Through a Water Landscape to the City of Tofu

Rain was forecast again for today, and it was indeed raining while we had breakfast. But by the time we set off at 9:40 a.m. in a pleasant temperature of 29°C, the roads had already dried. Soon afterwards, a few raindrops fell again—not enough to get us wet, but pleasantly cooling. In the end, I got just as wet as on the previous days, only because I was sweating less.

Today we found ourselves surrounded by more and more water as the day went on—the complete opposite of the desert, so to speak. I kept waiting for Wenxin to want lunch, but he held out surprisingly long today. On the previous days, he had usually become hungry much earlier.

So we didn't stop for lunch until we had ridden about 70 kilometres. Unfortunately, the "slightly spicy" dish turned out to be much more spicy than slightly, pushing me close to my limit. It was still very delicious, though.

After lunch, we didn't have many kilometres left. However, there would have been an even more direct route if part of the road hadn't been washed away. We first rode alongside rice fields and soon watched farmers fertilising them with drones. According to one of the farmers, the fairly large drone can carry up to 100 kilograms. Afterwards, we cycled through seemingly endless fields where hundreds of people were harvesting thousands of watermelons before reaching a river, which we crossed by ferry. It was my first ferry ride since Istanbul, costing just 1 RMB—about 12 Swiss centimes—per bicycle.

Crossing the river officially marked our transition from northern China (known for noodles and steamed bread) into southern China (known for rice). Of course, nowadays you can find every kind of food everywhere. After crossing several bridges, we reached the ancient city of Shouxian. Before heading to our hotel just outside the city, we visited the local Confucius Temple.

We finally checked into our hotel just before 6:00 p.m. I was glad to arrive because I had been quite tired during the afternoon. Perhaps it was the spicy food, or maybe I had simply eaten too much. In any case, I was already feeling a bit better by the time we arrived. The warm weather is still a strain on the body, even though I don't actually mind sweating that much.

In the evening, following the hotel owner's recommendation, we returned to the old town for dinner. On the way, we took a few photos of the city wall and watched a very typical Chinese square dancing group, accompanied by an equally typical loud and overdriven speaker system. The city is famous as the birthplace of tofu, so tofu was served in many different forms, including one dish called "water flower tofu." With full stomachs, we strolled back through the beautifully illuminated old town to our hotel.