I never do find out why the town I spent last night in is named "lighthouse". I'm nowhere near any currently or formerly navigable bodies of water so it definitely wasn't a lighthouse or the location of a lighthouse at some point in it's history but, it not only is named lighthouse, the fact of it being named lighthouse is the point which the local Creators of Twee Slogans have used as a hook upon which to hang every single growth, production, development, or progress slogan about the area
This is what Chinese literacy brings me. Yay.
The lack of secondary phone is proving a major headache. I've figured out what joint actions are most likely to bork navigation (so that I can turn it back on before getting lost) but I'm still stopping to pull my phone out of my pocket or handlebar bag roughly every ten minutes or so to restart it again.
When you are traveling on roads like this, you need to have active navigation
Originally heading to a location called Gongbai (because it was at my 50km sweet spot while also providing opportunities to continue onwards), although I'm originally enjoying the back roads and their various strangenesses¹, I decided to stop heading there, to stop using the back roads, and to instead risk the potential truckiness of the main road not because of this issue but because of a lack of guaranteed lodging².
However, with the added benefit of the main road being perfectly lovely, a judgemental look at how many turns I would have needed to make and how many times I almost certainly would have needed to turn my GPS back on again (plus the possibility that, even if I had done the back roads, I still would have had to make it all the way to the specific county seat where I ended up spending the night) shows that this decision was the right choice for me to make.
Anyone with fever or other symptoms may not enter the factory.
Worst part of the day came after the decision to head to the main road but before actually making it there. I'm sure there was a perfectly good paved route that BaiduMaps³ could have sent me on, but I got about half a kilometer of sticky clay muck that - when passing by a duck farm - was also mosquito infested with those black and white striped assholes⁴ who bite in the day and who have probisces long enough to bite through Lycra and Spandex.
I can't find my Benadryl⁵ so I spend the next hour or so with practically every body part screaming fire with the discomfort of at least a hundred mozzy bites. When I locate and go for six Claritin because long-lasting antihistamine is still antihistamine, the itching and burning immediately subsides only to be replaced by lots and lots of small firm edged welts (including the mostly healed patch from my annoying some spider a week or ten days ago).
Other than that, how was the show Mrs. Lincoln?
The hotel owner didn't think he could take me without approval from the police but was very polite and reasonable about the whole thing, and the police mostly weren't intractable. Hotel Owner and I have different interpretations of the reasons behind this⁶ but the important thing is that it was over and done with in 15 minutes or less.
Places with Interesting Names Series: There's a town in Hainan named Fengmu 枫木
Even if things went relatively smooth and easy, their subsequent refusal to allow me to register myself on the computer⁷ (which would have meant admitting that I knew how to use the PSB Hotel Guest Registration System and they—as grassroots-level officers of the PSB—didn't) resulted in a phone call some 90 minutes later from Exit & Entry checking up on me to "make sure everything was okay." This, perfectly pleasant, five-minute conversation with an officer who was in turns trying to be severe at chastising me for the not being registered that was not my fault and sweet in his blatantly fawning admiration of my spoken Chinese⁸ resulted in my being forced to let the higherest-ups know the exact cause of the problem.
There was a time when I would have been bothered that my welching on someone likely resulted in his getting a bollocking; but, honestly, when it comes to local police telling hotels "you don't have the qualifications to take foreigners", that ship sailed a long, long time ago.
From their epaulets, I got the lowest possible rank of police officer. As this makes it easier to cow them into doing what I want, I'm not particularly bothered by this.
Telecommunications cables do not include copper and anyone who damages them will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Based on the police officer being in green instead of blue this is probably from the late 80s.
¹ I'm not sure which was more awesomely strange, the camera module on my phone (which has never crashed before nor since) crashing when I absolutely wasn't taking a photo of the military helicopter passing over my head, the number of military helicopters seen doing maneuvers throughout the day, or the random Very Military Propaganda paintings that I expect to see on walls near Obvious Military Sites and not in Sleepy Backwater Towns.
On account of my immediately trying to take photos of the whirlybirds as soon as my phone was working again, I can be sure the app-crash had nothing to do with me being in a place where I oughtn't be allowed to take photos
² Only three places showed up on Maps, none of them were pre-bookable online, and the only one that answered the phone was definitively closed. Although its certainly possible that there are other places that might be open, this just wasn't worth the risk.
³ which was closing slightly less often than AMap
⁴ That, hopefully, don't have Zika in this hemisphere
⁵ A deep dive through the panniers late in the evening suggests I didn't bring it
I vaguely kind of sort of get the whole having a coffin ready in advance thing. However, I don't get the "then leaving it someplace where it will be in terrible condition by the time you need it".
⁶ Given that I made the phone call to 110, I firmly believe and will continue to believe that I get my way as often as I do because a foreigner, speaking Chinese, invoking the Law, and demanding written documentation that "local rules" not only exist but are allowed to exist is something that terrifies the average police officer. He thinks that they just weren't sure until they called their higher-ups to ask.
I think this sheltered bench (built in a location that doesn't appear to need random sheltered benches) comes out of the same karma-seeking tradition as installing expensive and absolutely useless directional signs that I mentioned before
