China Blog #61
Most
days are now hilly. The climbs are gradual and I'm pretty comfortable
with them. There has also been a lot of rain these past few days and I
need to be careful of my footing for there is a fair bit of slippery
slime on the side of the road and the lime wash-off from the road
markings can also be a hazard.
A 23-kilometre effort took me to Gantang.
Next day in a town on the way to Fu'an I took a wrong turn and wasted five kilometres. Well, had I not have gotten myself lost I wouldn't have got myself locked in the toilet in a burger joint! I was stuck inside there for about five minutes trying to open a flimsy latch which had a fiddly snip. I tried every conceivable way to open it but to no avail and even had the workers shouting instructions through the door to me in Chinese. They just didn't realise that I could be in there for a year and still wouldn't understand a word they said. Sometimes peoples attitude seems to be 'keep shouting until he understands!' Eventually I just picked up an iron bar which seemed to be an extension for a toilet brush and prised the lock off. My attitude was that such a crappy lock shouldn't be there.. What about people with vision impairment. As I walked out a lot of the customers sniggered at me. Lol,
Then I laughed at a cyclist who rode his bike over a bridge. He carried so many balloons that I feared he would be lifted up off the ground with the next heavy gust of wind!
Later on and down the road, I walked through a tunnel which was 2,500 metres long. Thankfully there was a separate tunnel for pedestrians and bikes.
This tunnel separated Fu'an from another large town.
In Fu'an, a large metropolis of about 450,000 I stopped at a shop for a drink. I read somewhere that the town won the best international tea award over 100 years ago and even though the tea company has long since gone out of business people still talk about that award with pride.
There was music being played from a stage and the road I was walking down was closed to traffic due to the Lantern Festival. I missed a lot of the fun was in the wind-down mode. This is held at the end of the Chinese New Year holiday. In that store, the young couple who owned it fussed over me as their young boy did his homework. The couple kept insisting on giving me some of their favourite snacks and two bottles of water.
A 23-kilometre effort took me to Gantang.
Next day in a town on the way to Fu'an I took a wrong turn and wasted five kilometres. Well, had I not have gotten myself lost I wouldn't have got myself locked in the toilet in a burger joint! I was stuck inside there for about five minutes trying to open a flimsy latch which had a fiddly snip. I tried every conceivable way to open it but to no avail and even had the workers shouting instructions through the door to me in Chinese. They just didn't realise that I could be in there for a year and still wouldn't understand a word they said. Sometimes peoples attitude seems to be 'keep shouting until he understands!' Eventually I just picked up an iron bar which seemed to be an extension for a toilet brush and prised the lock off. My attitude was that such a crappy lock shouldn't be there.. What about people with vision impairment. As I walked out a lot of the customers sniggered at me. Lol,
Then I laughed at a cyclist who rode his bike over a bridge. He carried so many balloons that I feared he would be lifted up off the ground with the next heavy gust of wind!
Later on and down the road, I walked through a tunnel which was 2,500 metres long. Thankfully there was a separate tunnel for pedestrians and bikes.
This tunnel separated Fu'an from another large town.
In Fu'an, a large metropolis of about 450,000 I stopped at a shop for a drink. I read somewhere that the town won the best international tea award over 100 years ago and even though the tea company has long since gone out of business people still talk about that award with pride.
There was music being played from a stage and the road I was walking down was closed to traffic due to the Lantern Festival. I missed a lot of the fun was in the wind-down mode. This is held at the end of the Chinese New Year holiday. In that store, the young couple who owned it fussed over me as their young boy did his homework. The couple kept insisting on giving me some of their favourite snacks and two bottles of water.
A kilometre further on down the road I stopped
and found a nice hotel which was run by a friendly couple called Daisy
and Ling. They first met in university and got married three years ago
and have two small children. I took a rest day there and on the second
night and being the only guest in the hotel they kindly invited me into
their quarters for a delicious dinner. While we ate a huge seafood and
vegetable meal Daisy who speaks very good English - and any Chinese
person who warns me of rheumatism must have a good command - told me
that their hotel has 22 rooms and they rarely get a foreigner. Perhaps
once every six months a foreign cyclist would stop by. I'm the first one
to arrive on foot. It seems that no foreigner really comes to these
small towns, except by accident.
One thing I had wondered about in China is that I never see a newspaper. Expecting some kind of a Chinese government conspiracy answer I was a bit disappointed when Daisy said that people get their news from their phones. Well, yes but they have a lot of newspapers in Taiwan and also in the Philippines.
One thing I had wondered about in China is that I never see a newspaper. Expecting some kind of a Chinese government conspiracy answer I was a bit disappointed when Daisy said that people get their news from their phones. Well, yes but they have a lot of newspapers in Taiwan and also in the Philippines.
I followed that up with a
44-kilometre day and walked until 8.30 the following evening. I was
horrified to see the sight of a man who was pushing a cart lying on the
ground with blood coming from his head. He obviously had been walking
with the traffic to his back, which is the stupid unsafe law here and in
many other Asian countries. I didn't see the accident or how it
happened but wondered why the solitary cop just stood beside him with
his patrol car protecting the poor man from the rear. In the meantime,
no doubt he was further traumatised from the music which blared from a
house which was less than fifty metres away. Would someone not ask them
to turn it off. I can't imagine what kind of a headache that wretched
man had and all this time cars weaved past and of course, honked at the
police officer who was blocking the road and stealing them of their
precious time.
Knowing I was heading towards a remote mountainous area
I pulled out my thermos which I haven't used for several months. In a
store, I filled it up with boiling water and bought some pot noodles and
snacks for this stretch as I figured I might have to rough it that
night. On I walked and the rain got heavier. Rarely am I happy to see a
tunnel but I was that night as it gave me 1500 metres of shelter as I
walked through it on a pedestrian path. A couple of kilometres later I
came to a sheltered roadside picnic area. There would do nicely and I
settled down for the night on my air mattress and snuffled up inside my
sleeping bag. I was glad I filled up my thermos and enjoyed my pot
noodles that I purchased that afternoon.
I had a good nights sleep and was really motivated for a five am the start when my alarm went off. I just went back asleep when I discovered it was raining heavily. It eased off at around nine o' clock, so much for my early start. February 21st, that was a miserable day and the only highlight was walking my 28,000th kilometre of this walk. I reached it about five k south of Xixixiang where I found a cheap hotel to dry my clothes off with a hairdryer. I had been on the lookout for a waterproof cape that the motorcyclists use. I eventually found one in this town.
Thanks for tuning in and please remember that early cancer screening saves lives.
I had a good nights sleep and was really motivated for a five am the start when my alarm went off. I just went back asleep when I discovered it was raining heavily. It eased off at around nine o' clock, so much for my early start. February 21st, that was a miserable day and the only highlight was walking my 28,000th kilometre of this walk. I reached it about five k south of Xixixiang where I found a cheap hotel to dry my clothes off with a hairdryer. I had been on the lookout for a waterproof cape that the motorcyclists use. I eventually found one in this town.
Thanks for tuning in and please remember that early cancer screening saves lives.
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