D27: 黄岭农场 → 石壁

February 17, 2025

Last year, when I went from Tunchang to Guantang and the Smitties' place, I didn't know what I was getting into. This year, although I was positively certain that I was taking one of the other roads through the mountains, I most certainly did know what I was getting into.

Now, it may be because I know I'll have over 20km under my belt before I even get to the turn-off at the south end of Tunchang, and it may be because I forgot to tell Chantel and her husband I was getting close, or it may be because this will be a respectable twelfth town in Hainan that I'm able to newly add to my Map of Places I've Spent the Night, but I'm not going to go all the way to their place in Guantang¹ this time. Instead, I will plan to end about 15km earlier in Shibi.

By this time next year, this should be a solar farm

After making oatmeal in the room and coffee in the lobby, I decide that I'm on the road far too late to stop for "real food" before leaving town. This is what is broadly referred to as "a dumb arse mistake" and will result in almost everything² else I eat for the rest of the day coming out of my panniers. Luckily, although I haven't seen a Yummy Market in a while, I supplemented the Wanning resupply of "known and known quality items" in both Qiongzhong and Danzhou, and I really like the pouches of "sure, you can call this flavor New Orleans BBQ³ if you want to, just don't do it near a person from Louisiana" chicken⁴ which made it into my basket at the supermarket near the Yongfa Warriott⁵.

I've been told in the comments section (but don't have photographic evidence) of the video about this school that they changed their sign

Recently rebuilt Revolutionary Martyr's Memorial complete with a newly inscribed plaque replicating the info from the 1980s memorial

Red Star Baijiu is definitely the best thing to leave as an offering at a Martyr's Memorial

On the road I'm on between last night's plantation town and the G224 national road, there's a few places which must have had extra super gnarly problems that have already been turned to gravel but—other than colored surveyors' flags, the road construction and upgrading mostly hasn't made it's way here yet. When I come this way next, it will be much wider and better graded.

I spend perhaps three or four kilometers on the G224 before turning off onto a road that owing to differences in weather and exhaustion is so completely a different experience than last year that it's only because of things like a concrete slogan wall with Mao's calligraphy or a very specific weirdly named housing development that I can confirm that I am most definitely on the same road as last year.

It turns out that the amusing dish name is a legitimate dish name, but it looks like it says "braised dandruff"

A particularly interesting example of Mystic Deer⁶ at one of the restaurants that refused⁷ to feed me lunch

Acquiring this plate of egg fried rice was astonishingly difficult

Muchly confused by how this guy's advertised "diagnosing tree illness" service makes money by only charging 10y per tree for a call out

Part of what makes the experience so different is the shape I'm in. I'm one of those people for whom Ozempic also makes exercise easier. The week of my first shot, I climbed a mountain that was enough outside my physical capacity that I had serious muscle tremors on the way back down. Pushing myself to that level of exhaustion is not an unfamiliar experience and I should have spent the next two days barely able to get out of bed; instead, I was up and doing my 10,000 steps no problem.

I'd like to think that all this exercise means I'm a lot stronger than I was, but I know that the majority of my newfound ability to go up these hills without dismounting is actually the 20kg less Marian that I'm currently carrying.

Former main street of a town that no longer is

Some are as early as the first ten kilometers of last year's ride and I remember telling myself that I was only walking because "I hadn't shifted gears in time" or because "I'd stopped to take a photo" and decided that it didn't really matter if I walked. However, on a gray not sunny day where I'm riding not pushing, although this is the exact same route as last year, it is also—for all intents and purposes—somewhere else entirely.

Just after 5pm, and well before getting to what I know will be the "hard bit," I pass through a plantation township that (despite not being considered important enough to get named on Maps at most resolutions) is big enough to have government buildings, a hotel, and food.

By all rights, I ought to stop here. I know what's ahead of me. I know how steep it's about to get. But I'm sure that I'll be fine; I'm sure that the first town when I come out of the mountains, the one with the pagoda in the lake, will similarly end up not being a nonentity and will similarly turn out to actually be large enough to have things like a hotel.

Besides which, moving my destination to one place earlier than Shibi and continuing when I should stop means I won't be giving up for the day before I've hit the requisite 50 kilometers the way stopping at this plantation does, and will still earn me a new-to-me town for the Map.

So, I keep going.

Over the mountains and through the woods. The first few times I pedal all the way up something extra gnarly that I absolutely walked the last time, there's no great sense of accomplishment. However, by the time I'm in the rolling ups and downs on the other side of some minor reservoir, there's an incredible rush of adrenaline and accomplishment when I change gears fast enough that I'm still pedaling.

The difference in bike load (both myself and my reduced luggage) isn't enough to make the scary downhill that had me walking last year sufficiently unscary and I'll walk it again.

These betel palms apparently belong to the post office

Last year, I stopped here for a water break

By now, I'm really feeling the previous day's rural adventuring and, even if I know things are going to be easy peasy flatlands on an upgraded for tourism road once I get to the Place With A Pagoda, I'm really looking forward to being able to stop there.

Yeah, about that...the Place With a Pagoda doesn't even have any open restaurants.

Headlight pulled out and helmet off because I haven't come up with a good way of mounting my light on my helmet and I like this light way better than anything I've used that attaches directly to the bike, I'll go a fairly substantial distance after pulling out my headlight before I get to road that doesn't have streetlights.

I remember these hideously ugly statues from last year

I feel like I should go visit this place for realsies

Oddly enough, this is someplace with a much greater population density than where I've just been, but it's probably a different town government or something.

It's so very black that turning my headlight off reveals the Milky Way and, pretty as that is, I'm very glad for all the days I've had this light "uselessly" taking up space in my bags.

¹ It may also be because I want daylight to see all the cool stuff I knew I wasn't seeing last year

My face is definitely less rounded than last year

I probably ought to have taken a picture of the beautiful new building across the road as contrast to this scene, but this is what I found interesting

² Maybe 3km before I finally made it into Shibi, a local Earth God whose shrine is well stocked with a selection of both fresh and hella moldy fruit shared his offerings with me.

³ I believe KFC started the trend of "New Orleans" flavored chicken, but its possible that I only became aware of it after they hopped on a trend that had already started elsewhere in Asia.

⁴ So far, although there's a lot of savory stuff that I like at both Super Ming and Yummy Market, I have yet to find a non-dried meat product* that I like from among the more than 1,500 SKUs they each carry.

I see a hint of Mao heads and the 公 from 公忠

* Considering how quickly I went through the 20 packets of goose liver that arrived via the next Taobao resupply, it's probably not such a great idea for me to buy salty gooey protein-y things in large quantities.

⁵ I haven't yet come up with a good shorthand name for places named Hilton or places named Sheraton, but Warriott seems to me to be the best thing to call places named Marriott that very definitely are not Marriotts.

⁶ I first noticed one of these liquid metal trees and deer images about two years ago, during which time they've gradually become more and more common as so called decór among the class of people who like stock images.

⁷ If we were still having Covid restrictions, I'd describe this behavior as xenophobic. In this case, however, although the first two restaurants still had loads of people eating, I think they just really didn't want to bother cooking for an individual at 12:45.

The Earth God who kindly shared some of his non-moldy offerings with me

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 1,921 km (1,193 miles)

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