D17: 富→下寺湾

April 4, 2021

The strong fist of the law smashing criminal elements has recently been a fairly common design item in Law and Order propaganda. This almost manga version is one of the more creative versions I've seen. I especially like the way the criminal figures are depicted.

The weather is still pretty damn yuck when I wake up this morning but I can't stand the idea of spending yet another day in this hotel room, so, since it isn't actively raining, I pack up, triple check every corner of the room for lost items, double check my panniers to make sure that my laptop is where it belongs, and head downstairs.

That the air conditioner / heat pump which the hotel owner didn't especially want me to keep running (on the grounds of "the heater will use up all the oxygen in the room and I'll get sick" rather than it running up the electric bill) seems to have been turned off at the fuse box is not actually a deciding factor in my determination to leave.

If it's a passive aggressive gesture on the part of the hotel owner and not a blown fuse, given that I know that she thinks (or will be willing to claim that she thinks) running the heat in a closed room will cause Korean Fan Death¹, I'm not in a good place to argue in Chinese that electric heaters can't cause carbon monoxide poisoning. If, on the other hand, it's a blown fuse, I'm bound to get a lecture about how much it costs for me to have the heat on and how it really isn't necessary for me to be heating the room because she's comfortable with a hot water bottle (that I don't have), and the extra nice electric mattress pad (that I don't have), and the sufficiency of warm clothing (that I don't have), so I should be too.

Farm Vehicles must be licensed, must not carry passengers, must not speed

Passenger Buses must not be overloaded, must not speed, may not drive after drinking alcohol

Motorcycles must be licensed, must wear a helmet, must not have more than 2 people on them

With a video of me saying goodbye, I was on my way out the door.

I meant to stop at the friendly noodle shop where I'd had a meal my first day trapped at the hotel and where the cook had so nicely asked if she could take a picture with me, but they weren't yet open.

Even before becoming wanghong, I felt that one of the most important things I could do on my trips was to be friendly to everyone who wanted to be friendly to me (and who wasn't too annoying about it). Now that Covid has severely reduced the number of foreigners living in China and completely gotten rid of all foreign tourists, my role as the person who will be the first foreigner someone meets and who will shape people's impressions is even more important than ever.

Taking a break from vintage Rural Safe Electric Usage posters made of tile and posting a Rural Safe Natural Gas Usage poster

This was a rather unusual Forest Fire Prevention Notice in that it not only gives a specific 20 hectare locale that is particularly at risk for fire, it gives the details of a specific case involving a local Mr. Ma (pixelated face in the photo) who was fined CNY 3,000 and spent 7 days in the county lock-up for improperly burning grave goods and putting the forest at risk.

Much of the ride north from Fu is the same as the ride south from Yan'an was nine years ago. In the intervening years, there is little that wasn't interesting enough to photograph then that has since become interesting. A historic marker here or there informs me of stuff I didn't necessarily know (or in some cases hadn't thought worth recording) about the role this area played in the Chinese Civil War, but that's about it.

Because I get off on a farm road for my first detour of the day (to someplace where Mao made an important speech), I come across a plaque for Him Once Staying Here at a place that has no "here". So far this trip, although almost every one of my videos is taking a permanent position for its listed location, they haven't been going the kind of viral I'd expected. As is to be expected though, snark and sarcasm about a Site That Does Not Exist ends up getting—if not a lot of views—a lot more than average for Shaanxi. It also gets me a PM from the county museum with pictures of the actual site and apologies for the misplaced marker.

My video expressing surprise over the lack of a building to go with this particular Historic Site marker was one of the few to rack up lots of views during the time I was being sponsored

What is it with the Chinese countryside and the decorative use of tires?

Modern bridge next to the spot where the ferry used to be

At Ganquan County I turn to the west and head for the Shimen Grottoes. These are rare among the sites I'm seeking out in that they actually show up on the digital maps as well as the paper ones. They're also roughly 150 feet above the road surface with no apparent paths leading up the cliff to them (there was a marker for them about a kilometer early that might have hinted at a path but I had too little sunlight on too cold a day to go looking for the non obvious).

I'm willing to go to quite a lot of extremes for silly detours but cliff climbing on a day that I definitely don't want to camp when I don't know how far it will be to lodging is a bit too much even for me.

Despite an expensive yaodong style hotel showing on Maps, there's nowhere to stay in Shimen so, even though Shimen is where I'm supposed to turn north to cross the mountains, I keep going west by northwest.

Believe it or not, there are grottoes (that I didn't visit) in this picture

This gets me a bunch of old bridges, some lovely lintel carvings that were clearly smashed up in the Cultural Revolution (the only undamaged figure is a farmer with a hoe), and brings me to a dusty dried up town that looks dead but which is actually chock full of hotels and hostels and guesthouses on account of the nearby danxia redrock park.

It being past dark by the time I roll on up to the place where I eat dinner for real (the first place I stopped turned out to be snack food rather than meal food), enough locals have started up their coal stoves that I'm asthmatically² wheezing and trying not to cough so I can't really blame the restaurant for wanting to see my green code and my NAT results.

Over dinner, I scroll through the many lodging options available to me on Maps before pointing myself at something that looks to be not too expensive for what I'm going to get. I don't recall if I booked online or if I just showed up and tried haggling³ but I do remember that I still thought they were charging far too much for it clearly being off season.

Old freestanding yaodong just barely visible on the other side of the wall

Given how frangible the rock is around here, it's certainly possible that these carvings are merely old rather than vandalized

As the only fully intact human figure is a farmer, it's very likely though that this is Cultural Revolution damage

I think this trio might have been scholars / petty bourgeoise

¹ Which is actually a nice way of pretending that someone didn't commit suicide and not actually the oxygen in the room being used up by a fan.

² Funnily enough, when I get back to Haikou for my first Interlude and get my lung function test, it looks like I wasn't just "wheezing like someone who has asthma" but that I've actually got a clinical diagnosis of asthma. It's just that I usually manage to avoid being places where I can't breathe.

³ As a result of my being really, really bad at haggling, I feel the need to periodically test my skills. Sometimes I can talk them down as much as 10 yuan, at which point I'm like "why did I even bother?"

Close-up of a partially demolished freestanding yaodong shows how these were built

Literacy doesn't help with understanding this wall painting

This one is even more confusing. However, it's also very original. I like it.

Although I don't think I've seen any of these before, this is fairly standard anti-cult content

Today's ride: 77 km (48 miles)
Total: 634 km (394 miles)

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