D21: 高碑店 → 固城 (双语)

October 15, 2024

You ever have one of those days where you reach into your jersey pocket and go "where did this piece of garlic come from?" 你有没有经历过，当你把手伸进上衣口袋，然后心里想着“这瓣大蒜是从哪儿来的？”

This was an unusually uneventful day. Because I'm trying to delay my travel southwards sufficiently that I can meet up with an old friend whose employer is having some kind of event that doesn't sound too horrible in the abstract, and because the G107 is an utterly horrible road that no one in their right mind would ever ride a bicycle on, I've got to wander¹ but I also can't wander too much or getting to the hotel where the event is taking place also won't work.

There's some interesting looking points a bit to the north and west of me, but, by the time I've coffee'd up over breakfast at the same place where I had dinner the night before, it's late enough that this is looking like it would both put me out way after dark and would result in uncertain lodging.

这是异常平淡的一天。因为我想尽量推迟南下的行程，这样就能和一位老朋友碰面，他的老板准备举办活动，从表面上看倒也不算太糟糕。而且107国道实在是一条糟糕透顶的路，脑子没病的人都不会骑自行车走那条路，所以我得四处逛逛¹，但又不能逛得太远，不然就没法及时赶到举办活动的酒店了。

在我西北方向有一些看起来挺有意思的地方，但是等我在昨晚吃晚餐的店吃完早餐、喝完咖啡后，时间已经不早了，要是去那些地方，天黑后我都回不来，而且住宿也没着落。

This year's Happy Cow Award goes to whomever painted this mural 今年的“快乐牛奖”要颁给画这幅壁画的人。

I see zero relationship between the images and the words 我完全看不出这些图像和文字之间有什么联系。

If you're ever feeling inadequate or suffering from Imposter Syndrome, remember, someone was paid for this 要是你觉得自己不够好，或者正受“冒名顶替综合症”的困扰，记住，有人收了钱画的这幅画。

Back in the day—before online maps on your phone were a thing—I knew that any place called 镇 (town) would have somewhere to stay but that places called 乡 (township) probably wouldn't. Nowadays, and I'm not sure if it's changes in the rural economy, the emptying of the countryside as China increasingly urbanizes, or improvements in the transportation network, it is entirely possible for 镇 to also be without lodging.

So long as a boolean search for 住宿 (lodging) turns up four or five pimple dots on Maps, it's okay to head to a town where none of the shown "hotels" are either bookable online or provide a phone number, but anything less than that and it's entirely possible that everything that's listed as a hotel is something that's wrongly marked², something that no longer offers rooms for rent, or something that's either temporarily or permanently closed.

以前，在手机还没有地图的时候，我知道任何叫“镇”的地方都会有住的地方，而叫“乡”的地方可能就没有。如今，我不确定是因为农村经济发生了变化，还是因为随着中国日益城市化，农村人口不断外流，又或是交通网络得到了改善，现在有些“镇”也可能没有住宿的地方了。

只要在地图上用“住宿”这个词进行布尔搜索，能出现四五个小点，那么去一个既不能在线预订、也没有联系电话的这种就没问题。但要是显示出来的结果少于这个数，那么很有可能所有标为酒店的地方是标注错误²，或是已经不再提供房间了，暂时或永久停业了。

Serious problem today with missing bridges 今天遇到一个严重的问题，有些桥“不见了”。

Luckily, alt routes were enjoyable 幸运的是，备选路线还挺有意思的。

And mostly didn't involve too much additional distance 而且大多也没增加太多的路程。

This worry could be alleviated if I were to pick Dingxing County (that I stayed in early on in this tour) as my destination, but—even if their police were the sort who told the not-a-Marriott 'don't make us show up, just check her in'—Dingxing gets a black mark for having ever been the kind of place where I needed to call the police, so, even if Baoding Shi³ is one of those places where the towns are historically just as bad as the counties, I would rather aim for a town.

This, plus it having a huge range of prices (from 18 to 130), is how I came to pick Gucheng about 15km south of Dingxing.

如果我把这次旅行早些时候住过的定兴县作为目的地，这种担忧就能缓解一些。但是，即便那里的警察会对“假万豪”酒店说“别逼我们上门，直接给她办理入住”，定兴县也因为曾经是让我报警求助的地方而留下了一个污点。所以，即便保定市³的城镇和县城在我和朋友的经验上都很糟糕的地方，我还是宁愿选择去一个小镇。

再加上这里的住宿价格范围很广（从18元到130元），这就是我为什么选择了定兴县以南大约15公里处的固城镇。

First "cures for premature ejaculation" advertisement of the Tour 此次骑行中看到的第一个“治疗早泄”的广告。

The outside of this Martyr's Memorial is for a woman 这座烈士纪念馆的外墙是纪念一位女同志。

But the stone inside is for a man 但里面的石碑却是纪念一位男同志。

Behold the chocolate brownie rugelach! 看啊，巧克力布朗尼鲁格拉什点心！

I would get in a bit after dark, unhappy with having spent any time at all on the G107 but glad for the size of the shoulders, the reasonableness of the streetlights, and the quality of the paving after the beautiful torture I had been putting myself through all day on the rural roads.

It's already cracked 100,000 views, so I kind of hope the whingy "but we don't have the qualifications," "okay so we have the qualifications but registering you is haaaaard" owner of the hotel I stayed at ending up seeing the "I think I stayed here in 2008" video I posted the next morning of me getting all excited by a road sign declaring me 183 kilometers away from Shijiazhuang.

我会在天黑后不久到达目的地，虽然因为在107国道上花费了一些时间而感到不爽，但好在这条路的路肩够宽，路灯设置合理，而且在经历了一整天在乡间小路上的“美丽折磨”后，这里的路面质量也不错，这让我感到欣慰。

因为我住的地方的老板之前还抱怨说“我们没有接待外国人的资质”，后来又说“好吧，我们有资质，但是给你登记太麻烦了”所以我还挺希望我住的那家酒店看到我第二天早上发布的视频。那个视频点击量已经突破10万了。在视频里，我看到路标显示距离石家庄还有183公里，兴奋不已，这是我2008年住过的乡镇！

You can tell how international an area wants to appear by the English/Pinyin (or lack thereof⁴) on street signs 你可以通过街道标识上的英文或拼音（或者没有英文拼音⁴）来判断一个地方想要的国际化程度。

Happy to be on the truck route 天啊！我骑的卡车行驶路线还挺愉快？

As I had been on this for at least 5km prior to the truck route 怪不得我开心。在这条卡车路线之前，我至少已经在这种的路上骑了5公里。

And some of this earlier in the day when dealing with a flooded bridge 而且今天早些时候在应对一座被水淹的桥的时候，也走过类似的路。

Because the hotel (a word I use very loosely) in question⁵ that I stayed at in Gucheng in 2008 was 2y.

Technically, since I insisted on paying for all four beds in the room it was 8y rather than two; but, as the owner tried to convince me that I really didn't need to give her that much, it's just the merest of technicalities.

因为2008年我在固城住过的那家⁴所谓的“酒店”（我用这个词都觉得很勉强）一晚只要2元。

严格来说，因为我坚持要付房间里四张床的钱，所以实际上是8元而不是2元；但因为老板娘一直试图说服我没必要给她那么多钱，所以这只是个很小的细节问题。

That hotel in 2008—with its thatched roof, pit latrine⁶, and a courtyard full of free-range chickens and scrap metal recycling—is unique not in that it is the cheapest place I've ever stayed or ever will stay, but in that it was the first time I ever stayed anywhere that had the Public Security Bureau's Online Hotel Guest Registration System, and it has the honor of being the reason why (even before I began studying the relevant regulations) I never believed in "we don't meet the qualifications to take foreigners".

2008年住的那家酒店，有着茅草屋顶、蹲式厕所⁵，院子里满是散养的鸡和回收的废金属。它的独特之处不在于它是我住过的最便宜的地方，而在于这是我第一次住到配备了公安局在线酒店住客登记系统的地方。而且它还有一个“殊荣”，那就是它让我（甚至在我开始研究相关规定之前）从不相信“我们没有接待外国人的资质”这种话。

They quite like their seal script around here 这一带的人很喜欢用篆书。

As is this, though less old, and also lacking in seal script 这个也是，虽然没那么古老，而且也没有篆书。

¹ Oh poor me!

¹哎呀，我可真可怜！

² 酒店 can mean both restaurant and hotel

² “酒店”这个词既可以指吃饭的地方也可以指睡觉的地方。

³ Has this year's journal included my traditional rant on how much I hate the word 市 and why I refuse to translate it as "city"?

³ 今年的旅行日志里我有没有像往常一样发发牢骚，表达我有多讨厌“市”这个字，以及我为什么拒绝把它翻译成“city”呢？

⁴ One of the many reasons we don't believe Wuzhai County to actually be Closed is the pinyin on most of their urban signs.

⁴我们不相信五寨县是“封闭”地区的原因之一，就是他们城区大多标有拼音。

⁵ Enough people in the comments section were able to provide information that was not in my video that I'm now certain it was in Gucheng

⁵ 评论区里有很多人提供了我视频里没有说的信息，所以我现在确定当时是在固城。

⁶ A pit latrine I only became aware of after dawn, as the question "where do I go to the toilet?" was met with showing me the room's chamber pot

⁶ 由于我当时问“厕所在哪儿”指出了房间的尿壶，我早上才知道了那个旱坑。

Lobby of the previous night's hotel, where they also bitched and moaned about needing to register me; and also wouldn't let me do it for them 前一晚住的酒店大堂，他们在这儿发牢骚抱怨说给我登记入住有多麻烦；而且还不让我帮他们登记。

I'm spitballing this mural at early 2000s 我猜这幅壁画是本世纪初画的。

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,378 km (856 miles)

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