D19: Xiaoyi to Xixinzhuang 孝义市 → 西辛庄镇

September 25, 2018

Today could have been longer. It also could have been shorter. As it was, it was just about perfect. The weather was colder than I like but, having lived on a tropical island for the past 14 years, the weather being colder than I like is basically a fact of life. It doesn't matter whether I'm biking, sailing, or visiting family in the US, the weather is always colder than I like. Furthermore, on the rare chance, that the weather is perfectly exactly what I'm comfortable with, people insist on turning on air conditioning or giant fans or opening windows and then I'm cold again.

My solution is just to accept that I will be cold. I make sure that I have layers and stuff like that but, it's just a given that "liking winter" is something that will forever remain a distant memory of childhood.

According to the weather report it was going to be a dreary gray day with on and off mizzle turning to drizzle at times. Temperatures were expected to drop as low as 10° and I figured that this would be as good a time as any to see how cold I could tolerate with the clothing I've currently got. I have a pair of long tights, a pair of full length thermal bib tights, and a silk knit top waiting in Haikou for Kaylee to mail to me as there wasn't quite enough room in the panniers to put them when I still had the clothing for "trips back to Beijing".

I won't go so far as to say I was happy with being cold and damp but I also wasn't miserable. It was definitely doable. It was also definitely time to tell her to send me my warm stuff cause even if I don't think I'll actually need it for another two or three weeks, it could always rain again and I've got scads of room.

If only I'd realized there was a sauna I could have spent last night in!

Since my room came with breakfast, I did my best to get as many nutritious calories as I possibly could off of the buffet but I didn't actually like much of what was offered other than the fruit and the hard boiled eggs. From there, it was time to check out and head over to the bike shop for route information and any tweaks that the apparently competent bike mechanic felt my bike needed. Like a new chain. Now I don't really think I needed a new chain yet but buying a new chain before the current one has worn out the rear sprockets is certainly cheaper than buying a new chain and a new set of rear sprockets so I let myself be convinced.

He let me know that the route I'd indicated on my map was probably not the route I wanted to take as it would combine "lots of trucks" with "not very much in the way of scenery". I could have sworn I'd gone for the same route as 6 years ago but, somehow, in the process of getting things marked out both electronically and on paper, I had in fact picked the main road one north of the road from 6 years ago. More sitting around talking with him let me know that the rest of the provincial road after Xixinzhuang [西辛庄] should be fine but that, instead of going north, I ought to go south to the town of Shuangchi [双池] and take smaller roads through those mountains to visit some places with neat old buildings.

From the pictures his friends had taken, the places he was recommending definitely looked cool. Unfortunately, if I went to visit them, there didn't really seem to be any way to keep going onwards that wouldn't involve dumping me back on the main road. I said I'd keep it in mind and, fortified by a few shots of espresso, went on my way.

The first part of the day's ride was nothing especially grand but it hadn't been anything especially grand six years ago either. Mostly it was just nice. I saw my first very definitely actually dug into a cliffside yaodong type cave home. I had a lovely scary descent on a road steep enough for long enough that, despite being a tertiary road, it got "Long Descent" warning signs. I found the same miserable random modern cobblestones and the same awesome falling apart temple—now slightly more falling apart.

Six years of weather and six years of continuing to not get fixed makes quite the difference.

But not quite the difference that discovering my new phone takes better pictures than the mirrorless camera I've been punishing myself with for the last two years because I failed to do sufficient research.

With this temple, the yaodong are closer to standalone buildings than they are caves dug into the side of the hill. There's a sunken courtyard with six caves facing on to it (as of 2012, two of these were being used for livestock) and a five-hole upper building that's very definitely a constructed building. They face towards a stage and gatehouse.

Things didn't get great until after lunch in Zhupu Town [柱濮].

Six years ago the local guy who insisted on paying for my lunch had equally insisted that I wasn't supposed to go straight on the obvious correct road but instead should take a different road that seemed to go the wrong way altogether. It had been a sunny day and the road signs only mostly matched so I followed his directions to a very wide, very new road that was obviously intended for lots of traffic but wasn't getting it.

This time I took the obvious correct road and, I have to say, considering the condition it currently is in with the coal mine closed down and the residents of one of the two large villages completely relocated, he was probably right. I mean this road was definitely way more interesting but it was also way more difficult. Way way more difficult.

There were quite a few rather impressive semi-modern paifang gates that had no apparent reason for existing

Or which had had a village and no longer did

So far as I can tell in the case of the abandoned village, everything that wasn't historic was knocked down last December. I'm not exactly sure why. The fact that the historic buildings were kept intact (or at least as intact as they were before the rest of the village got demolished) seems to indicate that the relocation of the population was not done in the name of industrial development. But it's also an area that's difficult to get to so I can't imagine any sort of why.

Considering the relatively abandoned nature of the occupied places in this area, it may just have been a formal recognition that no one lives here anymore with the exception of people who really shouldn't be left living on their own in deep mountain villages and that this was the way to push them into friendlier urban environments with heat and running water and reliable electricity. Even if it is often just so much lip service, the fact that the government of China is built upon the idea of "serve the people" means that there's a lot of 'social good' type ends, which may or may not be well implemented or undamaged by corruption, which are then used to justify some rather harsh means. Like demolishing buildings and relocating the entire population of a village.

Abandoned 19th(?) century building in the demolished village

Sunken Courtyard style constructed (i.e. not dug into a hillside) yaodong in the demolished village. Appear to be no later than 19th century.

A kang or heated brick sleeping platform. Basically, the chimney and the bed are the same incredibly awesome thing. Oddly enough, this kang is on a wall with a window. My extremely limited experience of encountering functional kang has them farther inside the building to better preserve heat.

Another kang, this one piled high with forgotten or discarded clothing. Some furniture was also left behind when the village was officially abandoned ten months earlier on November 29, 2017.

This building once held a Telephone Bar where people could go to make phone calls because why would anyone have a personal phone inside their house? (When I arrived in China in 2002, Telephone Bars still existed for long distance but were rapidly disappearing.)

Row upon row of ancient empty buildings surrounded by the rubble of more modern buildings

Shortly after the abandoned village, I found myself an abandoned coal mine, and a barely occupied village. After that I was on the big new road from six years ago. It's still just as big and still just as unused. And, just like six years ago, it rather abruptly gets very small and then dumps me on the S321. There's a lot less truck traffic on the 321 than there was six years ago so, by the time I made it over the little pass into Xixinzhuang, I was looking for a place to stay not because I was rattled by trucks but because Amap showed nine options for me to choose from while the more rural place I would have preferred the idea of spending the night at only had one.

As seven of the nine options shown by Amap were closed, it's a damn good thing I didn't push on to try the town with only one.

You know what's worse than random manufactured cobblestones? Random manufactured cobblestones with missing mortar. Going uphill. In the rain.

Today's ride: 42 km (26 miles)
Total: 1,154 km (717 miles)

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