Last week was a bit drizzly; so, when it cam to making firm plans for the weekend I was a bit reluctant. Last weekends trip was an adventure in misery. It seemed that the tourism majors wanted some western victims to torture. There is no group of people singularly more unqualified to lead western tourists as Chinese tourism majors.
They have two basic instructions, never loose a tourist and get to, what they consider to be, the attraction quickly. The result is that they want everyone to remain in a tight group. To not risk mixing with other groups, and to keep moving. Because there are groups behind them, there is great pressure to keep moving even faster.
They think they know what tourists find interesting and any attempt to stop and take a picture anywhere else is met with great displeasure. Eventually I put my camera back into my back-pack and left it there until I had managed to ditch the “tour guides.” Attempts to take pictures were met with, “there is nothing interesting here, we must keep going.”
The path was about 4.5km made up mostly of broken concrete slabs, used as steps. While they refer to it as, “climbing the mountain,” it is climbing endless stairs to the top of the mountain.
There is a resort at the top of the mountain that I have written about before. It was the headquarters of Chiang Kai-Shek (蒋中正) during the war against Japan. At the resort, having ditched the tour guides. Dez, Brianne and myself went to the more interesting places, such as: Soong May-Ling's (宋美齡) ballroom (the wife of the famous General), the air raid shelter, and other visited other historic buildings (to the Chinese “historic” has no special meaning, it just means “old”）at this large site.
I even tried some “snake wine” it was vile, like all the other bai jo (saki) here. However, there was an attraction to drinking something with an assortment of serpents fermenting in the bottle. The vendor/snake handler having only one arm just added to the weirdness of the occasion.
We later met up with the tour guides and began the 7km, hurried, walk back to the buses. The walk took us past many of the other buildings built by westerners before they were ordered to leave this western island in the center of China, there was no compensation, the Chinese army just arrived and said, “you must leave now.” The buildings and fixtures were then taken for the Chinese officers who later sold or abandoned them and are slowly decaying into ruin.
This brings me to something else that I was discussing with some students last week. I was asking about the Chinese lack of maintenance. There really is none, if something breaks then it will get the bare minimum of repair that is necessary to get it working again and nothing more and most of the buildings, if they are not new, are a short step from being crumbling ruins.
The answer was a cultural gap. They said, “if it is old you should get a new one,” in reference to cars, bicycles and machines. As far as buildings, they felt that the buildings should be allowed to fall into disrepair. That way they provide places to build new buildings. If you see America as a throw away society, you ain't seen nothing...
This weekend I planned to go on a ride with bicycle club, who tend to go places that I enjoy and have a very tolerant attitude, even if some of the stuff we do is just plain nutty. I didn't set an alarm on Saturday, as Friday was raining and the weather report said, “more rain.” So, of course, it was a fine, if cloudy, day. As such I didn't do much on Saturday, I went and got a haircut, did some cleaning in my flat, and walked up to my classroom to watch a movie on the big screen that I have in there.
I had to go to the classroom to do some class related stuff anyways. Last week was a test, I had them giving short presentations and I had left my grade notes in the room so I needed to go up and get them. I also wanted to d/l some stuff into my laptop. Due to the network security in the residences I am unable to connect my eeePC. However, the security is entirely turned off in my classroom. So, I use that connection when I need one.
Then, on Sunday I awoke in a timely manner and got ready to go. I was a bit slow getting out the door and as I approached the bike club meeting place someone shouted for me and I saw the club going the opposite direction on the street I was on. I made a U turn (yes, in traffic; hey, this is China, everyone drives like that) and pulled into the line. This put me near the head of the procession and I put effort into maintaining my position I the line.
The nice thing about being in the front of the pack is that you get longer rest breaks. However, unlike the tour guides, this group understands that a rest break means that you wait until your heart rate has returned to near resting.
As usual we made frequent rest breaks, about every 10km on the way out. And had a good time. The group does get real spread out. I am always in the front half and what I have noticed is that the front half, while it is spread, is way ahead of the last quarter. Those of us near the front raced through some little village with a main street that amounted to little more than and alley. Then we left there the road turned to reed covered concrete. To insure that it was slick enough, there was a person out throwing water on the reeds. Shortly after that it turned to dirt as it took us past another walled village.
We then entered a small town for yet another rest and regroup. From there the front runners raced to the destination about 15 km away. The whole way, as we were maintaining speeds between the high twenties to the low thirties, I kept two thoughts in my mind, one was as I approached turns and poor surfaces, was, “ in order to win you have to stay in the game.” The second thought was, “someone has to be last; but, it sure as hell isn't going to be me.” I was third to the destination. And, I still felt good.
We then did the usual picture taking and then headed off for lunch. When we got to the first restaurant we found that they did not have the facilities for all of us as this was an unusually large crowd (I had counted 59 and I think there were more). A group then headed off and I thought that they were going to some other, nearby restaurant. That turned out to not be the case, they were going to the next large town, to a place that we often eat on these rides. It was about 14km away. I have to say, at that point, I was getting a bit tired and testy.
As there were only about 15 of us who had ridden off, we spread out and pretty quickly were riding by ourselves. There was no real way to get lost as about 1-2 km away was a major highway. It was visible during a lot of the ride. If I had really needed to I could have cross countried it to the highway and gone back that way. At one point the road I was on even went under the highway, and I recognized that spot from previous trips.
In a couple more kilometers I met up with the others for lunch, with a few stragglers falling in behind. Lunch was actually pretty good and we rested for a little while; but, nothing like the three hours common to the rides. About that time we started to get ready to go. I wandered to a, nearby, store for water and was a bit of excitement for the people in the shop. While the owner of the restaurant had seen and recognized me from before, the others had not realized that I was there. The shopkeeper even called out her daughter, who was in the process of washing her hair, in order to see the foreigner.
From there we pushed back. It was about forty kilometers and there were no real planned groups. The return trip generally ends up that way, for whatever it seems that the return leg is much more “on your own.” I was in a bit of a hurry, as I was expecting to meet some students at 16:30 so I was pushing. This kept me near the front and even at my rest breaks I was checking my pulse and the time. This is actually the first time I have entered the city first ( really I was second, I was passing the first person as he was entering the city).
I would have been fourth but one of the front group blew a tyre and his friends stopped to help him. There was no reason for me to stop as there was nothing I could do. Besides, you know you are in touch with your evil side when you see a person in front of you have a mechanical failure and your thought is, “ah, there is justice!”
