Ann’s Day 3 Xinqiao town — — Yunfu city 42Km
Day 3 新桥镇 — 云浮市 42公里
昨天入住酒店时有两个酒店客人和我们搭讪，他们说在酒店附近有个100多年历史的小街道，挺有意思的，建议我们去看看。于是今天上午先去那里逛一下。这条街不是很长，一个看起来很大的新教堂在街道入口处右边，一个很老旧的教堂在街道入口几步的左边。旧教堂显然没有继续在运作，被围栏围了起来，我想可能是因为太旧，或者有破损不安全，或是去的人越来越多，旧的不够用，所以盖了新的。这里大部分房子都是旧骑楼，也要几栋看出来是后来新建的现代楼房穿插其中，看起来像90年代或2000年左右建的。我想以前这条街应该很热闹，这里的骑楼有马来西亚建筑的风格，Jerry说也像澳门许多建筑的风格。100多年前的普通老百姓是没有能力建造这么漂亮的房子的，建这些房子的人应该比较富裕。时光荏苒，人类繁衍了一代又一代，祖先们留下的点滴和足迹演变成历史被流传下来被后代传颂，这些建筑是历史的见证。街道很安静，许多房子已经空置，没有人居住了，只有少数老人仍留守旧居。几个老人在屋前聊天，我和她们聊了一会，她们告诉我现在仍住这里的只有为数不多的老人了. 问她们为什么不搬出去和子女们住，她们说这条街差不多有200年历史了，她们一直生活在这里，这里就是家。一个坐轮椅的女人好奇我和Jerry是不是要拿着纸质地图骑去云南。我拿出手机打开百度地图，演示给她看我们是怎样跟着导航骑行的。一个开着三轮车的老人向我们骑过来，他看到Jerry在拍视频于是停下，我们让他先过，可他坚持先让Jerry拍完他再走。于是我和他聊了起来，当他得知Jerry是澳洲人时送“哦，澳大利亚人啊，他们澳大利亚人好白啊！” 我非常同意，这是羡慕啊，我们广东有句话是“一白遮三丑”，所以我是非常羡慕白的人，因为我自己是又黑又黄。
和骑楼街说再见出发去云浮，离开国道进省道，途经几个村落，走走停停，看到好看的景色或有趣的事就停下拍照。这几个村给我最大的感受是，虽然村子看起来不是很富裕，但非常干净整洁。大部分稻田里秧刚插上，还有的田里有人在插秧，菜地里劳作的农民，我仿佛回到了童年。
离开那几个村落来到思劳镇，这个镇应该是专门生产各种花岗岩，大理石，云石。我们骑了十几公里看到的全是生产这些石头的工厂和店家，不是一边马路，是马路两边都是。
骑行过程中看到路边有卖叫花鸡的，我和Jerry讲这些像橄榄球状的粉色泥坨里面是一只鸡。以前是用荷叶包着鸡，然后再裹上红泥，埋在用干泥坏砌成的建议烤炉里烤熟的，不过现在不用荷叶，用锡纸，不用泥烤炉，用炭烤了。他听了很感兴趣，于是决定如果再见到有的话，我们就买一个。在离云浮市区大概5～6公里的时候再次看到叫花鸡，马上停下，买了一个。我问老板他的鸡好不好吃，Jerry听了笑我说“你这样问，他肯定说好吃的嘛”。我确实不知道味道怎样，感觉可能一般般。Jerry把鸡挂到车头，他说还好现在才买，这个鸡太重了，估计有4斤。我们跟着导航来到市区，找到酒店，办好入住才2点。洗完澡马上吃鸡，哇，好好吃啊，味道出乎意料的好！叫花鸡，厉害！
今天是骑行的第三天，从石岐家里出发到云浮市区一共骑了199公里。这几天骑行身体比较疲累，加上昨晚住的房间在路边，整晚车声不断，没有睡好，所以决定明天休息一天。特别要了一个不靠路的房间，希望今晚能睡个好觉！
Two hotel guests chatted with us when we stayed in the hotel yesterday. They said there is a small street with a history of more than 100 years near the hotel. It’s very interesting and suggested us go and have a look. So we went there this morning before left the town. The street is not very long. A nice but very old church is on the left side of the beginning of the street and a brand new one only few meters away. The old church was closed and surrounded with fence. I guess it may be too old and too small to use so they built a new and big one. Most of the houses have arcades and mottled. A few of them are modern buildings; I mean they were built maybe in the 90’s or after 2000. I can see that it was a busy street, people who built these old houses were quite rich because the buildings are more like Malaysian or Macau style, poor people couldn’t afford the costs to build such beautiful houses 100 years ago. As time goes by, human beings have bred generation after generation, but the traces of history haven’t disappeared. The street is very quiet. Many houses are empty, seemed no one lived in them for a long time. There are some old people sitting outside of their houses and chatting. I talked to some of them, they told me only few old people are still living here. They don’t want to move, this street is about 200 years old and this is home. One lady who is sitting in a wheel chair is curious if Jerry and I use paper map to ride to Yunnan. I open my Baidu map and show her how we follow it. An old guy coming towards to us, he stopped to let Jerry continue taking his church video. When he knew Jerry is an Australian, he said, ah, Australian’s skin is so white! Don’t get him wrong, when Chinese said your skin is white, it’s a compliment. Me myself, I do hope I can be whiter as my skin is always “black and yellow” in our words. Cantonese has a saying to describe a person’s look: one white can hide three ugly”
Anyway, we left the old street and headed to Yunfu. Left national road to provincial road, passed by several villages, stopped and took photos when seeing beautiful scenery or interesting things. My biggest feeling of these villages was that although they don’t look very rich, they are very clean and tidy. Villages are sounded with fields. Most rice fields have just been planted with rice seedlings, and on some fields people were planting with rice seedlings. A couple was working in the vegetable fields. Someone was burning something in the field far away and the white smoke flied up to the sky. It was serene and peaceful. All these brought me back to my childhood and reminded me the field work I did.
We said goodbye to those villages and rode into Silao town. This town should be specialized in producing all kinds of granite, marble and other special stones. We rode more than ten kilometers and saw all the factories and shops producing these stones, not on one side of the road, but on both sides of the road.
During the ride, I saw some people selling Jiaohuaji which is beggar’s chicken on the road side. I told Jerry the pink rugby ball shape thing is a whole chicken and is wrapped with lotus leaves, then wrapped with red clay, then roasted in mud oven traditionally, they use foil to wrapped the chicken instead of lotus leaves, use charcoal to BBQ them nowadays . Jerry was very interested, so he decided to buy one if we saw any again. About 5–6 kilometers away from Yunfu City, we saw Jiaohuaji again, stopped immediately and bought one. When I asked the boss if his chicken was delicious, Jerry laughed at me and said, “hahaha, he of course say it’s delicious.” I really don’t know what it tastes like. It may only so so. Jerry hung the chicken on the handlebar. He said it’s good to buy it now not the first time we saw it because the chicken is very heavy, it may be 2 kilo. We followed the GPS to the downtown area, found the hotel, and it was only 2 o’clock after check-in. Eat chicken as soon as we take a shower. Wow, it’s delicious. It’s unexpected delicious! Jiaohuaji, bagger’s chicken, it’s amazing!
Today is the third day of cycling, from Shiqi’s home to Yunfu City, a total of 199 kilometers. I’m very tired from cycling these days, and the room we stayed last night was on the road side, very noisy and I couldn’t sleep well, so we decided to have a rest tomorrow and hope I can have a good sleep tonight!
