D20: 神州 → 长丰

February 6, 2025

First (2023) and second (2025) times across the bridge and both times there's someone on a pedal assist bike just ahead of me

With the possible exception of the parts of my 2008 Tour where I did my best to draw a straight line across any given provincial map and then figure out how best to achieve that line using only the green and brown labeled roads, I have never been the greatest at achieving the concept of "shortest distance between two points."

And, while it is true that I mostly didn't go haring off on complicated Adventures on that first Big Tour, I did once find myself going southwest for about 300km while nominally going from Haikou (on far southern China) to Beijing (in the northwest), so—even then—my navigation skills were not exactly what you would call "optimized for speed."

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED, First hotel room that was renovated to add a bathroom

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED, first giraffe statue of the Tour

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED, first dragon dancers of the Tour¹

Cycling infrastructure designed by non cyclists and, ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED, a "steep slope, walk your bike downhill" sign.

Starting from 2012, adding preTour research material to the scope of planning took a sledgehammer to what little A to B to C order there had previously been.

However, even in terms of my intentionally trying to take the least efficient route around the island, today's gratuitous detour was gratuitous in the extreme.

The problem isn't so much in tonight's potential sleeping points as it is in tomorrow's and the day after that's. I want things to line up so that I have a consistent, reasonable number of kilometers per day, that my afternoons segue into deciding "do I do 10km more or do I do 20?" and that I can book everything online without having to call in advance².

It would seem that this village is named "English"

I find it interesting that the local government feels the need to post Dire Warnings outside a cement plant that Though Shalt Not use ocean sand

Speaking of interesting signs, "telecommunications poles are not to be used to string wires for cable TV" is a new one for me

Cause even though I don't have the craziness of the C19 years where booking in advance was one of the only ways I knew to be righteous when also being a right bitch to everyone who tried to tell me "no," there are still risks involved with showing up on the edge of sunset to a town that has five hotel rooms in total³.

I'm mostly on the Coastal Tourism Highway. There's a brief section after Dong'ao Town (where I shopped at Yummy Market and lunched on Tastien) that isn't, but it's also shorter than the Official Road so—since GPS aren't good at "give me the scenic route"—there's still some bicycle traffic, just not as much.

Why? "No ocean swimming during the Dragonboat Festival period"

Are you a numpty who drove your car out on to the beach and got stuck? Call this number for help.

Details obscured by modern advertisements. Plaque in Dong'ao Town. GLORY TO THE ROADBUILDERS

I was intrigued by the phrasing differentiating "rice for animal feed" and "rice for people" at this general store

In order to get a picture of a specific not actually very funny sign, I'll also dip off the scenic road onto the original road once I'm on the skinny little peninsula that I ought to remember the name of. However, shortly after this, I'll suddenly realize that the Coastal Tourism Highway is the horrible annoying construction that I ran into two years ago during the Tour I didn't write about, and now I have to go experience it being all smooth and glorious with a decided lack of gravel or pain⁴.

Between the two, while the scenery on the new road has the old road beat all to pieces, I think the old road, with its houses and shops, is more visually interesting.

Totoro decorated guesthouse on the old road

Every time I pass this still abandoned building left over from the mid 90s property market crash, it's a little less unfinished

Located someplace that very likely doesn't have wild animals, I'm wondering if this "don't strike wild animals and migratory birds" sign is a tongue in cheek comment on the "uncivilized beasts" (aka winter snowbirds)

Then I cross the bridge where there was a ferry that I think I only ever took twice. Once with the Shandong Four⁵ in 2008, and again on some other occasion where I'm remembering that this uber annoying twat⁶ called and was annoying at me while I was sitting at the overlook just after the Dahuajiao Pass. But I can't remember what year that was.

In He'le Town on the other side of the bay, I head towards an interesting looking temple on the point of the cape but the last hundred meters would involve pushing my bike through the sand and then getting all the sand out of my shoes, so I eat the leftovers from lunch and turn back towards Wanning by way of Hou'an where I wasn't hungry enough to get a bowl of the noodles named after the town.

Temple carved into the boulders at the end, it's only about 100m with no pavement, but that's about 90m too much

This is a very pleasant ride with shophouses and old schools, martyr's graves, and a twenty-minute phone call from the police station in Sanya not exactly apologizing but not "not apologizing" either. I don't necessarily know that anything I've said or done will change anything and I'm certainly not going to be staying in that price range in that area until next year, but at least they know that there are people who give enough of a fuck to keep following up until they at least give a semblance of a reasonable answer.

Finish stocking up my food pannier at the first Super Ming I come to in Wanning, fail to find the location of the old central coach station to see if I can find the hotel I stayed at in 2005, 2008, and 2009, and bike out to the edge of the streetlights and the hotel which it turns out I stayed at on last year's Round the Island.

Combined Yummy Market and Super Ming haul, this was about 115 yuan in total

¹ This one only counts as a "nearly every Tour" occurrence if it's expanded to also include lions, because the two person lions are much more likely than a 40 person dragon to just show up

² I can count on the fingers of one hand the times a "called to check availability" hotel that was told "I'm bicycling" was thoughtful enough to call me back to check if I was okay and was still coming.

³ The 2018 Tale of the lovely cops in rural Li County who rescued me from walking any farther in the pitch black without a working headlight starts with me deciding to eat dinner before checking in at the only hotel in town and the last room of five going while I was eating.

Martyr's Grave with a fairly new stone (erected by the government) blocking the original stone (probably erected by family)

⁴ In addition to roadworks and shitty gray skies, that was also roughly day three or four of losing contact with Presumably Not Dead Friend†

† I feel like I've already mentioned PNDF once this journal, but in case I haven't, he was someone I hadn't known for very long and wasn't super close with. We'd been out on all of one date and were generally vibing in the direction of friendship. Day one of the 2023 Tour, after specifically asking me to "send him lots of updates from the road" because he was bored out of his skull in the cardiac ward while recovering from Covid-related heart complications, he then stopped responding to me mid-conversation; and never responded or picked up his phone ever again. However, his phone stayed turned on, and—some months later—he periodically started showing as "currently online" on Douyin.

Out of the literally dozens of variants I have of this retro-futurist mural, this is the only one I've seen that doesn't have a specific quote⁷ by Deng Xiaoping

Also a common primary school motif, also with the wrong quote

I've entered "schools built by community donation" territory

Stylistic choice of traditional characters, or the library was donated by someone from Hong Kong? I wonder which.

⁵ I had met Boss Tong +one of the Four) while riding somewhere, possibly even their home province of Shandong. He called to let me know him and his buddies were about to do a Round the Island, and—upon finding out about their total lack of maps—I invited myself along as a guide for as long as it was fun.

⁶ A guy I met in my first month in Hainan when he stopped to practice English at me† and tell me I shouldn't take photos of "non beautiful" things like a wild chrysanthemum, but should instead focus on beautiful things like the orderly hedges planted by Official Landscapers.

Last year, this public toilet and parking lot area had already been taken over as a campsite by the uncivilized RV crowd. I'm glad to see it's been cleaned up.

Fewer births and more excellent ones is good, best to have only one child

Guanyin in her aspect as a protector of sailors

† I had such poor Chinese at the time that I was unfortunately grateful for someone I could communicate with and it took years before I realized that no amount of improving my language skills was ever going to fix his personality

⁷ From a speech marking the establishment of a very important school in 1983, "Education should face modernity, face the world, and face the future."

He made sure to warn me about the hills up ahead

That pretty bridge is the Coastal Scenic Highway.

Original, now blocked off, dangerous bridge

I would not want to drive anything across this bridge

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 1,363 km (846 miles)

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