day 232: 沙井子 (shajingzi) – 新华镇 (xinhuazhen) = 31km

I have this friend I was going to tell you about: I can’t reveal his name though. So let’s just call him Paul.

Paul is also walking through China, and today he arrived at a park in 临泽 (linze):

It was the 中国红西路军烈土陵园 (Western Army Memorial Park):

Just as Paul was walking through all the honor and the glory, he suddenly felt that something wasn’t exactly right with his bowels.

In fact, it didn’t feel right at all!

He locked his caboose (he has one as well), and then he ran into the men’s room.

…

A while later when he came out again, Paul was thinking: should I stay or should I go?

He felt that it might be a pretty good idea to just get a hotel room here in 临泽, god forbid the strange bowel movements might return.

Paul strolled across the central square:

He came by a statue of 老子 (Laozi, or Lao-tse) riding his bull into the West:

There’s something you should know about Paul: he is a man who is not very likely to stick to his decisions. Besides, he gets easily impressed.

So when he passed by the huge and tasty-looking watermelons that 刘鹏 (Liu Peng) had to offer…

…Paul forgot all about his intestinal problems, smiled and raised his voice to an outcry: “Give me the biggest watermelon you can find!”

Then he hauled at his caboose and continued walking west, looking only for a place to devour his precious purchase.

…

All the different landscapes looked so interesting to our dear Paul!

There were forestry areas that seemed to glisten with fertility:

…and there were the rough and arid stretches of the Gobi desert in the South:

Paul noticed that there were many people selling things next to the road:

He didn’t buy anything though, since he only pleasantly anticipated the cool juicy redness of his watermelon.

Then he suddenly found a good place to sit down:

He stretched his back, got a knife and a spoon and started the feast.

Here’s a video of Paul and his watermelon:

(Note the beard – Paul is growing one too!)

…

The rest of the way seemed all too easy.

He came through settlements by the road that were made up of little houses that seemed totally identical:

One time, there were all these sunflowers, standing tall and radiating with yellowness and summer:

Paul suddenly thought of the time when he had been in kindergarten…

It seemed like ages ago, but still there was this distinct feeling that the words sunflowers and kindergarten would always remain connected, inseparably tied together like Christmas and ginger bread, like swim trunks and the Mediterranean Sea, like Beijing and lamb sticks.

…so there he was, our dear Paul, staring at the sunflowers, absorbed in a sort of proustian reminiscence of his earliest childhood:

Then he suddenly felt his bowels again. Oh no! – the urge was back, and it was more violent than ever!

Paul looked around like a wounded animal, thinking: damn that melon!

There was really nowhere good to go, and the urge was getting stronger and stronger. It seemed like an exploding force that was ready to tear the whole world apart.

And nowhere good to go…

“Aaarrrrrrgggghhh!!” Paul cried, and he wanted to make it sound like a battlecry.

Then he leaped into the bushes.

Soundtrack: NOFX – “The Irrationality Of Rationality”

—total: 2940,6km