D22: 保国农场 → 毛阳

March 4, 2024

If you really don't care about safety, you can hardwire a kettle

Back in late November or early December of 2008, I ended up joining (and kind of taking over) a Haikou to Sanya ride by four guys from Shandong. One of them had previously met me¹ and had my phone number and our going out to dinner while they were in Haikou was how I found that they had no maps of any kind².

My work at the time was already fully remote³ so, as I knew the island and they seemed like fun, I said I'd join them for a day or two or as long as everyone was having fun. That lasted from Haikou to Longlou, Longlou to Wanning, and a bus from Wanning to Qiongzhong when, after lunch, the guy who initially invited me on the trip, who was getting more and more bothered by how slowly we were going to places that weren't the Correct Stops, and who had instigated our taking the bus to Qiongzhong announced that we would be continuing onwards to Wuzhishan.

Dried apples, dried blueberries, tallow, sweetened condensed milk, and a duck egg

Maogongshan, so named because it theoretically looks like Chairman Mao's nose, wasn't yet a tourist site the last time I passed this way

Now, it is no longer a tourist site (though I expect the improved roads will change that)

Despite the scenery, the mountains are mostly around me rather than something I'm going up and over

"That's 70 very hilly kilometers away," I countered, "with a UCI Cat.1 ranked climb at the end."

"We can stay at the foot of the mountain, in Maoyang," he responded.

"Welp, been nice spending time with y'all, I'm going to catch the bus back to Haikou now."

As one⁴ of the four guys thought to ask why I didn't want to go to Maoyang and then decided to take my advice, I didn't actually end up catching the bus back to Haikou for two more days, when he had to go back in order to catch his flight.

I know they are supposed to be grave goods, and that they are super serious, but they look all the world like llama piñatas

Literally a highway in the sense that this very evenly graded road is rather substantially elevated over the fields (frequently using dirt from the hill cuts)

It has taken an additional 15 years, but I've finally spent the night in Maoyang and, although the hotel I stayed at—the only hotel in Maoyang—probably wasn't open then⁵, 2008 me knew what she was on about by not wanting to go there. It's just that it was that, or do the aforementioned ranked climb, or hitch a ride.

As my crack of noon⁶ habits for leaving hotel rooms would mean doing the mountain in question in the dark⁷ and I've managed well over 1,200 kilometers of what is usually a 700 kilometer trip around the island with only one bus (and that to escape roadworks)—even with having friends who live in the city on the other side of the mountain—I really don't want to cheat.

Less nakedly obvious grading (note how the area off to the side of the road slopes sharply down on one side and sharply up on the other)

It really looks like a church. It's actually a pool hall.

And it seems to have been closed since 2018

Not noticing that there were user uploaded⁸ pictures of the hotel on Amap, and thus not knowing that they included the phone number to call for bookings, I set Tyra to finding out if the hotel was open. With the local police saying yes it was and the knowledge that four wheels over the mountain was always a possibility, I therefore started riding.

Taking the S314 north towards Ledong, I'd skip the city in it's entirety due to some country road that was marked as a "rural tourism route" by the local government. This then put me on the G540 going east.

Seen in two different towns, a building style I've never seen before

Bit of a digression here on route numbers, but S is for "Sheng" and means provincial, while G is for "Guo" and means national. Roads that start with a 1 go to the capital, 2 roads are mostly north/south routes that go to a major location that's not the capital, 3 routes are east/west, 5 are recognized Scenic Routes, and I haven't figured out what the rarely seen but existing 4s or 6s mean yet.

So, by saying I took the S314 to the G540, I was saying I had been on the fourteenth of the provincial-grade east west trunk routes and was switching to the fortieth of the national-grade scenic highways⁹. Although it's not supposed to work this way, the fairly recent regrading and resurfacing of the S314 combined with the G540 merely looking like they're maybe thinking of widening it, actually meant that I got a lower quality road with more traffic.

Why did the chicken (try to) cross the road?

With this county road, you can see the lack of grading as the road follows the contours of the land

Before there was a cut out notch, the road probably went around the outside

Traveling the way I was, both roads were of the more downhill than uphill variety and, even if they lacked specific interesting things, were very pleasantly pastoral. On the G540, if I'd wanted to, I could have gone to a memorial garden related to Wuzhishan's revolutionary forces during the War Against Japanese Aggression and the Chinese Civil War but I've been there before and the only thing even remotely interesting is a roughly preserved piece of graffiti left behind by Xi Zhongxun° sometime in the 80s. As I didn't have a mental script in mind for what to say if I took a video, I decided to keep riding instead.

After checking in the combined hotel and karaoke bar, where they made it pretty clear that their rooms usually weren't rented for the whole evening, I went looking for the restaurant where I ate lunch last March with the Wuzhishan Forestry Bureau, Chinese Boyfriend, and the owner of Hainan's only continental team while tagging along on a trip that was checking out trails for a potential mountain bike training and tourism facility that I haven't heard any mention of since. Couldn't find it and none of the restaurants I could find were even remotely appetizing, so I ended up getting fried noodles from a Shaxian Snacks along with a salty iced passionfruit from the tea shop next door.

Wuzhishan is very, very bike friendly. And, unlike most places in China that are doing the Healthy Green Tourism thing, the cycling facilities were designed by cyclists... So, instead of having fibreglass statues of bicycles alongside useless verging on dangerous bike paths, it has signboards with topo profiles and suggested routes.

A provincial grade epidemic free village, I suppose it's supposed to recognize that the people here are extra super duper hygienic and good about things like mask wearing and disinfecting, but mostly it just means that they don't go out

Then, back to the room, where I'm pleased to say, the singing only continued until 1am.

¹ He was from Jinan so I don't think I met him on the 2008 Tour but I'm honestly not sure where

² One man had Nokia Maps on his phone

³ Both the residence permit granting and sometimes salary paying job and the one where I was making most of my money

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED, First instance of a complete stranger stopping me to give me water

The ongoing tree removal is part of why I think this road is about to be upgraded

In terms of existing traffic, it doesn't really need it. However ... development ... and the recent change from an S3xx to a G5xx now means national road maintenance funds are available

⁴ Not that it's especially relevant to this story, but said guy—the north China general sales manager of a German multinational—later on became the obvious start of a pattern where the only Chinese men that date me for much more than a month are very very rich and completely out of my league in all respects.

⁵ I believe the guys said they stayed in a rough and tumble migrant worker guesthouse. I've asked. They don't remember.

⁶ In my defense, I had breakfast in the room, and journal updating, and some work

Complete with the ever popular Oddly Expensive Thing (in this case, petrified wood) being poorly displayed

But, it was the first place this Tour to have free condoms in the room

⁷ Which I've done, by bike in 2006, and by motorcycle in 2015, and really don't want to do again.

⁸ All coming from someone whose profile picture is a bicycle

⁹ Although the Hainan Coastal Tourism Highway is aggressively advertised and signposted with lots of facilities (including bridges and rest areas) built specifically for it, it is actually a collection of routes and not a single numbered road.

° Xi Jinping's father

Lucid waters and lush green mountains are the real hills of gold and silver

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 1,348 km (837 miles)

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