Geoff's Wedding

This was the first mixed Chinese/Foreign wedding that I've been to.
I've been to Chinese friends' weddings and I've been to foreign
friends' weddings but I've never been to one where a laowai and a
zhongguoren got married.

As a westerner I found the wedding to be far more tasteful than most
Chinese ones I've gone to. There was no karaoke, no emcee, hardly any
fireworks, and no performances by song and dance troupes or acrobats.
Geoff and Linda got married on the beach under the palm trees at
Longlou. The service was seperate from the meal and everyone sat in
rows to watch it.

With the bride on one side and a bridesmaid on the other to hold him
up the bride's father walked down the aisle with her. Fancy clothing
was the game of the day and not a single person at the wedding was
seen wearing "just whatever" in the usual Chinese way of having no
idea of the meaning of "situation appropriate" clothing. (If you wear
a suit to work then jeans and a t-shirt are your casual formal.) This
was particularly strange considering that the invitation specifically
said it was "casual wear" and a few of the western guests were still
in shorts, one bridesmaid took her heels off mid-ceremony, and people
started to go skinny dipping around 10pm.

The bride threw a bouqet of flowers which, after the symbology was
explained, one Chinese girl was so desperate to grab she actually
knocked down another girl.

The people at the hotel were a right pain in the ass with things like
getting large quantities of food ready, not throwing out things like
half the specially brought from Australia wedding cake or the roast
beef (which had originally been planned as sandwiches for the
honeymoon), or actually getting the beach cleaned up. As I got there
a day early it was up to me and Sue (another early arrival) to do the
yelling and to try to get them to clean up, but despite a full month's
advance notice the hotel staff thought it was "too hot" and besides
which "that isn't garbage it's just firecracker paper...beer
bottles...styrofoam" and when they did manage to sweep up some small
portion of the area where the actual wedding was to take place,
instead of bagging and taking it somewhere (like the compost pile
behind the hotel perhaps) they just dumped it over on the other side
of a large rock on the beach.

Of course, after the meal the Chinese people mostly all got up and
left. Even though the arranged bus with free transporation back to
the city didn't leave until 9pm most of them had come by car and most
of them were gone by 8pm, even before the western style wedding cake
was brought out and cut. This is normal. At Chinese weddings people
don't sit around and talk late into the evening with their friends
(though a group of friends might go out together after the wedding)
and they definitely don't take the groom swimming.

After last weekend's mostly successful ride to Paul Feng's village
through Wenru and out to Chengmai before catching the bus back to
Haikou I figured I'd have no real problem biking out to the wedding.
Headwind all the way it was also going to be near as flat as a pancake
so I shouldn't been hurting too bad to do it. Also, because of last
weekend's mostly successful ride's inclusion of roads that I had never
been on (an increasing rarity in Hainan) I decided that this weekend's
should also include roads that I had never been on.

There are three basic routes from Haikou to Longlou by bicycle.

1. The "Just Like a Car" Route - About 120km. Done either on the old
Haiwen Provincial Highway or on the new expressway one takes a
straight line route from Haikou to Wenchang, turns north about 25
klicks, and then east to Longlou. The advantage of this route is that
it requires almost no turns and nearly no thought. The disadvantage
is that whether you take the unsafe expressway or the slightly safer
Haiwen both roads are heavily trafficked, and the Haiwen has extremely
poor quality pavement.

2. The "Dazhipo - Baoluo - Changsa" Route - About 130km. Starts by
heading out on the Haiwen Provincial Highway, features about 15 klicks
of heavily trafficked road that, judging by the occasional paint
stripe made out of broken crockery, appears to have last been repaved
in the late 80s, then turns north from Dazhipo to Baoluo and then east
on newer, smaller, relatively lightly used roads. The advantage of
this route is that all of the turns are obvious ones, asking
directions is easy, and roads are in good condition. The disadvantage
is that it takes you north before going south, goes through few towns
with places to buy drinks or food, and has only one spot where a tired
cyclist can consider giving up and spending the night.

3. The "Qukou - Puqian Ferry + Baoluo - Changsa" Route - about 145km.
Turning north just past the airport one wanders into a touristified
area of "civilized villages" (so called because they have paved roads,
small restaraunts, and throw their garbage in bins rather than pits),
three turns later there's a dodgy half hour ferry across the bay to
Puqian, followed by some only slightly confusing roads south to Baoluo
after which one meets up with the route mentioned just above. The
advantage of this route is that there are no heavily trafficked roads
and no poorly paved roads. The disadvantage is that you must know
exactly where you are going, be good at reading a map, be willing to
frequently ask directions on the fiddly bits, and you end up going
first north then south then north again

I, of course, decided to take route number 4.

4. The "I Wonder Where This Goes + There Ought to Be a Through Road"
Route.

I started by asking a number of my cyclist friends there opinion on
alternate ways to get to Longlou. All of them, even the man who is
known as "living map" suggested that I go with #2 or possibly take #3
halfway and spend the night at Jinshan (a full 60km from final
destination).

When that didn't work and when I couldn't actually find any maps of
Hainan in my apartment (I store my maps in my head), I went online and
looked up "Wenchang County Map" on google. None of the ones I found
were very good maps and most of them didn't even have some of the
roads that I know from route #3 but I drew a straight line of where I
wanted to go, wrote down the names of the towns on the way, and set
off on An Adventure.

This isn't quite as stupid as it sounds. On the maps I was looking at
there was no road access of any kind shown for most of the towns I was
writing down. I was working on the theory that any town large enough
to have gotten onto a poorly drawn tourist sketch map of Wenchang
County had to be a town large enough to have a way in and a way out,
furthermore there was a good chance that the eastern way out would
probably lead east to the next town to the east.

Haikou - Meilan Airport - Qukou - Puqian - Jinshan - Fengpo -
Wengtian - (Pokou) - Longma - (Changlian) - Longlou

I put Pokou and Changlian in parantheses because I never actually
found either of those places. In Wengtian no one seemed to have heard
of Pokou but they all gave reasonably consistent directions to Longma.

I did 140 kilometers of beautiful traffic free roads, mostly concrete,
rarely wide enough to warrant so much as a yellow line, and with
frequent stops in small towns where I could ask directions (and buy
more water). Start to finish, including two tea breaks, lunch, a
ferry, a stop to find someone with a needle and thread to sew the
growing tear in my bike shorts while I was still wearing them, getting
lost at least once, and an hourlong pitch black ride henceforth
entitled "I Forgot Sunset Was at Seven" it took me 10 hours.

If I hadn't started the morning off riding in the wrong direction so I
could translate while Tim looked at a secondhand bike for TC's 5th
birthday I figure it would have been 133km. I figure it this way
because it was 10km from my door to the bike shop but the odo only
read 17km when I got to a spot that I already know is 10km from my
door. If I can refine this route (ie - not get lost next time) it
will be a much better way to take mainland bike friends the next time
I decide to do a round the island and ride to Longlou.

About twenty minutes into the trip I correctly figured out how to use
the "pick up the phone" feature on my handsfree headset. I've had the
phone for four days at this point and have been happily exploring its
capacity as an mp3 player but keep forgetting that the headphones in
my ears mean I don't need to reach into my pocket and press the green
button to pick up. Reaching into my pocket screws things up so it was
a good thing I figured this out. An hour later they called me back so
as to spend 30 minutes being interviewed on live radio and I was able
to keep riding my bike.

I took lunch and milk tea just past the airport. There's a cluster of
about fifteen buildings at the intersection most people take to get on
the expressway. I also bought a kilo of oranges, snagged my bike
shorts, and broke the lid of yet another Walgreens water bottle (good
thing they were free).

The snag in my bike shorts grew as I rode. Grew and grew and grew.
By the time I got to the next town it was less of a snag and more of a
gash running from upper thigh to just about the knee. It would have
been difficult enough to take my shorts of mid-ride (I, uh, I'm not
wearing any underwear) to have them mended but, in order to make
things as complicated as possible, I had bib shorts on.

I found someone to loan me a needle and thread and sewed them shut
with big ugly stitches while I was still wearing them. They sat and
watched and me, commented on my sewing ability (or lack thereof) and
questioned why I would want to mend such a clearly inferior piece of
clothing that would be unusable in the future. The bibs actually
helped some in this case since they made it obvious that I had no way
to take my clothes off (nor was the shopkeeper's suggestion of "buying
a pair of pants here" going to help much with me being 6 inches taller
than the lot of them.)

Qukou is a pretty drecky looking place and the ferry across to Puqian
somewhat daunting (at least they now have lifejackets!) but it was a
gorgeous day to be out on the water with the wind blowing and I really
like Puqian. The main street is all 18th and 19th century southern
European style buildings with overhangs and arched windows and the
town doesn't extend much beyond main street.

Last time I was in Puqian was most of two years ago with a couple of
cyclists from Singapore. The girl was quite pleased when some random
guy stopped her and tried to ask her for directions.

I like the road between Puqian and Jinshan. It's flat. The headwind
is barely noticeable. For some odd reason there are a couple of small
villages with bilingual signs in Chinese and what looks like Thai.
And there are quite a couple of very cool very decrepit bridges next
to the ones you cross rivers on. I've got a thing about bridges. To
illustrate the constancy of the wind in northern Hainan I passed a
relatively new windfarm.

At Jinshan I got directions to Fengpo. The only problem I had was the
perennial "if you go that way a bit you can catch a nice bus" and,
within moments, I was on concrete farm roads. The good thing with
back roads in Hainan (possibly all of China though I cannot confirm)
is that paved ones usually go somewhere and roads off to the side that
aren't obviously marked as Going Somewhere usually (usually) aren't
the ones you want. The bad thing is that there is no signage (in any
language) and little enough traffic that you might find yourself
standing at a crossroads for five or ten minutes before seeing a
motorcycle or a tractor you can ask directions from.

I bought water in Fengpo and got directions to Wengtian. This is when
I got lost. First an old lady wanted to know "which road to Wengtian"
I wanted. Then I found myself 6km down the road with the kilometer
markers switching sides of the road and counting down instead of up.
I didn't think I'd changed roads but there had just been a bit that
hadn't been as obvious as I would have liked.

The new markers said 4km. Then they said 3km. The sun and the wind
told me I was still going east southeast and the numbers were counting
down. The 0 marker is usually where the road starts. It's usually a
larger intersection or town. So I kept going.

And found Wengtian.

I sucked down two things of bubble tea and bought two bottles of
water. I also decided to take another naproxen and a half percocet.
Since it's a right pain in the ass getting narcotics in China I
strictly ration the number of pills I can take in a week and try very
hard to make up any ouchiness with extra trips to the massage guys.

Longma didn't make an impression on me. Or maybe it was Wengtian that
didn't make an impression on me. In fact, as I am writing this I
think it was Longma where I had the bubble tea and the pain pills.
But it might not have been. Pre-bubble tea I was bonking pretty badly
unsure if the slowness was low salt, low sugar, or an insufficiency of
pain pills. Whatever it was I never found Changlian but was suddenly
in Changsa and Very Nearly There.

Unfortunately, it was also Very Nearly Dark.

And soon enough it was Completely Dark.

At least at the beginning it was still light enough that I could make
out some semblance of the road. Then it got so dark that I was
navigating by the trees at the side of the road, looking up instead of
down, and seeing amazing things that city dwellers aren't used to
being visible to the naked eye like the Milky Way. Every passing car
or motorcycle brought with it a sudden wash of darkness as my pupils
were shut down to mere pinpricks followed by a slow reopening to the
glorious night.

At one intersection I pulled my camera out and took a flash photo of
the sign so I would know which way to turn. I should have left my
camera out and taken the opportunity to do some 30 second exposures of
the night sky but I was thinking I'd do something when I got to the
hotel. This was a silly thought as the hotel, when I eventually got
there, had lights and lights meant not being able to see all there was
to see.

Just before the new space launch center (it'll be completed late next
year) I came upon the disheartening sign "Longlou 12km" and it wasn't
until I actually got into Longlou 10 minutes later that I remembered
previous trips where the same sign had nearly broken my heart.

Longlou is getting lots of construction of high rise apartment
buildings which, as they aren't on the seashore, I suspect will be to
house people working at the space center. The road has also been
widened an astonishing amount for such a small town and I had some
trouble finding my turn off as the sign used to be on the edge of the
hill that has now been scooped out for the newly widened road. (It
would turn out that the newly widened road ended 15 meters past my
turn off so, had I not found out when I did, I would have found out
soon enough.)

Even though it was more than a kilometer from the turn off to the next
turn and most of another kilometer after that before the actual hotel
I decided to walk my bike, fearing the downhill I knew would be coming
soon and the knowledge that the invisible turn I wanted was about
halfway down that hill.

It was while walking that some guy on a motorcycle came up and offered
to play headlight for me. Already knew where I was going since there
was only one place I could be going and another foreigner had come
this way this afternoon and some foreigners were having a wedding
there the next day. (Small town, news travels.)

Last time I was at Longlou Hotel there were 5 of us cyclists. We
ordered two large bowls of noodles with eggs and pickled vegetable for
breakfast the next day. On this day there was one of me. I at the
same large bowl of noodles with an egg (but no pickled vegetable) by
myself. Sue says I inhaled it.

Over the course of the day I drank 7 liters of water, and 2 liters of
tea. However I didn't need to pee until I got off the bike, had
devoured the bowl of noodle soup, and was drinking tea with Sue while
listening to the ocean from the balcony of her room.

-M

M
Wonderful story of "I Forgot Sunset Was at Seven".

Who was interviewing you via cell phone?

What were the pain pills for? Accident?

Dave
(re-beginning riding again,
San Jose, CA, USA)

wrote:
This was the first mixed Chinese/Foreign wedding that I've been to.

Nice story. Thanks.

aka Marian Rosenberg wrote:
[...]
After last weekend's mostly successful ride to Paul Feng's village
through Wenru and out to Chengmai before catching the bus back to
Haikou I figured I'd have no real problem biking out to the wedding.
Headwind all the way it was also going to be near as flat as a pancake
so I shouldn't been hurting too bad to do it. Also, because of last
weekend's mostly successful ride's inclusion of roads that I had never
been on (an increasing rarity in Hainan) I decided that this weekend's
should also include roads that I had never been on.

The most important part of the story is missing - which bicycle did you
ride?

[...]
When that didn't work and when I couldn't actually find any maps of
Hainan in my apartment (I store my maps in my head), I went online and
looked up "Wenchang County Map" on google. None of the ones I found
were very good maps and most of them didn't even have some of the
roads that I know from route #3 but I drew a straight line of where I
wanted to go, wrote down the names of the towns on the way, and set
off on An Adventure.

Does GPS work, or are there no maps available?

[...]
Over the course of the day I drank 7 liters of water, and 2 liters of
tea. However I didn't need to pee until I got off the bike, had
devoured the bowl of noodle soup, and was drinking tea with Sue while
listening to the ocean from the balcony of her room.

Now we know Marian gets 15.6 km/L.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007

On Sep 21, 7:41*am, "
wrote:
This was the first mixed Chinese/Foreign wedding that I've been to.
I've been to Chinese friends' weddings and I've been to foreign
friends' weddings but I've never been to one where a laowai and a
zhongguoren got married.


Another great story, Marian. Thanks for sharing!

By the way, if you knew you were going to drink that much water, why
did you wear bibs? (I'll withhold the lecture about not drinking
enough to need to pee for a later time, but doesn't taking painkillers
make keeping things flowing even MORE important?)

aka Marian Rosenberg wrote:
[...]
The snag in my bike shorts grew as I rode. Grew and grew and grew.
By the time I got to the next town it was less of a snag and more of a
gash running from upper thigh to just about the knee. It would have
been difficult enough to take my shorts of mid-ride (I, uh, I'm not
wearing any underwear) to have them mended but, in order to make
things as complicated as possible, I had bib shorts on.

I found someone to loan me a needle and thread and sewed them shut
with big ugly stitches while I was still wearing them. They sat and
watched and me, commented on my sewing ability (or lack thereof) and
questioned why I would want to mend such a clearly inferior piece of
clothing that would be unusable in the future. The bibs actually
helped some in this case since they made it obvious that I had no way
to take my clothes off (nor was the shopkeeper's suggestion of "buying
a pair of pants here" going to help much with me being 6 inches taller
than the lot of them.)[...]

This is one of the reasons why I carry either duct tape or electrical
tape with me.

--
Tom Sherman - 42.435731,-83.985007

On Sep 22, 12:34*am, DaveC wrote:
M
Wonderful story of "I Forgot Sunset Was at Seven".

Who was interviewing you via cell phone?

What were the pain pills for? Accident?

Dave
(re-beginning riding again,
San Jose, CA, USA)

I'm not sure what the show is, something dealing with "Hainan -
International Tourist Island" where they've been asking various
international people their opinions on the island and how to improve
it and how it has improved in the time we have been here.

As for pain pills, I'm currently recuperating from the after effects
of a healed injury not being treated correctly. I spent a large
portion of the spring and summer on crutches.

-M

On Sep 22, 8:41*am, Tom Sherman °_°
wrote:
aka Marian Rosenberg wrote: [...]
After last weekend's mostly successful ride to Paul Feng's village
through Wenru and out to Chengmai before catching the bus back to
Haikou I figured I'd have no real problem biking out to the wedding.
Headwind all the way it was also going to be near as flat as a pancake
so I shouldn't been hurting too bad to do it. *Also, because of last
weekend's mostly successful ride's inclusion of roads that I had never
been on (an increasing rarity in Hainan) I decided that this weekend's
should also include roads that I had never been on.

The most important part of the story is missing - which bicycle did you
ride?

Panasonic Touring Bike with take apart frame from A.Muzi at Yellow
Jersey.

Brooks leather saddle and a Dahon Biologic Pump Seatpost, 700c x 31
tires, full fenders, platform pedals.

Last I checked I have one of almost every Shimano gruppo on the bike
though now that I have started changing the mix with mountain bike
parts, I may have lost some of the road groups.

[...]
When that didn't work and when I couldn't actually find any maps of
Hainan in my apartment (I store my maps in my head), I went online and
looked up "Wenchang County Map" on google. *None of the ones I found
were very good maps and most of them didn't even have some of the
roads that I know from route #3 but I drew a straight line of where I
wanted to go, wrote down the names of the towns on the way, and set
off on An Adventure.

Does GPS work, or are there no maps available?

GPS works. I just don't have it yet.

Once I do have GPS it'll really only be good for bike routes I, or
someone I know, has already been on.

Easily purchased maps are intended for tourists and don't include
things like the farm roads I want to ride. Maps with farm roads are
usually available on a county by county basis and aren't very easy to
find. Plus, there's no guarantee that a road is paved.

This is why I take my tour bike on trips where I'm not exactly sure
where I'm going. The Habanero doesn't like dirt roads so well.

[...]
Over the course of the day I drank 7 liters of water, and 2 liters of
tea. *However I didn't need to pee until I got off the bike, had
devoured the bowl of noodle soup, and was drinking tea with Sue while
listening to the ocean from the balcony of her room.

Now we know Marian gets 15.6 km/L.

Errr... yeah...

On Sep 22, 11:41*am, Brian Huntley wrote:
On Sep 21, 7:41*am, "

wrote:
This was the first mixed Chinese/Foreign wedding that I've been to.
I've been to Chinese friends' weddings and I've been to foreign
friends' weddings but I've never been to one where a laowai and a
zhongguoren got married.

Another great story, Marian. Thanks for sharing!

By the way, if you knew you were going to drink that much water, why
did you wear bibs? (I'll withhold the lecture about not drinking
enough to need to pee for a later time, but doesn't taking painkillers
make keeping things flowing even MORE important?)

The main reason I wore bibs is because they were a) clean and b) in my
Haikou apartment .

The secondary reason is because they are more comfortable. On a
really long ride (and 10 hours counts) I find that I sometimes get a
bit of a chafed spot where the elastic waistband goes.

On Sep 23, 1:05*am, Marian wrote:
On Sep 22, 11:41*am, Brian Huntley wrote:

On Sep 21, 7:41*am, "

wrote:
This was the first mixed Chinese/Foreign wedding that I've been to.
I've been to Chinese friends' weddings and I've been to foreign
friends' weddings but I've never been to one where a laowai and a
zhongguoren got married.

Another great story, Marian. Thanks for sharing!

By the way, if you knew you were going to drink that much water, why
did you wear bibs? (I'll withhold the lecture about not drinking
enough to need to pee for a later time, but doesn't taking painkillers
make keeping things flowing even MORE important?)

The main reason I wore bibs is because they were a) clean and b) in my
Haikou apartment .

The secondary reason is because they are more comfortable. *On a
really long ride (and 10 hours counts) I find that I sometimes get a
bit of a chafed spot where the elastic waistband goes.

Ah, yes.

I like MEC's shorts in Canada, which don't have an elastic waistband,
though of course the spandex itself is rather elastic. They have a
nice long drawstring instead.

And yes, I've worn them for 10 hours and more at a time (I'm slow.)