Day 2: Relaxed from Langfang to Tianjin

Distance: 78.2 km Travel time: 04:11

Today we're travelling on flat roads, mainly along rivers, to the southeast to Tianjin. It rained heavily the night before and there are huge puddles on some of the streets. An underpass that we were supposed to go through is flooded, so we (once again) take a detour. But no problem, "the journey is the destination"!

At the Beijing Paiwu River, which we cycle along for a few kilometers, the frogs seem to be particularly active. Is this due to the heat or the night-time rain? Their loud quacking accompanies us for quite a while and even drowns out the noise of the cicadas.

When planning the route, Zhaoyang pointed out to me the many villages we would pass through (“village” is “cun” in Chinese, which is reflected in the place names). Well, with so many villages, Tianjin might be big, but probably not very big, right? Far from it: Tianjin is the 7th largest city in China with 15.6 million inhabitants. Everything is ultra-modern and stylish. When the lights come on in the evening/night, the city is reminiscent of a utopia like something out of a science fiction film. Drones form patterns in the sky, the walls of skyscrapers turn into giant screens, ships on the river glow futuristically and even the city buses are equipped with lots of LEDs.

By the way, the "Internet of Things" has long been a reality in China. For example, traffic lights are connected to the Internet, so that the Chinese navigation app "Gaode Map" shows exactly how long the light will remain green or red, down to the second...