D20: 坑梓 → 惠州

June 11, 2023

Not that it really matters as I lost my silicone mat shortly after I took this photo but I oh so carefully contained all the mess to the mat, and then missed the garbage bin completely when dumping the mess

Today is my unbirthday.

I am 23 years not dead.

This is a state of affairs which—like the May 16, 2018, anniversary of being not in Chinese jail¹—I quite like and wish to continue experiencing.

As unbirthdays go, it's a relatively uneventful one. After a pleasant but uninteresting breakfast, there's a tiny bit of back roads followed by a "well, at least it has a bike lane" truck route for the rest of the day.

On account of poor placement of barriers, I'm not always able to be in the bike lane

The pagoda that I picked as my urban destination in Huizhou eats up an hour spent taking a multi-shot³ video of me looking at the pagoda, but it doesn't actually have anything interesting about it. Built in the middle part of the 19th century, it was so generic of a Pagoda of Learning when it was built that records merely mention which emperor was on the throne when it was built.

I've got fresh access to the Antiquities Atlas (and this time, I'm going to download it instead of using someone else's cloud drive), so I'll be better able to look for "weird and interesting" in the coming days, but this starkly simple false rooms style of five storey octagonal tower looks exactly like every other false rooms style of five storey octagonal tower from that century.

It doesn't even look like there was ever any decoration.

Only barely manages to be interesting because it's old

I pick a random OYO⁴ hotel that makes zero impression on me in terms of check-in or facilities, and with a relatively full tummy from yet another meal at Wallace Chicken (if I order off the loss-leader meal on Douyin⁵, its 29 yuan for a thing of chicken nuggets, a thing of taro balls, two burgers, two drinks, and a chicken wrap) plus the stress of big loud vehicles being near me all day, zonk out pretty much as soon as I finish video editing.

Can you see the character 忠 (loyalty) written on the wall?

I'm pretty sure the pro-Mao stuff has been vandalized

Likely a People's Commune at some point in it's history, it was something else before that

Nice little Greco-Roman archway probably from the 1920s

Part of the same complex, it's hard to tell if the second floor rotted out or burnt out

¹ After almost two years of not talking to me, one of the detectives recently called me to ask about my coming in and signing a piece of paper that says they returned everything² they confiscated from my apartment. Because I didn't do the thing that it isn't that unreasonable for them to think I did, and because I want the serious police to think of me as someone cooperative and law-abiding, I've agreed to do after I get back.

² Because being a smart-ass comes naturally to me, I can't help but say that they returned everything but my (legally acquired) narcotics, and I had to go to the hospital and spend a whole $3 to get a fresh prescription.

³ Because I've only got one phone with a decent camera and one phone stand, although my videos aren't scripted, I need to repeat actions - sometimes as many as five or six times - in order to get them from different angles.

Ever since I started collecting statue photos for Jake, I've noticed that elephants are the most likely to come in "clearly female"

There's also a correlation between the masculinity of the site that lions are in front of and whether or not they are clearly male

Because they were newly opened this week, the place I had breakfast gave me a free fizzy drink with my meal

From the days before ubiquitous traffic cameras⁶, this sign is the only remnant of the "Police Check - 200m Ahead" which this sign is warning about

⁴ OYO is a "brand" that is basically an online travel agency with their own platform that offers you the exact same prices on all OYO listed hotels as purchasing through any other platform. I've yet to encounter an expensive OYO hotel (though that could just be because I only do budget travel) or a hotel built or managed by OYO as opposed to previously existing and becoming OYO branded. Compared to Hanting or Seven Days Express, even if it doesn't feel right calling them a chain, I find them the most consistently nice of the nationwide chains.

I take screenshots because I'm always afraid I'm not going to be able to find the purchase code again

Unfinished mid-90s building that would have had a rotating restaurant on the top

⁵ Discovered by accident, since the last update I don't actually know how to find the menu for checking local deals and can only go to Things I Have Previously Purchased and navigate back to the same vendor.

⁶ With functions ranging from checking speed to determining if the people in the car have seatbelts on or are using a handheld mobile phone, Chinese traffic cameras are quite impressive. Beginning with an automatic weigh-station seen in 2015, I've also, since maybe two years ago, started seeing additional safety checks including automated Emissions Testers.

Warning (or advertising?) about a local GHb and caffeine laced drink

Don't sell or rent bank cards to fraudsters

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,155 km (717 miles)

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Jeff PoretskyA belated happy un-birthday to you.
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