Rain

So the morning of June 3 was a rainy one - so, I wasn't all the certain whether I would take off or not - however after checking the forecasts and realizing that it was for rain forever, I decided that now was as good as a time as ever. My plan today was to go to a place called Changxiao, about halfway between Liancheng and Qingliu. It wasn't that far off, so I pulled out my umbrella, and off I went.

(Of course, I can't just go on an empty stomach - only after enjoying a snack of "Occident Favorite Cookie", the well known "Olio" cookie could I head out.)

After about a half hour, the rain cleared up and it was pretty nice, so I thought that it would turn out to be an ok day. However, as I was getting close to the relatively historic town of Sibao, the heavens opened, and it began to pour - hard. I only had my umbrella, and opted to protect my backpack and myself, so I got off my bike and huddled by my backpack in an effort to prevent all of my clothes from getting wet. It was pretty sad. After about 20 minutes of standing there on the side of the road, the rain let up slightly, and I kept on going for about another 15 minutes when the hard rain started up again. This time, I could see a structure about 200 meters ahead, so I slowly made my way toward it, and was extremely happy to make it under a roof.

There were 3 other motorbikers there as well, waiting out the storm. I actually ended up waiting about 2 hours for the rain to clear up - it seemed to never end, so when the rain was a bit lighter, I decided to head out and make it into Sibao. It continued to rain, but when I got to Sibao (it was about 5km away) where I was going to get lunch, the rain stopped completely! Of course it would happen like this. In any case, I took this chance to buy some rain gear, and a large plastic bag to protect my backpack.

Sibao's claim to fame is that it had one of China's first woodblock printing presses. Great. I went to a museum there - the ticket price was 20 yuan, which seemed a bit steep for a museum that really didn't have that much in it. The lady who was running the place was taking care of two crazy kids who were going nuts around me, and made it very distracting as I was looking at the displays - they were shouting something like "Niu gege" - which I don't know what it exactly meant (perhaps big brother cow), but which the woman seemed extremely embarrassed about and she kept telling the kids to stop saying it because it was rud. So I asked her what niugege meant, and she very obviously lied to me saying "I don't know - the kids are just yelling something and I don't even know what it means".............right.......... Anyways, the steep entry ticket, lack of really interesting displays and psycho kids made Sibao not that great of an attraction.

So, I kept on going. Changxiao was only 10 km away, and despite having gone so slowly, I made it there by 1pm. When I asked the locals, they told me that Qingliu was about 40 more km away, so I decided to go for it. After Changxiao, the road was being repaired. In one section that was particularly mucky given the large rains during the day, there was a line of trucks going one direction facing a long line of trucks going the other direction, and they seemed to be at a complete impasse. I felt extremely cool as my bike deftly navigated the muck, and sped past all the vehicles that had passed me back on the road - the foreigner on the crappy bike beat them all!

On the turnoff toward Qingliu, I saw a biker going the other direction on a very nice bike, so I knew he was a recreational cyclist - the first I've seen while I've been going. He wheeled around and turned out he was from Qingliu, and worked in the office that helped to find work for people moving from the countryside to the city. Pretty interesting, and we had a long discussion about China's rural to urban transition. Qingliu can be seen as the place where it is happening because the vast majority (according to this guy, 130,000 out of 150,000 total people) in Qingliu are farmers. Very interesting. He was also a committed Communist (yes, they still exist!), who took the time to quote several of Chairman Mao's poems and such. He introduced me to a travel agent who was a friend of his, and I ended up getting a room in the Party School hostel for free for the night! Wow. So that was pretty nice of them. People here are pretty nice. So it was a great contact to make.

So today was pretty hardcore - the total distance I went today was 84km, which given the rain and my terrible bike is pretty decent.