D23: 河源 → 灯塔

June 15, 2023

Counterfeit Sinopec Series: Fried Chicken Restaurant Edition

Is it properly a Tour if Really Fucking Useful things you possibly shouldn't have considered indispensable break¹?

I have two phones. I have regularly had two phones for a pretty long time now though I'm not sure exactly how long a long time is. Definitely 2020, but I feel like there was a time in my life where one phone was my China stuff and one phone had the T-Mobile sim that I ended up getting rid of after the number associated with it was used on Signal² to spear phish my mailing address in China and mail me a package full of drugs³.

These days, one phone is my photos, videos, general connectivity, and getting online phone and the other phone is used for music and GPS. Also, because my bank's physical security key for corporate banking⁴ required—until quite recently—a headphone jack, it did that too.

Transitions such as these between the road and the bike lane are one of the reasons why I so often end up still riding in the street

For complicated hand-wavey I don't fully understand reasons that have to do with not allowing apps to excessively drain the battery, Android doesn't like to let you constantly run GPS navigation while also doing other things. If you are sufficiently forceful, it will tolerate it, but unless you are actively connected to a powerbank it gets bitchy about it.

Even back in 2019, the first year I moved to constant audio directions, when most of my photos were still taken on a camera, I noticed that using my phone to take and share a picture inevitably resulted in my having to restart Navigation. As this was what taught me how to use the options available within the Chinese ecosystem to force navigate myself onto the small roads I prefer, it wasn't necessarily a Bad Thing. But it was a Thing and I noticed it.

I say all this because my OnePlus 6T from 2018 has—after two battery replacements and a new screen—finally kicked the bucket. There's an infinitesimally small chance that someone with relevant computer software and cables might be able to breathe new life into it⁵, but, it is generally safe to say that it is dead and gone.

How am I supposed to play the Date Guessing Game when bridges like this probably non-historic bridge (whose spalled concrete railings indicate that its at least 20 years old) has an info sign which, rudely, fails to disclose its year of construction?

I first came across Ghost Arrows in rural Hunan in 2008. While mostly a specifically regional thing to certain parts of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hunan, as people have more money and more mobility, they are popping up in more places

Died while being chucked into my handlebar bag shortly after connecting to the Bluetooth speaker for music.

While the weather today isn't hot in the slightest and the issues my good phone⁶ is experiencing mostly aren't from 248 of 256gb of memory being full⁷, it does not want me running Navigation and a GPS Logger and using WeChat and uploading to Douyin and taking photos and videos all at the same time. It's chewing through the battery like a triathlete with a protein bar, and it's constantly turning off "unnecessary" applications (mostly without telling me).

So, there's that.

There's also my first "yep, these are definitely mountains" of the Tour on roads where I kind of sort of need some form of navigatory assistance and, as I don't have paper Maps these days, that's my phone.

Depending on who you ask, they are either for the Hungry Ghosts that wander the countryside OR a form of good luck charm/way of giving thanks after a relative has survived a life-threatening illness. In either case, as actual directional signage for living, breathing humans, they are completely useless.

One of these days I'm going to find out where these Historic Routes go and intentionally follow them

Seeing this sign made me realize that the "this mountain closed to logging" signs are slowly fading away. This leads me to wonder if mountains are still being closed or if they have new and different ways of expressing that an area is being left to regrow forest.

Other than that, today was a stunningly gorgeous and wonderful day with wonderful people and wonderful food and wonderful experiences.

After the most adorable interaction of confirming that I'm not a halal-following ethnic minority who accidentally ordered pork belly, lunch is free cause I'm a cyclist and cyclists are cool. During the 100-yard stare of laser focusing on my ice pop, a convenience store employee takes the initiative to ask if I'd like them to refill my bidons. I might not find the Ming Dynasty bridge listed in the Antiquities Atlas⁸ that I'd set out looking for, but I end up tromping through and around a number of sprawling late 19th/early 20th century manor houses that are now listed as municipal-grade protected Heritage Sites.

And then, there was the hotel check-in...

This kind of concrete road is aptly referred to as "tofu dregs" for the shoddy materials that went into it

"I've never registered a foreigner before"
"If it's okay with you, I can go behind the desk and show you."
"What do hotels usually do?"
"Well, they call the police."
"And?"
"I tell the police officer I know how to register myself."
"What does he say?"
"That he needs to call his supervisor."
"Who does what?"
"Says that they should take a photo of my passport."
"How is taking a photo of your passport registering you?"
"It's not. I'll often end up on the phone with the supervisor trying to convince him that I know how to register myself on the computer."
"But?"

Unite under the leadership of the Proletarian Revolution headed by Chairman Mao!

"Follow Chairman Mao's great strategic deployment ... [something that doesn't make sense] ... Khrushchev" seems to be referring to the 1956 Speech О культе личности и его последствиях that is cites as being one of the causes of the Sino-Soviet split

"They always say it's very difficult and that a photo will be enough."
"So I should take a photo of your passport?"
"Actually, you should just let me behind the desk. It's really easy. I can show you."
"But didn't you just say it's difficult?"
"No. I said the police said it's difficult and that the police tell the hotels they should just take a picture of my passport. Because you asked me what normally happens."
"Oh."
"So, can I go behind the desk and show you?"
"I suppose. But, maybe I should call the police."
"They'll tell you to take a picture of my passport. Which isn't the right way. The right way is to use the computer."
"I've never registered a foreigner on the computer."
"Neither have the police. But I know how to register myself. Honest."
[Logs onto computer, moves over so I can sit down.]"Oh! That was really easy.""Yes."
[10 minutes later, a knock at the door]
"I called the police. They told me I should take a picture of your passport."

Scars of couplets once painted on the walls

Interior windows with Cultural Revolution damage

¹ Or get lost. Getting lost is also an option.

² A very privacy oriented WhatsApp equivalent

³ I assume everyone reading this either knows enough of the details that I don't need to rehash them here or that they will ask

⁴ During my 2015 Tour, in the days before a phone option was available for corporate, I once wrote and sold an article: "How to Pay Your Foreign Employee in 75 Easy Steps"

⁵ And I'm going to mail it to him to try

⁶ Xiaomi 11 Ultra with a miniature display on the rear

⁷ I'm taking video in 4k and I'm not real good about getting it off into the external hard drive

⁸ I got real close, but there wasn't sufficient pre-sunset time for in depth exploration

Another mansion that I didn't have time to go inside

Now those are some Big Character Slogans

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,325 km (823 miles)

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