Friday, 11th December, 2015
- Day 101/298
- 33%
Making up for the previous day’s navigational error, I have three encounters with Chinese folks then ride into the night to make it to the city of Fengzhen, just 40km from my destination of Datong.
A long day
Your light is brighter than my light.
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It’s a fine day.
Gormless pose with one of the many Men in Black.
The aeronautical swoosh.
The day starts off well, with the parted curtains revealing a fine morning, notably free of snowstorms.
I rise at 7am and am on the road by half past eight, skipping breakfast in favour of a couple of cereal drinks, leftovers from Mongolia.
The first town I reach has a restaurant, but it is closed and in annoying proximity to a carpark containing shiny black plateless cars. Their drivers are similarly devoid of personality, yet each demands to have their photo taken with me. Feeling like an unwilling celebrity, I put on my most gormless face, to indicate that I’d rather be eating breakfast right now. They then escape the foolish scene en masse, leaving me to be thankful that this doesn’t happen everyday.
A few kilometres later, I pass a gated complex containing an aeronautical swoosh atop a metal sphere. Perhaps my strange fanboys were in fact the local Men in Black.
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Carbs for a long ride.
A proud moment.
Flower arrangement.
Crochet skills.
Thankfully the small grocery store in the next town is open.
I grab a Coke and, although I’m dubious about the tastiness of the biscuits on offer, pick two of one kind and four of the other. The shopkeeper adds two more of the first kind to my bag and I don’t know enough Chinese to protest.
The shopkeepers are a husband-and-wife team and her husband invites me into their back room. Pouring me some cups of tea from the ubiquitous thermos, I pair these with one of my surprisingly moreish biscuits. We have a chat via the Youdao translation app, and a fair amount of guesswork, and I tell him that I’ve done a risky thing, quitting my job and selling my stuff in order to see Asia. Expecting him to be disappointed by my reckless abandon, he instead gives me the thumbs-up.
Switching to pictures, he draws Chinese characters on a golden Chinese phone, then points at them, but I’m none the wiser.
His wife then points out her crochet clock and flower arrangements, which she is clearly proud of. They match her red jersey, brightening up the place and I’m happy to take some photos of her achievements. But it takes an embarrassing 15 minutes to overcome the technical hurdles required to copy them from my iPhone to her husband’s Android. Eventually I succeed, but his photo viewer is locked with a passcode which he can’t remember.
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One in a sequence of underpasses.
Toilet ambush.
Disneyesque masterpiece.
This is Jining.
Feeling re-energized after the biscuit and tea, I continue on and realise that I am now en route to the town of Jining.
This is a surprise, as I have a friend who is going to be in Jining in the next day or so, but, when we had consulted the map together, Jining was in a different location altogether. I wondered how many Jinings there actually are in China.
At any rate, by this time I am on too much of a Coke-and-biscuit-fueled roll to make any stopovers, so I apologetically carry on and head for the town of Hongshaba, going via Jining, but not planning on stopping there.
The entrance to Jining is stressful, with no shoulder to ride on and thoughtless drivers coming straight at me. Their attempts to pass two or three vehicles at once remind me that drivers near big towns are far less courteous than those found on the open road.
A cool series of underpasses leads me to a quick toilet stop, but this becomes the usual show & tell when I am ambushed by a small crowd which gathers around my bike. Their natural leader is a lady from Inner Mongolia. Dressed in bright pink, she offers to take me out to lunch, but keen to keep up my sugary progress I politely decline her well wishes, feeling quite rude at this afterwards.
The G208 winds its way around Jining before spitting me out the other side. Karma catches up with me on the way out of town, as I stop to attend to a sugar crash outside a Disney-esque building. And again as I pass Hongshaba - realising that it’s not on the road that I’m on, I’ll need to ride another 30km to the next city of Fengzhen.
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A family of four.
Cooling towers on the horizon.
Your light is brighter than my light.
There you go.
Now I can see.
Back in the countryside, the traffic calms down and the riding is largely uneventful.
I pass another one of those state sanctioned billboards. This one seems to advocate for the One Child Policy, but shows two parents, with their young daughter pushing a second, younger child in a pram.
On the horizon, huge cooling towers indicate power plants supporting the next city, Fengzhen.
But as daylight recedes, the road becomes steeper and busier, with large noisy trucks passing in threes and fours, or sixes and sevens when they attempt to pass each other all at the same time.
I used to mountain bike at night. My powerful, helmet mounted beam created a cocoon of light which from afar must have looked like a firefly, peacefully drifting up the mountainside.
Unfortunately touring is a completely different beast. My Luxos U dynamo lamp only lights the road directly in front of me. When cars and trucks pass, their powerful yellow beams completely wash out the small white pool. Afterwards, I can’t see anything. Then my eyes adjust and I can follow my beam again.
There’s a shoulder now, but it’s packed in intermittent snow, ice and hardened mud. The poor lighting conditions make riding at speed quite treacherous.
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Superstar service station.
The early bird catches the Ks.
Finally, I roll into Fengzhen.
I pass several service stations, their exteriors emblazoned with dancing LEDs allowing them to imitate night clubs or casinos. I wonder what special services they offer to their Heavy Vehicle driving clientele.
Passing an LED colour fading bridge, I spot a sign. Written in both Chinese and English, it reads Railway Station, New Area, and something else which is hidden behind a tree. I ride towards the New Area and stop at the first hotel that has hotel in its name. It is the Feng Zhen Hotel, which I mistakenly read as the Feng Hen Hotel, due to a blown bulb in its sign.
The staff gave me a Stand(ard) Room at a presumably discounted rate of ¥ 110, rather than the ¥ 138 shown on the sign. I’m pleased to pay less for a change, but then they spend ages on the phone discussing my passport.
After receiving my room key, I ask if I can bring my bike inside and they defer my request to their two security guards. Dispirited, they surprisingly say that I can, but encourage me to wheel it in through the revolving door at the main entrance.
I have my doubts, and as I pass fully into the door I become wedged stuck. The two guards are in the next segment of the door and can’t help, only saying things in Chinese through the glass.
In the end I really have to push the Troll to get it out the other side, using hand signals to indicate how close I was to being permanently stuck in there. Everyone thinks that this is very funny, which is at least a nice bonding moment. The men lock my unloaded bike in the storage room and carry my 5 bags up 3 flights of stairs to the 4th floor. It’s a nice gesture, perhaps one done out of respect. And I guess a lift costs extra!
Checking my speedo, I’m impressed to learn that I’ve beaten my former record by clocking up a total of 110km. But it took me all day, nine and a quarter hours with the last few descending into sketchy night riding. It’s my longest day so far and I’m knackered.