D12: 公坡 → 文城

February 19, 2024

He was so pleased that I was not only willing to sit at his table, but also let him take a picture with me

Woken up at 6am by the sounds of someone else's alarm going off in another room, if I had had the room I was supposed to have it is entirely possible that I could have gone back to sleep. However, the requirement to achieve full consciousness and put clothing on in order to go downstairs and use the bathroom basically guaranteed that I was staying awake.

Spent a bit of time getting the photos for yesterday's entry in place, reading the newest on the Hugo controversy¹, and making sure that everything² was fully charged³.

I am getting entirely too good at the Bridge Age Guessing Game. (Assumed mid-80s before I even crossed it, and it was 1985)

A scenic rest area without either scenery or restrooms

New sluicegate and bridge and old sluicegate and bridge

There wasn't any room in the room for food or coffee so I go down the street to the corner laobacha where the hungries from yesterday's lack of food catch up to me in the form of my adding two steamers of dim sum to my morning oatmeal⁴ and eating all my bananas. Along with coffee and them charging me a hot water fee for "bringing my own tea" (i.e., the oatmeal), it comes to 12y. Not that it really matters that—at 9y for milk tea and a bun—that the laobacha in Longqiao overcharged me, but this pretty much confirms it.

The GPS offers me a winding back road route to the Soong Family Ancestral Residence and I'm glad I took it. Not because I didn't get to the visit the Residence on account of them having zero options for safe bicycle parking in an area that is so suffused with bike touring that both last night's hotel and the hotel across the street advertised "24 hot water, wifi, and bicycle parking," but because of the abandoned primary school I passed on my way there.

Breakfast. (Note that the local ties to the ethnic Chinese diaspora are sufficiently strong in terms of outsiders showing up that a small place like this had a fork to give me)

Left to the Soong Family Ancestral Residence

The first of four abandoned schools I'll see today, it's also the best. The huge unexplored (because locked gate) campus with the multiple five and eight storey buildings and the student dorms right before the turn-off to the Residence looked like something that must have a Fascinating Story to tell, but this school had far more than just one story.

Instead, it was a collection of stories. Stories about the Chinese diaspora, the links that they maintained with their home villages even after going abroad, about the value placed on education, on economic development over a period of decades, and of rural electrification.

According to the carved stone plaque recording the Yiqun Primary School Improvement & Reconstruction Project, there were two phases, 1964 and 1984. In 1964, 121 people raised 3,000 bricks and 910y to improve their village school. The largest single donation was 40 yuan; and the guy that gave 3,000 bricks was listed in 12th place, between the 10y and 11y donations. What's more, of the three people who donated 20y in 1964, one of them shows up again in 1984, now with the honorific that's usually translated as "Mr." after his name, along with recording that he gave 1,000y in Chinese currency, and 75,000 in Hong Kong currency.

In 1984, he and the donor who provided HKD 50,000 both got their names on buildings, one to the left of the entrance, the other to the right. "The Obviously The Name of His Mother" Memorial Building, built with funds by [name].

Note the wire hook on the ceiling where they would have hung an oil lantern. This building has never had electricity.

I kind of wonder who Messrs. 鄭心春 and 吴中春 were but neither is a unique enough name to look him up online.

So many layers of once fine building materials

Although the other two abandoned schools are of much more recent origin, and show evidence of probably receiving electrification before they stopped being used as schools, they don't have nearly the degree of fine details like—same as local temples—a painted yellow and burgundy stripe where the ceiling meets the walls, or the eras of different construction materials.

Lunch break at a laobacha in Songliu. Some not very good dumplings, an equally unimpressive bun, and a horrific cup of milky coffee that's actually sweetened condensed with Nescafé. It's about this time that I discover my hotel booking auto timed out for lack of confirmation and I try booking again only to discover, shortly before the turn-off to the secret bridge, that it's still timing out.

False flats, a headwind, and a village where volleyball is important enough that they've built an indoor court

Third booking, in my Chinese name, goes through. Sort of. Around the time I'm discovering that the secret bridge is missing and I'm going to have to backtrack 4km to get to my road, the hotel is realizing that all three bookings had the same phone number and is actively cancelling on me. Which, since there's nothing wrong with my booking, they aren't supposed to be able to do without penalty, but which the OTA let's them do anyways.

I'm not impressed. I'm also not in the mood for fighting on a day where I know someplace else to go that, as my chain is still making the Horrible Noise (though not as much, and only when I'm in the smaller chainrings) I'm going to have to go to anyways. I'd just hoped to be coming that way tomorrow and by way of something other than the Very Boring Road that's the only option since the Bamen Bay Greenways were decommissioned⁶.

And I almost never find myself forced to turn back

It's almost exactly 20km from where I am in Wenjiao to the hotel in downtown Wenchang that I stayed at once last year and twice in 2022 (and which I probably⁷ had coffee at in 2004), so, even if I know that it's under new management⁸, it's definitely less hassle than showing up someplace that's explicitly made it clear they don't want me or my money. Also, by going to the place in the city, I not only know I'll be getting an elevator, I'll also know where to go for a good meal⁹.

So, with that, I change directions, make a booking (that goes through!) and head west to Wenchang.

¹ The guy in charge waited until the last minute to release raw data that was clearly cooked. Since last year's event was held in China, everyone blamed China. Instead, it turns out that the 1) the western concom proactively engaged in censorship (including compiling poorly researched dossiers on authors) because they thought they were complying with Chinese "laws" as requested by another westerner who can't or won't show anything indicating that anyone Chinese so much as asked him to do so, let alone that it was anyone with authority; and 2) the same guy wholesale deleted thousands of Chinese votes because ... um ... Reasons.

No stealing coconuts from the road landscaping

No shoulder but the outside lane is limited to 30kph

² In regular usage, I've got two itty bitty powerbanks, one normal sized powerbank, two phones, and a pair of speakers. Laptop, bike pump, and headlight generally don't get used.

³ Most nights my problem is that I've got enough cables but not enough USB to wall power warts to plug the cables into. In recognition of my being given a substantially cheaper room than I paid for without so much as a by your leave from the owner, I've...ahem..."liberated" three power warts from the box sitting on her desk. After doing that, however, I discovered that my room only had two outlets. (I did not, however, return the warts when I left.)

⁴ Ginger garlic, peanut sauce, and banana

Another abandoned primary school, this one a single storey with pitched rooves from the mid-90s. Looks to have had limited electricity installed.

Generally not as finely built as the first school, it does have some interesting architectural features including these really interesting shuttered windows that originally had no glass, and a second floor with balconies that must have been the principal's office

It's now being used mostly for storing agricultural materials

⁵ Soong Ching-ling

⁶ A linked series of stunningly beautiful farm roads that were connected via a couple of boardwalks and other things that were later on determined to not be acceptable construction within a wetlands conservation area.

⁷ Back when it was one of the poshest places in town, it had a coffee shop on the first floor. That physical location meshes with my Core Memory on why I generally prefer to never go to hotel coffee shops (or posh "looking" things that aren't actually high quality) . However, there are no pictures or other evidence, and the person who was with me at the time doesn't even remember us going to a coffee shop.

I know February isn't over yet but I'm proactively awarding this the Ugliest Mural of the Year

⁸ The place I stayed in Lin'gao on Day 2 told me that the family had consolidated their hotel business and was now renting their Wenchang hotel to someone else.

⁹ While I was blowing their mind over being a repeat customer coming back after a year and they were taking pictures of my bike and me and going on all their social media networks to brag that I liked their food that much, a second foreigner (from the school down the road) walked in.

Memorial Pavilion to some revolutionary I've never heard of

Interesting solution to having your license plate obscured by your bike rack

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 723 km (449 miles)

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