D28: 石壁 → 琼海

February 18, 2025

Multiple layers of Cultural Revolution Era slogans and sigils

I am beyond wiped out.

There's tired, and then's there's whatever the hell I am.

Granted that I didn't see any of this road when I rode it last year in the dark, it being a marked “scenic countryside route” means that I had fairly high expectations and it mostly didn't meet them.

I suppose it's possible that there is a 1950s superstructure somewhere underneath this blatantly early 2000s bridge

Of course, considering the absolute awesomeness of the one former village hall that was bought and turned into a barn during Privatization, and the conversations that I had with the owners who were far more interested in bragging about the massive ducks (that don't actually seem to be for sale) they were raising in the building than they were in talking about the building, it may just be that I don't have enough energy left in me to find the things which surround me as interesting as I would normally¹ find them.

The weather matches my level of tiredness

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are like "you want to take pictures of my duck coop? Sure. In fact, let me tell you all about the history of my duck coop."

So much so that its rare occasion where someone gets all stroppy, rude and "what are you doing here²" that's memorable

I ought to have taken a bunch of these photos and turned them into a collage, but the nuisance level³ of getting around to doing that is why it's already December 2025 before I'm uploading this journal entry and I want to have it finished before my translator catches up.

Some of this is faded. Some of it, however, was scratched off the wall.

Six of one, half a dozen of another, and the fact that I've got taobao packages due to arrive in Qionghai that the app says will finish arriving tomorrow is an excellent excuse to find myself a hotel as soon as I'm inside the urban area.

I stop first at a Yummy Market for a favorite kind of sugar soda⁴ that's rarely available outside of Guangdong and a rambling phone call with one of those someones who willfully refuses to understand that my company's services with regards to helping other companies find foreign employees are limited to people who are legally allowed to work⁵ and that no amount of how important or connected you think you are is going to change that.

Another combo of fading and deliberate removal

Unlike usual examples of deliberate removal, there doesn't seem to be a politically motivated pattern

The best part when photographing old stuff like this is when neighbors join me in my attempts to read the wall

Although there are certain kinds of round columns in traditional Chinese architecture, these specific round columns' appearance in architecture of the era probably came by way of Russia

Leaving my bike at the hotel, I walk more or less in the direction of a cluster of massage places that I saw on the initial search for a hotel. It's only more or less that direction because I somehow, with all of three turns and 600 meters to go, get lost and, long after I should have already arrived, find something else acceptable.

It's one of those places where the total lack of decor or privacy hints at customers who don't care about pretty and who have been coming for decades because the masseur knows what he's doing. As he manages to make most of the ongoing soreness from whatever the hell it is I did to my left thumb *poof* away into nothingness in between sessions of making me yelp from the pain of muscles sore with built up lactic acid, I decide that he does, in fact, know what he's doing.

This roundel definitely has wheat stalks

Oh! It's not Cultural Revolution. It's Great Leap Forward!

Then, with a stop for some fried noodles and an egg at a dodgy fast food restaurant, I'm back to the hotel for a long night's sleep.

¹ I originally wrote "as I ought to find them," but then I realized that no-one ought to find 1960s grafitti as interesting as I do.

I wonder if these windows ever had glass. The top part looks like it might have.

And, if there was glass, was it removed to be used elsewhere or did it get broken?

² For example, last fall in Hebei, the pair of druncles who tried to physically prevent me from contuining down the public road I was on because I hadn't shown them my ID or given them sufficient reason for why I was on a road in their village, looking at buildings

³ My photo collage app doesn't accept "search by date" and requires you to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll back to the photos you want to stick together. This is a pain in the ass two or three days after you've taken those photos. Two or three months ... yeah ...

The age of the signs on this public toilet indicate that the tile underneath the signs is a recent renovation

Very 90s (the white signs, not the blue)

Does anyone else giggle when they see "no tooting"? I just can't help but think of farts

Lanterns strung across the street at my lunch stop

⁴ A Malaysian drink called Sarsae, it tastes just like slightly flat A&W Root Beer.

⁵ Foreigners in China who are on a student visa are not legally allowed to work. Foreigners in China who are on a visiting family visa are not legally allowed to work. Foreigners in China who are on a tourist visa are not legally allowed to work. Foreigners in China who have a job with someone else who processed their resident permit through their company are also NOT allowed to work for other people.

Another old building where I spent less time

Something underneath the 公 about 人民 but I can't make it out

If I recall correctly, I'm mailing coffee to someone.

How often do people attack the check-in kiosk that this sign is necessary?

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 1,951 km (1,212 miles)

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