision of telling a story about the people I interact with when bike touring in rural China, and how my going to the next town with interesting things should be done via renting a Huolala cargo vehicle instead.

Also, and you have to understand that I was sleepily asking if we could stop talking about my pressing "order" on the app as a way of saving time and let me press "order" on the app already, and that I was not asking to be reimbursed for the truck, if entry tickets into paid tourist attractions and overly wasteful lunches could be expensed alongside petty cash items like drinks from a convenience store, the only reason for them to proactively volunteer "we can't pay the cost of the truck you need to rent because we don't like any of the other options³ caused by our own lack of planning" is because "we don't think our paying for the truck is important enough to do the paperwork."

Good thing I had a helmet mount available for them to use

Good thing I had a headtube mount available for them to use

As previous attempts have always been places that either don't have the service or where another option presents itself before a truck does, the drive to Zhengding was my first time actually taking a Huolala. I was warm and comfortable and sleepy enough that I don't remember any of the conversation with the driver, but I remember that there was a conversation and that we both seemed to enjoy it.

Historical reasons related to the late 19th century development of Shijiazhuang as a major train hub with all kinds of manufacturing pushed Zhengding's cité into a sufficiently unimportant role that a huge amount of historic architecture survived both early 20th century redevelopment and the mid 20th century deprivations of the Red Guards.

So, separate from it being in a really convenient location for any trip that starts or ends in Beijing—with at least three visits in 2003, a visit in 2005, a visit in 2012, one in 2018, and one in 2022—I've intentionally come here more than almost any other place in China I haven't lived.

Arriving after a bathroom stop at the first gas station off the expressway, I first visited the restored section of City Walls at the south side of the cité then the mostly unrestored west gate and partial enceinte.

Once this was done, I went into the cité, bought a bottle of water from a convenience store, and made coffee on a sunny bit of sidewalk which I was repeatedly reminded wasn't as photogenic as any of the not yet dry and not sunny places⁴ they thought I ought to make coffee.

I thought this was plenty photogenic as a coffee making location

Caffeination achieved, we proceeded to Longxing Temple. A national 4A tourist spot that has been a recognized national heritage site since 1961⁵, this place would have been pretty cool no matter what. Coming back with fuzzy memories of photographs long lost and with eyes that know a lot more about art and architecture than they did when I was here in 2003, however, made it extra cool.

One of my Core Memories from that 2003 visit was being weirded out by seeing a staff member casually taking fruit off the altar and snacking on it. Merit is achieved by giving offerings and—outside of the small temples where offerings are frequently left so long that they rot—no one actually thinks that they aren't getting eaten by someone; but such open taking of the offerings is as unusual at a touristified Chinese temple as the huge number of banners and statues and recent construction scattered around the Qianfodong Dr. M and I visited our first morning in Shaanxi.

Clearing the altar of offerings which are being sorted at the altar into "currently edible" and "to discard" bags

Two headed Bodhisattva that's been damaged by centuries of supplicants reaching out to touch the hand

The only statue that had a cash offering

With both an unusually active and allowed practice of leaving offerings of fruit, flowers, mantou, and wrapped grain snacks (but not candy, cash, banners, statuettes, or tokens⁶) and food on the altars being treated as food by security guards, docents, tour guides, apparent pilgrim types, obvious tourist types, and workmen, Longxing's peculiar in that regard micro culture has not changed in the slightest. In total, I would guess I saw between two and three dozen people either actively grazing off of the altars or in the process of snacking on something that was clearly recently retrieved from an altar. I even ate a banana⁷.

Probably one of the most magical moments during the visit to Longxing was having a "don't touch the relics" security guard tap me on the shoulder not for the expected "excuse me Ma'am, you are leaning way too far over the barrier to look at the Ming Dynasty animal powered prayer wheel" but to say "I saw you looking at the kids feeding birds on your way in, have some crackers to feed the flock" and then being surrounded by pigeons so brave and so tamely used to humans that they were willing to eat from my hand.

Described as a "rotating library," I'm pretty sure this is a giant prayer wheel

This magic was tempered, however, by the wonderful folks from [national media outlet] and their insistence that other people at the temple⁸ stay out of their shots. They mostly didn't harass the supplicants who were actively in the process of praying⁹ but no one else was off limits; and, as the target of a lot more dirty looks than I got at the museum, it was obvious that—even if no one was saying anything out loud—an awful lot of people were unhappy with them.

After we finally broke for lunch (at 2:30), I had about a twenty minute ride to the riverside and then a lot of riding back and forth along the river road with an Insta360 in various locations, a GoPro in various locations, a drone, and the main camera either on a tripod or handheld.

The ability to read Chinese didn't help with the atrocious level of information on the signs about these Ming Dynasty murals

I really ought to remember who Birdman is by now.

Then, because neither the previous night's teeth chattering chill nor my morning wearing of every piece of clothing I was aware I had¹⁰ didn't directly concern their personal well-being, we had to go to someplace countryside-ish that they hoped¹¹ would be a good spot to act out my getting a flat tire.

Which, forgetting how bad an idea my totally not at all superstitious self considers "tempting the Road Gods with a pretend flat tire," also required that I temporarily lose control of my bike because, even if no flat tire would ever cause that to happen, a slow speed loss of control and a crash¹² would look good telling a story.

Although the English translation is terrible, the Chinese is also supremely uninformative

I remember being able to go up on the balconies (which, from the signage, look to have only been closed in the past few years)

Finally, with the sun creeping ever closer to the horizon, all my known layers and full fingered gloves back on, and my getting ever more vocally worried about us being out after darkness stole the last of the day's warmth, I got enough spine to insist that filming stop for the day and that we go to the nearest hotel.

A nationwide chain with some of the loveliest squishy beds, I don't know what was wrong with it that—after declaring my room too small for convenient filming—they decided to stay elsewhere but even if they hadn't fucked off to some other location without inviting me to join them for dinner, I was close enough to hypothermic by that point that all I wanted was a long hot shower, a hot glass of sour plum drink, and a bowl of hot oatmeal.

If it weren't on a slope, I'd say it's a game board

¹ Once in 2012 in the private rooms of a place in Dawangdian, Baoding (about 120km away from here), once in 2018 in a place in Shanxi that looked so much like a normal hotel I didn't even realize it was a bathhouse until I was checking out in the morning, and here.

² With a few days from "when they decided to film me" to "actually filming me," Xinhua was able to figure out that "renting a car big enough to fit a bicycle" was a key part of filming something about someone who always has a bicycle with her.

It's been almost ten weeks since these people first called me about doing something specifically on the topic of my bike touring. Meeting me in Dingzhou was the fourth possible filming location to be tentatively set. Other than the obvious "not caring about anyone else" attitude which they constantly display, they have no excuse for the size of the car they rented.

Setting up the 360° and the GoPro for me to ride somewhere

³ Options which included my biking to the next location (without having any guaranteed fabulous sights) or my taking a bus at one quarter the cost† and arriving 30 minutes later than I would have with the truck‡.

† Not that, at 120y, it cost very much

‡ The biggest reason for me to take the truck was because of how much time it would save. From the perspective of the "on screen talent" watching them discuss what could and could not be done while the morning was still too cold for doing, absolutely no time was saved.

Why yes, I do want you to put some kind of spacer between your metal clamp and my handlebars without me having to point out that you've already nicked the metal

⁴ This was people in heavy fall coats, flannel shirts, trousers, and longjohns both telling me every single piece of clothing they knew about as being with me didn't look warm enough (because it wasn't) and telling me to go sit on frosty grass in damp shadows because it was "more photogenic."

⁵ I believe 1961 was the first batch of National Heritage Sites to be listed after the initial Antiquities Census.

⁶ Outside of Approved Token and Ribbon Leaving Areas

You mean to tell me that your big fluffy coats and long pants over longjohns aren't enough to keep you warm?

Three jerseys, a thermal vest, a windbreaker, and a thermal muff slide against each other in ways that create interference on the mic

⁷ I couldn't bring myself to just take something off of one of the Big Altars but this was a very small shrine in front of a Song Dynasty tomb that had been moved here after an archeological dig in the late 50s, it was gone on 2pm, it had been six hours since my "no thank you, I don't usually eat breakfast," they hadn't offered me any of their candy, and I had no idea if or when lunch was going to be.

⁸ People who had paid the same entry fee as us, and who had no way of knowing that they were Important Professionals

Setting things up for the twelve times my GPS tracker shows me riding through the West Gate

⁹ They also didn't ask† any of them if they minded being on camera

† It's kind of funny/sad how many of the "why does this resonate with people" or "why are people always saying this" statements that are regular occurrences in my comments section have turned out to be descriptions of the film crew's shitty behavior.

¹⁰ It turns out that there were two pieces of really warm base layer I had forgotten about which is my fault, but lest there be any doubt that they knew how cold I was, we'd actually had a "don't do that, it won't look good" discussion when my face got so frozen I tried to put on the N95 that's still hanging around in a side pocket†

† Along with an almost certainly expired C19 test

¹¹ In this particular case, I'm not going to fault them for not being able to correctly guess from Maps what the area would look like.

View of a collapsed portion of the west enceinte and a public phone charging point

¹² I wasn't doing a good enough job at pretending to lose control, so one of the videographers put on my helmet and windbreaker and pretended to be me losing control. I was amused enough to take a picture of this Unfortunately, when I confronted him the next day about damaging the purple Coffee Kit Bag one of my fans custom-made for me last year, and he denied it, I didn't realize I had this picture.

Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 1,644 km (1,021 miles)

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