D13: 广丰→鹅湖

October 18, 2019

Another day, another unvisited urban pagoda

In the morning I notice among the various framed things on the wall behind the front desk, the notices and the warnings, the licenses, the ratings, the rankings, there's also a metal plaque honoring the household as having a veteran who served in actual battle. There's not a whole lot of those in China as China's military hasn't much been in the habit of officially participating in wars since the founding of the People's Republic. (Yes, China was involved in both the US/Korean and US/Vietnamese war but that doesn't mean China was officially involved.)
In this case, it's the husband of the husband/wife pair whose hotel this is. He was a soldier during China's war against Vietnam.

I feel like this is one of those people that if I knew them well enough to get them to be telling me stories (or if Myf were around to get them talking about themselves and how cool they are instead of about me and how awesome it is to have a foreigner visiting), they would be having all kinds of interesting stories to tell.

I really feel like you shouldn't have to have a sign telling people not to set off fireworks underneath the high voltage power lines.

I left late enough (though still not late) that I'm not having a super easy time finding an open breakfast stall and when I do find one, my bike is just enough out of sight on a road that's just enough busy and the food is just enough uninspiring that I leave more than half of it untouched. They're so thrilled about having a foreigner eat at their restaurant that they insist on my not paying so I end up digging around in the handlebar bag for one of my remaining drilled pennies to give their kid.

A little while later, after I'm already out on the main road, I come across my favorite Chinese fast food chain and decide that an early morning chicken wrap and coke is totally the way to go. Especially as this street doesn't have all kinds of foot traffic and I can see the bike through the window without straining.

This is one of the few Chinese chains to be really successful. I wouldn't be surprised if they go international in the next 5-10 years. They refilled my water bottle for me and asked me if I wanted ice. I didn't notice until much much later that they'd refilled it with orange pop.

Good boye restaurant worker making sure that floor cleaning is extra easy

I know that most people aren't bad people, that most people aren't thieves, that my bike is really actually going to be fine if I let it out of my sight. I'm willing even to leave it downstairs overnight in the random lobbies of hotels. But, in places with people, even when I pop the pedals off, it's still too new of an expensive possession for me to be willing to just leave it out of sight. It makes me nervous.

I have a good fast ride along the National Road in the direction of Shangrao [上饶] turning off at some industrial park with the intent of taking a "short cut" and a smaller bridge and ending up the roads that aren't a blink away from being expressways. This doesn't exactly work though. First my road doesn't connect and then, when I finally get across the bridge and start traveling along the little roads, I immediately hit full on torn up gravel type road works. So I go back to the expressishway.

I feel like some of the factories along this stretch are in fact actively factories but quite a few of them seemed derelict

Sign reads: It doesn't matter whether or not it is intentional, if you damage national fibreoptic cable, you will be punished accordingly

Some people would say that this is ugly but I find the differing styles much more visibly appealing that everything being new and shiny

According to my GPS, there is a road here

A grave which has the character for "relocate" spray painted on it

The torn up gravel that sends me back to the main road

It's nice wide expressishway that obviously has speed cameras as well as drivers who are aware that they are sharing the road with slower vehicles and the occasional surprise pedestrian so I'm not actually all that uncomfortable. Also, unlike Zhejiang, the scenery is scenic. There's stuff to look at and ponder. Not all of it is beautiful but it's varied and different and changes from one hill to the next.

Even when I was on the big main road before my attempt to get on the small roads there was variety. I know that some people might find it ugly but I really much prefer the hodge podge of different styles and eras of construction, where things have started and stopped and started again, where different people got money enough to build a nicer place at different times, where their idea of what's stylish or pretty and mine are very much not the same.

A rock that has an unexplained chunk carved out of it (possibly related to some nearby graves but who knows)

From Chating [茶亭] to Ehu, I'm finally on little roads. There's a newer medium road that the road signs say I'm supposed to take but the GPS wants me on this one if I'm to max out my possibilities for night time hotels in the vicinity of Ehu and, as I actually want to work today and will be looking for hotels around 3:30ish, it's really important that I have a lot of choices to choose from.

This is an amazing road. It's one of those roads where the villages merge together without often having an obvious start or stop as the trailing edge of one joins the leading edge of the next but there are so many different styles of buildings from so many different eras and the occasional patches of nothing but fields between them. It's all beautiful. Even the parts that are ugly are beautiful. And the parts that actually are beautiful are very beautiful.

I'm a little creeped out by the picture of Xi Jinping where the God of Wealth traditionally goes

It's a good thing that I went with the route I did as the hotel choice in Ehu doesn't look so good. I mean, I find the places. They are definitely still there. At least they still have signs. And maybe, when night falls, they even light up those signs to indicate that they are actually open. But at mid afternoon, they don't look open in the slightest.

I go south from Ehu towards Yongping [永平] and catch the last batch of hotels that would have been my only batch of hotels if I'd taken the road the road signs wanted me to take. One of them, conveniently one of the ones that isn't on the Maps, has an open restaurant and after I have a satisfactory meal, confirms that they do in fact have rooms.

Built by the PLA #3 Engineer Corps in March of 1950, the inscription is in traditional characters because simplified didn't exist yet.

My guess was off by nearly 20 years but I'm going to blame it on the railings having been repaired

I'm not sure that the railings actually have been repaired (particularly given their current condition) but I'm going to blame my bad guess on them being repaired nonetheless

The 50元 a night room only has very hard beds and a toilet down the hall. I don't really need my own bathroom but the merely hard beds are in rooms that have their own bath so I get one anyway. Still, 70元 is not that expensive and, like last night, while they don't have a washing machine they can let me use, they are willing to provide laundry soap so I get what I was wearing cleaned and on the line before doing anything else.

(Technically, last night did have a washing machine. It's just that it was a washing machine for 15kg loads.)

A bit of a nap and some dinner then I get down to work work work on the Corporate Client. If I work again tomorrow and set some time aside for the Book Project, I should be able to earn back most of what I've spent so far this tour.

Those who grow wealthy first are obligated to lend a helping hand to those who have not yet grown wealthy so that everyone can jointly build a moderately prosperous society in all respects

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 888 km (551 miles)

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