Up and over a mountain. It's not a tall mountain, it's on a National Road, and I've been biking now for more than two months, so I really have no excuse for why I get off and walk parts of it. I'm feeling fatigued. 

To add insult to injury, the muscles that are worst off are the ones that don't get all the biking exercise. They're affecting the biking muscles in ways that lead to my decideding to walk but they're also more tired when walking than they are when riding.

Once the mountain is done though, although I'll sporadically have bits of up (some of which I'll walk) for the rest of the day, it's almost entirely down or flat.

Other than just generally being the kind of gosh darn pretty that doesn't photograph well from my phone (my camera strap still unfixed, the camera has been in the left rear pannier long enough for the battery in it to go flat), there isn't a whole lot of exciting or interesting about today and that's not just because I'm almost two weeks late on writing about it.

The town of Huanggang has an Old Street where nothing is old except for a single building that I and an expert in Shanghai who is in my WeChat group both have a high degree of confidence in dating to the 1930s but which much of the peanut gallery in the Douyin comments section inform us must be the 60s or the 80s or 1971.

The woodstrip and plaster walls, wooden stairs, and traditional characters are pretty firm indicators, however, for this not being particularly new. The bit that interests me the most is the vestiges of a ripped down cardboard placard where the only remaining character visible is a 万 for 万岁. Most likely a "May Chairman Mao Live Forever", the part I find intriguing isn't that someone ripped it down but—in the 46 years since he died—no one pulled down the last inch or two still sticking out from the wall.

I've noticed over the years that China isn't real big on cleaning away old stuff. Unless I'm talking out my ass with my non-understanding of eastern philosophy, there's a bit of Buddhist fatalism going on but—whatever the case may be—from Christmas decorations left up until November (when you replace them with new Christmas decorations) to not actually getting rid of that propaganda banner, once it's up, it's left up...for decades.

China also has a real 'Ship of Theseus' idea regarding Ancient Stuff. A temple that was built last week in the same location as where a temple had always been since antiquity is an Ancient Temple. Even if there is nothing old about it and the "ye olde" stuff isn't even trying very hard, it's still Ancient.

So, while I'm creaming myself over how awesome it is to find something that's actually 70 years old (particularly if it's ephemera), your average Chinese person is going "yeah but there's a 2,000 year old thing over here that doesn't look like shit" because my discovery is something forgotten and dust covered and the not even 2 year old thing they're pointing at is cleanly and professionally maintained.

In any case, although it's awfully pretty scenery, there isn't much 'old' stuff on the road today and, once I'm out of the mountains, it's a relatively major road with even less to see. 

Pointed at a hotel near an old street I've found on Maps, I wear myself out riding too fast chasing a non-existent timer, end up at someplace that wasn't marked because 'oh look, a hotel¹ next to a restaurant' and then—the next day—completely forget to actually check out the reason I marked this town.

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¹ Still on edge about the previous night's nastiness towards a perceived Uyghur, I stand on the street corner and call the phone number on the hotel's sign only to have the hotel owner look at his ringing phone, look at me, and walk over to me to ask if I'm the one calling about a room.