day 52: 张兰 (zhanglan) – 介休 (jiexiu) = 20,3km

Today was a good day: subzero temperatures, but good.

I’d like to start off with this:

“你让我” – “You make me…” - happy:

…the friendly group of workers who insisted on buying me lunch, the policemen who waved me in to have tea together, the countless motorcycle dudes who stopped and wanted to give me a ride, the shopkeeper who didn’t take my change, the girl in the hotel who sowed the hole in my pants – all the friendly faces who kept showing up smiling at me from everywhere…

Definitely a good place to walk around.

A lot of folks have been advising me to take public transportation though – as if I’d never heard of that idea before.

And really, every busload of people seems to be staring at me:

They all seem a bit confused as to why anyone would deliberately choose to walk around in the cold outside.

“Foreigners…” they might think, “weird foreigners…” – and who am I to blame them?

I had a great time though, I even walked around in the fire for a minute:

A farmer was burning weeds next to his fields there. The fire moves and dies very quickly; for a second I felt really nice and warm from below (though breathing was hard in the smoke), then the fire had already moved on and I was back in the cold fresh air again.

Weird experience.

Over lunch I had a chat with some workers who were throwing a birthday party. Really nice folks, very friendly.

Then I found a truck driver with another interesting tattoo for the collection:

I asked him whether this was the trademark of some secret society, possibly an underworld thing?

The dude had a good laugh; then he told me he had done this by himself when he was seventeen, and that it meant “dragon” (龍) – aha!! his nom de guerre?

Laughter again; it was the nickname his family and friends have called him since he was little.

…suspicious enough, I thought, but a good investigator knows when to stop asking questions and understand the secret hints. But what were the secret hints?

I didn’t have time to think about this mystery for too long, however, because a short while later I bumped into the coal-shoveling guy:

I asked him if everybody could just come and take this stuff for free.

The coal-shoveling guy said yes.

How much coal did he need for a day on average?

This much.

That’s a lot of coal and a lot of work for a night of warm air, huh?

I really felt happy to be back in the city by nightfall:

More shops, more hotels, more restaurants, more people on the street:

You see the BDC fast food restaurant on the left? Looks like the brand with the colonel, doesn’t it? Pure coincidence I bet.

Anyways, after all the good stuff, here’s the bad news of the day:

My butt is burning, and it’s flaming red.

See for yourself, or close your eyes if you don’t want to see my burning butt:

I have three theories:

1) It’s too cold.

2) My backpack is rubbing against my butt while I’m walking.

3) My underwear has some kind of chemical left in it from last time I had it washed in the hotel laundry.

Who knows?

It was a good day anyways.

Soundtrack: Sir Mix-A-Lot – “Baby Got Back”

—total: 768,4km