D20: 内丘 → 鸡泽

June 22, 2022

I am back on the North China Plain and, after a substantial amount of deliberation and research with Maps, have decided to simply cut the whole part of my plan where I was to duck into Shanxi and visit some smaller grottoes, a particular "of interest to me" tunnel, and a bit of Great Wall before coming back into Hebei and heading south.

There's just no guarantee that if I go west again and climb back off the flat and out of the heat that I'll find open lodging that's willing to take me. Most of the towns only show 3 or 4 hotels, none of them are pre-bookable online, and with the spacing between towns being 15km or more, it's just not worth the risk.

I eagerly await an advertisement weirder than bulk kitty litter supplies

A large "no advertising here" next to an advertisement and the topic of my fourth 100,000 view video

We are entering "Premature Ejaculation" cure territory

Graffiti about Jiang Zemin (like having graffiti about Bill Clinton)

Your daily Hebei anti bed wetting advertisement

I originally set my destination as Nanhe District what was only recently still Nanhe County but has now been politically absorbed by the city of Xingtai. Then, as the heat breaks with deliciously cooling rains that are never actually heavy enough to be uncomfortable, I revise my destination another 20km down the road in Jize.

Except that it's 20km with the shortcut the GPS wants to take me on through muddy fields that possibly still have roadblocks up to keep people from avoiding the Covid Checkpoints, and I get kind of lost trying to find my way back to the main road, and then when I'm on the main road I'm actually 15km from the city rather than the 5km by the route the GPS wants me to take.

I have a much better copy of this concept in my 2012 propaganda collection

The presence of this image dates this village's tile mosaics to within the past 5 years

Also, it's now past sunset and it's started to pour.

I now know that my battery powered headlight is actually better than my dynamo ever was when I was carrying luggage. However, I've also determined that my mounting location and mounting materials¹ cause it to be unfortunately prone to deciding, when I most need to avoid rougher terrain, that now is the time to point anywhere but the ground.

I believe the phrase "drowned rat" would be an acceptable description of me when I showed up at the Checkpoint. Following the instructions on the very large sign that says everyone without a 48 hour validity NAT must be tested, I go over to the EZ-Up pavilion and the table where you show your codes and get entered in the system before being swabbed and the officer on duty refuses.

If I'd realized the finials dated it to the late 50s, I would have made a video

My name—with its decided lack of Chinese characters—is far too complicated to figure out how to enter and besides, I'm still within the validity period of the test I took in Shijiazhuang.

Except that I'm not within the validity period. Once every seven days is the community testing rule for people who are staying put. I am not staying put. I have just crossed borders from one 市² to another and for this 市 that explicitly means that I need to have a 48 hour validity test to legally do anything like enter a mall or stay in a hotel.

It will turn out that the hotel that I pick chooses to accept my photo of "this is the guy who refused to give me a swab" as proof enough that I'm following protocol, but—by doing this—it means they aren't following protocol. It also means that when the police come by in the morning to ask after me, the hotel 'helpfully' decides to lie on my behalf and tell them that even though I had registered myself on the computer (thus allowing the police to know I was there), I had gotten angry and driven off in my car when they insisted that I show a 48 hour test.

I find this out because, after initially waking up with sunrise and intentionally putting myself back to sleep because I ache all over, I am awoken by a frantic woman bursting into my room to tell me "be very quiet and don't answer the door if anyone knocks".

Given that my mud covered bicycle was still in the lobby and that just about every single piece of paperwork that has ever been generated on me in relationship to the Chinese police³ will have mentioned in it somewhere "while riding her bike", the story the hotel has told the police is as full of plot holes as any of the recent Potterverse films and their further decision to carefully delete all the surveillance video that shows me is practically a guarantee that if anyone so much as scratches at the surface of their tale, they are going to be in deep fucking doodoo.

I'm in a region with mostly locked up shrines, so this was a surprise

In any case, although I don't actually intend to honor this promise if push comes to shove, I agree not to answer the phone when the police call me⁴ and promise not to go out of my way to let anyone know where I slept.

¹ You may or may not remember that the shim material used to make my front rack thick enough for a poorly designed handlebar mount is a combination of bandaids from my first aid kit and one of the cheap unopened condoms that often comes with a Chinese hotel room.

² In this case a 市 is the geopolitical boundary set one smaller than a province.

Nation → Province (Autonomous Region, or Municipality Directly Under the Administration of the Central Government) → 市 in the sense that does not mean city → County (or District) → Town (or Township) → Village (or Neighborhood)

³ I don't think any of my Haikou stories involving the police feature a bicycle but the one time I got detained by the military ....

⁴ Thinking on it later, as I'm writing this, I realize .... I didn't give the hotel my phone number and, given that phone books aren't a thing here, I've got no idea as to what channel the police used to get it.

On the other hand, given that police in this province have previously called my employer (me) without me giving out the number one had for 18 years, it can't be that hard for them.

If you squint, you can see the fence closing off this "road"

Today's ride: 86 km (53 miles)
Total: 1,187 km (737 miles)

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