D25: 永发 → 昆仑农场

February 15, 2025

A very passive aggressive "please pay for the things you take from our store" sign that feels¹ like it would be completely ineffective at stopping anyone who actually wanted to steal

So, now I'm looping back towards the west and a stretch of mountains that, on account of a pretty inconvenient lack of non dead-end roads that go from one place to another place via a third place, I thought I'd never visited up until I start getting little flashes of memory here and there of the second day of a spring 2020 road trip with Unca Marc², Sarah, and this super loud super grating Texan that—on account of Marc refusing to exclude her—made Sarah and me go from "road trips are so awesome, we should persuade friends with drivers' licenses³ to do this more often" to "one and done."

Watermelons as sweet as the blush of first love

As I write this, I realize how incredibly bitchy I sound. I was a middle school social pariah. I know exactly how much it sucks to be the person excluded. I not only wouldn't want to be that person, I also don't want to be the Mean Girl doing that to someone else

To a certain extent, I can even admire Marc—as someone who lived the "expat life⁴" for 30 years before returning to Canada—for sticking to his principles and requiring us to consistently include the Texan in social things. But—and limiting myself to only bitching about things from that road trip—if it wasn't making us get on the road over an hour late cause she hadn't finished packing yet, it was claiming that she needed to bogart the front seat (and all the not very functional air conditioning available in the cheapest rental car) because she gets altitude sickness in the mountains and no amount of "these mountains top out at 350m above sea level" would get her to say maybe she meant "motion sickness" because she had latched on to a new concept and by gum she was going to use it.

The nice thing about China Post versus any of the courier companies is that when a staff member freaks out over my lack of an ID card and attempts to tell me I can't mail stuff, I can yell at him to figure it the fuck out.

Fixing a mistake after the rest of the plaque was already engraved

Only bridge today where I was within a decade of guessing correctly

I think the Texan in question left Hainan in 2021. Maybe 2022. I'm not sure. I know, from the moment she left, she was so unimportant a side character in the Story of My Life that I've not thought about her even once.

And yet, as I pass by places like the highway sign for a mysterious (and apparently non-existent) hot springs tourism site, or the countryside convenience store where we stopped for drinks and smokes⁵, I progress from flashes of vague familiarity to entire scenes, of which some⁶ subsequently lead to cascading waterfalls of remembering episodes with other equally clueless and grating English Teachers⁷ I have known over the years.

I suppose this ticks boxes both for Rural Surrealist Trompe I'oeil and Bad Art

Does anyone else remember when Michael Jordan sued Qiaodan Sports for one dollar over their unauthorized use of his name and likeness?

Chengmai's coffee culture is even more robust than Wanning

Considering that the sky has gone blue again, the generally good paving, the generally pleasant atmosphere, and the generally well graded slopes, this amount of being lost inside my own head would indicate that—for all that I've gone home three times during this trip—I'm starting to hit the saturation point where I've been on the road too long and I need to go back to a normal life.

I'm still having fun to the extent that I'm going to try to finish hitting every one of the island's counties and shi⁸ before returning to Haikou, but I've had enough Amazing Adventures over the years to recognize when the adventure starts to stop being fresh and exciting and begins to be same old same old.

Chengmai County county seat in the distance

Perhaps, if I was traveling between provinces, or the majority of the roads I was taking were completely new to me, but, I've lived on this not very big island for 21 years, there aren't very many bits left that I've never visited and even less of those places are ones that I actually want to visit.

There's some old buildings in Chengmai that I've never seen before because I've always been on different roads, and the plantation town where I spend the night is only familiar in that it was built by HSF, but even with the weird little cultural quirks like how thoroughly coffee culture has permeated this county or the slow but definite shift in vocabulary words on advertising for drone-based agricultural services, I'm not really getting to see anything new to me.

Abandoned primary school with an unfamiliar gate mural that has a quote from a Hong Kong business tycoon

The other side's content⁹ (if not the template) is more familiar

A new copy of my favorite retro futurist cityscape mural and Deng Xiaoping quote

This is usually closer to being a Jetsons-style flying car, however this time it's marked as belonging to the Chinese space agency

Which is how (even if the clock weren't already ticking down on account of my nearly having no roads left that I can ride without painting myself into a corner that forces me to cross an earlier path) I know it's time to get ready to go back to an existence where I have actual choices in what clothing I will wear and which places I will eat.

¹ Feel ineffective. However, I remember enough from psychology and sociology classes that it's probably more effective than a harsh "violators will be prosecuted" type sign.

A warning sign about prohibited pesticides and the promise that crops for market will be tested for compliance

² Often referred to as "Drunk Uncle Marc" or "Drunkle Marc," he was a Quebecois man that first moved to Taiwan in the early 90s, then opened a bar in Nanjing, and finally moved to Hainan around 2009 or so. Although it really shouldn't have been given the mood he had been in since Covid, his decision to finally return to Canada about a year after the borders fully reopened was kind of a surprise to everyone who knew him.

³ I'm not sure of Sarah's reason for not learning how to drive. In my case, I had the bad timing to fall through cracks in relevant rules and now I'm old enough that I wouldn't feel comfortable being behind the wheel of a car.

Drinks stop on the way out from Jinjiang Town (the Chengmai County county seat)

Fresh squeezed passionfruit with sea salt and plenty of ice

Lightly loaded and going fast, he must have stopped somewhere for me to be able to catch up with him after he passed me at the drinks stop

⁴ Marc was an expat not because he was white or from the global north, but because—even after he had been here for decades—he always said he intended to "go home."

⁵ In a very stressful year, I may smoke up to 5 or even 10 cigarettes. Otherwise, I'm a non smoker who—so long as I can wash the smell out of my hair at the end of the day—has no problem being around smokers.

⁶ Like the insistence that entire categories of vegetable were unavailable in China because she hadn't learned to shop anywhere other than Carrefour† and wasn't willing to try showing a picture of the uncooked item to a Chinese coworker with a "can I get this?" and "where?"

On a side quest to an "Ancient Ferry" that's been marked on my Map for quite some time now

The size and slope of the dykes on the other side would indicate that this crossing has been unused for a while

The long unmaintained condition of the docks even moreso

Heading back the way I came, a bicycle with basket panniers

† As someone who found herself standing on the sidewalk mooing at a butcher less than four months after arriving in China, I cannot even begin to describe the extent to which I get really fucking annoyed by the people who refuse to so much as try to step outside the bubble of international chains and easy to use apps.

⁷ "Clueless and grating" is not limited to English Teachers nor are all English Teachers "clueless and grating." However, as the largest single group of international residents†, they often seem to have a monopoly on the term.

"Get an electrician when installing electricity"

The birth control policy will help good fortune come for everyone

† Apologies to everyone I know at China Daily as well as all of my colleagues in Hainan-based media outlets who use China Daily as the linguistic standard, but "being an international resident in China' doesn't make you an expat!

⁸ Especially given that the three different degrees of shi (municipalities such as Haikou, prefectural level municipalities such as Zhanjiang, and municipalities under the direct administration of the central government such as Beijing) are all referred to in the long form as a "municipality," this word works so much better than XYZ City† except for the part where English doesn't use it in names.

† Shi is almost always translated as "city." However, it means "city" in the same way that the word "shoe" means "everything below your knee."

⁹ Good good day day, study study up up

Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,782 km (1,107 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	1
Comment on this entry	Comment	0