Other than it only being something like 90 minutes total with no transfers as opposed to the godawful number of hours that the train to Guangzhou was, and—of course—this train being a high-speed one, it's also a million times more comfortable cause I'm not trying to balance the awkward load of a pannier that isn't on a bicycle.

Instead, I'm using the canvas swag bag from the Boao Tourism Department that I got for attending¹ a TEDx event they held the week before I left on this trip. Not thinking that Tyra would include the bag, I'd designated it as a "useful pot to put things in" when figuring out what stuff was going to need to be mailed to Guangzhou and, upon discovering it in Guangzhou, seized upon it as being a useful way to carry a day's worth of stuff when going off to not be biking.

I won't end up having a moment's time to use my laptop but, even though I'm willing to leave my bike in the storage room of someone I just met, my actually cheaper than the bike laptop is another story altogether.

Make coffee on the bus and bitch about there not being food or a better place to wait while waiting for the contingent from Wuxi to arrive, this will turn out to be a blessing in disguise as my empty stomach keeps me from getting carsick during the drive. 

While I'm making coffee, I notice that the campgas canister is running low and I'm soon² going to have to either get a new one or find the butane cans that allow me to refill³. Since the supply chain issues that meant my preferred can size⁴ is available again, I figure I'll let myself run out and just order some gas to a city two or three days ahead of me.

Once the Wuxi folk arrive, we head first to the local martial arts museum, then a puppet show, then a peach orchard. Rushed through everything a bit faster than a tour group would normally go (as our purpose in visiting these places is to have photos and videos taken of us visiting rather than to actual experience the various items), there was just enough time spent that we could say we'd actually visited and not one second more.

At the puppet show, although everyone else was far more wowed by the variety show put on at the beginning, I know enough about opera and enough about puppets and enough about Chinese acrobatics that I wasn't particularly impressed by things like fire-breathing, face-changing, or balancing a ceramic jar on one's head while riding a unicycle⁵ but was, instead, blown away by the expressive emotion when the master puppeteer got behind the curtain and performed a romantic ariata between two figures.

Finding out afterwards that the eyes of his opera puppets are gravity controlled instead of having a cable like Hainan opera puppets just made me that much more impressed.

Fast and smooth check-in at a very nice hotel (where I wonder if I'm actually registered as the fact of my planned return to Jinhua means that, despite my certainty that not deregistering me could possibly cause problems⁶, I'm still marked in the Public Security system as being at that hotel) that already has my Guangzhou package behind their front desk, I head up to the room to shower, change my clothes, and go join the others in being a tourist experiencing a historic village.

Only part of the day I really didn't like was the decision that we should walk back to the hotel from the village but I've done little enough exercise or standing that my bad leg mostly doesn't complain about this.

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¹ I was also one of the speakers but that's not why I got the bag.

² I don't realize that the "soon" on needing a refill will be the next morning's coffee but I've also got the mini hotplate so it's okay 

³ I've got this awesome little refiller doohickey. Problem is, it's almost impossible finding the butane in quantities smaller than 5 cans at a time.

⁴ As the only cooking I do is coffee, it's really unnecessary for me to have a full size can of campgas.

⁵ All things that are much easier to perform when you aren't a fragile flesh and blood body, and when you have body parts attached with magnets

⁶ One time in Hainan I wasn't deregistered and the next hotel couldn't finish checking me in.