D9: 昌江 → 东方

January 18, 2025

Last year's photo of this river crossing was pointed uphill at the interesting office building built on the locks

My smartwatch claims that I got roughly the same number of hours of sleep as I usually do.

It also claims that I fell asleep at about the same time I usually do.

It lies.

That, or the once every 45 seconds BEEP that kept me from actually falling into the blissful unconsciousness of actual sleep wasn't enough of a complete wake up to change my breathing patterns as I lay there in the dark and fumed.

I am exceptionally slow to start the day. Slow even on a "me with breakfast food available in my hotel room" scale of slowness. The very poor night's sleep makes it very easy to push myself back into unconsciousness, and then, when I actually want to get up, I'm logy and having a hard time with complicated multi stage tasks like getting dressed.

In the Requested Shot List the media center gave me, I'm supposed to find a Scenic Overlook and take a rest. However, they're all choked with an unusually large amount of garbage

Chinese New Year travel rush traffic checkpoint ahead

Something about this wall painting makes it seem wrong for Hainan. Must be the seagulls....

I haven't yet lost my newly purchased tripod, and—as one of the goals on the unachievable with my equipment task list sent by the media center is to "have conversations with locals"—I first set up a sequence of me carrying my stuff downstairs, then do a horrible awkward staged conversation with Boss Lin outside his hotel.

Of course, it's only after the camera is off and the tripod stowed that we get a real conversation going, and he tells me about the time in the 80s that he and four of his friends rode from here to Baisha on the yellow dust road, and how one guy got leg cramps while they were pushing their bikes over yesterday's big ridge¹.

Brick construction, can't be more recent than the early 80s

Interesting way of painting something industrial that crosses a Tourism Road

It's okay though. Depending on how this first segment goes, there's a strong possibility of an Insta 360 on my future and a series of professionally edited videos on "Hainan by bicycle" for RedNote and Bilibili² so, even if I didn't already know I'd be back here next year on next year's Round the Island, I might also be back in March or April.

In packing up I realize that I forgot the nicer of my two bidons at the place where I had dinner, so heading back to there in the hopes that they hadn't thrown it out is my first task of the day. Then, re-bidon'd³, I go to a nearby Wallace for lunch⁴ as they have just finished cleaning up and are not willing to dirty the kitchen again for a single customer.

Now, instead of scanning a QR code, the tables have an NFC sticker that opens the menu in AliPay!

The ride from Changjiang to Dongfang is remarkably unexceptional. There's a poorly chosen section of road that's I'm pretty sure has been labeled a part of the Rainforest Road, but if it hasn't, then it's a different "Tourism Road" where they were like "yep, this goes from Awesome A to Awesome B, it's perfect" without considering that it crosses through a still active mining area⁵. There's also a nice bit of pavement which was very definitely dirt when I rode it on my first Chinese New Year Round the Island ride, back in 2006.

But, other than that, and stumbling across a village named "Off With Their Heads" which had shown up in the comments section of my video on Weird Hainan Place Names and which I absolutely hadn't intended to visit, there is both nothing good and nothing bad.

An appropriate village for the Red Queen

It's approaching dark as I get to the very specific temple I want to visit and make video of cause—even with photos—people really don't believe me when I say I once visited a temple that not only had a carved Mao idol, it also had one of his wife Jiang Qing⁶.

Unfortunately, my insistence on being open and respectful when it comes to making videos of things that people might hold important means that, after chewing me out for wearing shoes inside⁷, the Temple Keeper is quite adamant that the spirits here are okay with photos but they don't like video.

If there were ways that I could have persuaded her, they probably would have involved my giving her a few pieces of paper with Mao on them (i.e., hundred yuan notes) and my degree of "wanting to take video" isn't high enough to want to try to pay for a privilege that I might not get even after paying. So, I continue on to Dongfang.

I hate it when a temple doesn't have labels⁹ on the idols

Blue and riding a fish. These are very obvious symbols but they aren't helping me

I've booked a business hotel instead of the 517 I usually stay at, and for all that I think the folks at the Dongfang 517 are lovely, I'm enormously grateful for this decision as none of their rooms (even the private ones) have comfortable beds, and the whole next day will be spent holed up inside with a Very Dodgy Stomach.

¹ Which, I'm amused to note, seems to have only acquired a runaway truck ramp in the past four or five years, after many rounds of regrading and long after there was an expressway for the trucks† to use

A dinner oatmeal featuring corn niblets, the dust flavored peanut protein powder, and some spicy pickle

I sense a road widening in the near future

† Unlike the mainland, Hainan's expressways are free and trucks generally don't take surface roads

² I also want to start posting on international platforms but, even with Shawn's help, that's a lot of work

³ Is that even a word?

⁴ I really meant it when I said it was a late start

⁵ the mines that were operated by the Japanese during the Occupation of Hainan have become a museum, but Changjiang has a lot of valuable mineral resources

⁶ The only redeeming factor I can think of for having the architect of the Cultural Revolution enshrined in a folk temple as a goddess is that it would piss her off.

Does this look like an area which tourists should be getting sent through?

Two years ago, on the Tour I didn't journal, I got stuck down there because people weren't supposed to be using the construction bridge and there was a locked gate on this side

First "Toilet Revolution⁸" PSA of the Tour

⁷ Even when it has carpet, taking shoes off in temples is not a normal thing in Hainan... and I vaguely recall her bitching me out about this two years ago

⁸ Despite it, paradoxically resulting in less† places for me to easily find in the countryside, I am all in favor of the push to get flushies in every home.

† During the outhouse era, it was common for outhouses to be in the front yard, along the road. Which meant I had no problem finding a place to go. Now, however, they're indoors and private

This former post and newspaper kiosk is now a massage parlor

There is a slight chance that my upset stomach actually came from these recently discarded too ripe to go to market cherry tomatoes ... which I filled my pockets with, and which tasted amazing

⁹ Because the written word is so powerful, it is acceptable to have a place for an idol that is just a wooden placard which reads "Place for So and So." The very common habit of including both makes it much easier for me to learn who is whom and what the different iconography means

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 553 km (343 miles)

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