Thursday, 10th December, 2015
- Day 100/298
- 33%
Realising that every turn towards adventure is a step away from my target of Hong Kong, I battle ongoing FOMO until an intended detour sees me get my fix anyway.
Fighting FOMO
A beautiful detour.
A knock on the door of my hotel room signals the return of my sleeping gear.
My friend from the China South Locomotive Company has very kindly driven or bussed for an hour, so that I don’t have to lose a day retracing my steps. Knowing me fairly well by now, he warns me not to dawdle in getting to Datong. Snow storms are coming!
Naively hoping that the weather was getting better rather than worse, my recent feelings of relaxation and contentment are displaced by stress and anxiety. Hopefully the worst case scenario is that I get snowed in in some cosy town, rather than buried in an avalanche somewhere!
Of course, the stress at my slow progress also remains ever present, with my average daily rate wavering at around half of the 100 kilometres I'm supposed to travel. 38 days remain in which to get to Hong Kong.
Part of my stress comes from thinking about all the cool places that I’ll miss out on if I ride more and stop less. However, I am slowly realising that every town is cool in some way and therefore any town can be skipped, because any other town will provide a worthy substitute.
My other realisation is that every town is statued, monumented, signposted and conducted in Chinese. My interactions with local people are limited to buying lunch / dinner / snacks for the road, or asking for directions to accommodation. I’m really limited in my understanding of any town, whether it happens to be in my planned itinerary or not.
Another big part of my stress, is of course, about money.
Today I am consumed by Subscription Rage, the side effect of trying to cancel a subscription that won’t die. Battling with AJAX websites over the VPN, the Adobe support person tries to guilt-trip me by reading generic scripted responses about how they’re sad about my decision to leave and then aggressively attempting to up-sell me on a new subscription with the ‘incentive’ of a free month.
I’m running out of money and I don’t need this expensive software while I’m touring anyway. And it’s my right to unsubscribe, godammit! The subscription model is a total scam and these big companies are only looking at their own cashflow. It’s difficult for people to start and stop their subscriptions to suit their own needs, and it’s clear that the auto-renew feature is just a way to extract more money from unwitting customers.
Usually I could just vent my rage through the usual channels of Facebook / Twitter / Slack, but being as I’m now in a country where these channels are not supported, the simple task of publicly naming and shaming a company becomes much more difficult. I wonder how the locals do it, if at all.
Adobe do finally capitulate, but in a follow-up email they warn me that auto-renew has been turned off and to please consider turning your auto-renew back on. Oh dear.
Departing The Hotel For The Persons Coming From The Outside Boundaries, a carpark employee points me in the right direction.
The road leads up a reasonably steep hill. Passable on the low-geared Troll, it proves too much for some of the locals’ electric scooters. Their tiny engines rev unenthusiastically, barely carrying them up the slope. Some give up and dismount, pushing them at a much faster pace.
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Keyboard instructions
- Navigate with: LEFT + RIGHT arrows
- Select with: ENTER
- Enlarge with: TAB then ENTER
- Pan with: TAB x2 then LEFT + RIGHT arrows
Mountainous backdrop.
Classic village, contemporary remix.
Country road.
Getting nicer.
And nicer!
The ride out of town features a stunning mountainous backdrop.
Satellite towns dot the road, a classic Chinese village here, modern low-rise buildings clustered around a power plant there.
In one classic village, classic Chinese music has been updated with the addition of drum rolls and a thumping dance kick. People sit there and chill, while dogs yap frantically at the echoing beat. I’d love to investigate this siren song further, but every turn towards adventure is a step away from my target of Hong Kong.
There are a few more tourists out here. A couple of girls are taking pictures of each other and I offer to take one of them together. But the sun is bright and I have limited success in repositioning them, silhouette being too foreign a word for my translate app’s autocomplete. They take a photo of me, but I forget my rule about reciprocating.
Heading down a country road, it becomes progressively more idyllic, with the snow-white surface complementing a corridor of tall brown trees.
And the Troll’s squeak is noticeably absent. Perhaps this is due to dry overnight storage, or maybe it has realised that it can’t compete with the drollness of Bill Bryson’s Audible narrator. Whatever the reason, I’m very excited about this new development!
Select a photo to display
Keyboard instructions
- Navigate with: LEFT + RIGHT arrows
- Select with: ENTER
- Enlarge with: TAB then ENTER
- Pan with: TAB x2 then LEFT + RIGHT arrows
The slippery ramparts.
The beautiful lake.
Resting Troll.
The heavily inscribed plaque.
Way off course.
Back on track.
Origin of the spoken word.
A mishmash of different building techniques.
Walking sticks?
Eventually I reach an icy rampart. The surface is super slippery and I make my way carefully across, trying not to hold up the motorised traffic.
I’m passing in front of a beautiful lake, which is partially iced over. A small pagoda sits on the lakeshore and further up the bank there is a heavily inscribed plaque, against which I lean the Troll. The Chinese characters are interspersed with years, lengths and volumes, perhaps tracking the rise and fall of lake levels. However with only a couple of empty lines remaining I fear that they’ll need to install new plaques to continue the story.
A spoken loop emanates from the sound system of a nearby village. It sounds ominously demanding and I decide against exploring the village’s orderly streets lest my paranoia is justified.
Checking my position on the map, I’m alarmed to find myself way off course. Ooops! The lake is a beautiful mistake, but the detour will definitely slow me down. My GaiaGPS map only shows fuzzy main roads, but after a bit of unnecessary backtracking down the idyllic road I’m happy to discover that my sharp maps.me vector map contains enough detail to reorientate myself, a white line leading me out of the lakeside community.
Back on the country road, a long wall runs alongside the roadside. Its construction is a mishmash of different building techniques and it reminds me of websites that are built by one company and updated by another.
In the fields that follow, stick-like plants with curved tops suggest that this is the place where walking sticks are grown. An old man stoops over to pick up a big bundle of sticks, perhaps one for each day of the year.
Further out, a goods train passes by over a pretty embankment, pulling maybe a hundred wagons of what looks like coal.
Like it, I’m on my way to the next place. Would every detour be this rewarding? Probably not, but I still can’t shake my FOMO.
A bit further on, a crazy three wheeled contraption passes by and then stops.
It looks like a truck and sounds like a motorbike. The friendly female passenger reminds me of Wanna and asks me some questions. Caught off guard, there’s no time to fire up Google Translate and I realise how dependent on it I have become.
Nǐ hǎo and Xièxiè (sheah-sheah) are still the mainstays of my conversations, despite a total of twenty days in the country. The ChineseSkill (opens new window) app is still on my phone, but it’s impossible to learn hands-free and my comprehension has fallen by the wayside.
I reel off the usual nonsense, about how I’m from New Zealand and heading south to Hong Kong. Sure I can show her a map, but it’s a pretty base level of communication.
Select a photo to display
Keyboard instructions
- Navigate with: LEFT + RIGHT arrows
- Select with: ENTER
- Enlarge with: TAB then ENTER
- Pan with: TAB x2 then LEFT + RIGHT arrows
Just the basics.
China map.
Chinese national anthem?
Invitation to salute.
DIY dinner.
Cranking with coal.
One of the passionate presenters.
When I finally reach Bihong I’m surprised at how easy it is to find accommodation there.
Pulling off the main road into a parallel side street, I stop outside a grocery store and enquire about a place to stay.
It’s late and I hope that they don’t send me down the road to the official hotel for foreigners, because frankly I don’t have time for that.
The people in the store don’t seem too keen on the idea, but the shopkeeper takes me to see a man living next door. It seems that money can overcome all obstacles, so ¥ 100 ($23.94) is paid and a room allocated to me, the Troll stored in the adjacent hall.
It’s a sprawling complex, two separate areas of rooms, and a dining hall through which we entered the building. The rooms seem mostly empty, with only intermittent voices and throat-clearing making the reverberous journey through the empty halls.
My room is a dorm for four, perhaps justifying the high price tag. Far from flash, it nonetheless has my basic needs covered. A bed, a TV, a few power outlets and the warmth of a soon-to-be-cranking pot belly stove. I mean, what more do you need?
The room’s plain walls are decorated with several laminated maps of China. They look pretty dated, and the larger one features a call-out box containing a music score, perhaps the patriotic notes of the national anthem.
Next to these, a wordy notice flows around an illustration of a uniformed man, apparently saluting the reader. I have no idea what it says, but I feel a strong impulse to salute him back!
I DIY up some dinner, a container of cooked instant noodles with added sausage and spicy greens. A bottle of Pepsi and a jar of chilli add the finishing touches.
Cozied up in my room, I spend an enjoyable evening watching a TV show about a man extracting venom from snakes. Although it appears to be a blatant ripoff of Steve Irwin’s Crocodile Hunter, the voiceover takes it to a whole new level. The convincing Chinese voice actor makes good use of rapid panting to mimic the excitement of the passionate presenter.
Topping up the roaring fire with chunks of coal, I realise that I’m probably speeding up global warming. But this reminds me of the time that I camped with the Mongols in the cellphone tower and we ate something resembling dog, and I love those nostalgic connections.