CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Baiqi it runs 191 km to Baiqi; allow about 3 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple, Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions, Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu and back through Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions. The line favours views over speed.
Liusheng Pagoda stands on a hill at the edge of Quanzhou's coastal region in Fujian, and it has watched a lot of ships leave. It is a seven-storey octagonal tower of granite, usually dated to the Song dynasty, and sailors once used it as a landmark and, tradition says, as a bit of spiritual insurance for the sea. Quanzhou was one of the great ports of the medieval world, which Marco Polo and Arab travellers described as a bustling trading city, so a pagoda guarding its approaches fits easily into the picture.
Read the complete Liusheng Pagoda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Liusheng Pagoda is where the day begins. Next is Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple.
Hidden in the hills behind the coast of Fujian is a small stone temple with a figure that should not exist. Cao'an is the last surviving Manichaean temple in the world, and its main statue shows Mani, the third-century Persian prophet who founded a religion that once stretched from Spain to China, in the form of a serene Buddha-like figure with long white hair and eyebrows. It was carved in the fourteenth century, during the Yuan dynasty, from a single piece of local stone, and its identity was recognised only in the twentieth century, when scholars matched it with texts.
Read the complete Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions.
Before the sailing season, officials and merchants climbed a hill above Quanzhou to ask the gods for wind. The Jiuri mountain inscriptions, carved on cliff faces and boulders between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, record these prayers, and they are among the most unusual documents of China's maritime past. They were written by local officials of the Song dynasty, and they appeal to the sea gods and to the spirits of the mountain to send a favourable monsoon, so that the trade ships bound for Southeast Asia, India and Arabia could set out in safety and return. Standing before a rock face carved with neat columns of characters, you are reading a note that someone left when the world's biggest port was run by hand and weather.
Read the complete Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 54 km into the recorded legs you reach Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions. Next is Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu.
Medieval travellers called it Zaitun, and to Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta it was one of the greatest ports in the world. Quanzhou, on the coast of Fujian facing Taiwan, flourished under the Song and Yuan dynasties as a hub of maritime trade, where Arab, Persian, Indian and Southeast Asian merchants lived alongside Chinese traders, and ships left laden with silk and porcelain. In 2021 UNESCO inscribed a group of sites as Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China, including temples, mosques, tombs, kilns, bridges and docks that together tell the story of this cosmopolitan city.
Read the complete Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu, about halfway. Next is back through Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions sits at 123 km, about halfway. Next is back through Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple comes up about 163 km into the recorded legs. Next is Liusheng Pagoda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Liusheng Pagoda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Liusheng Pagoda closes the day.
Liusheng Pagoda → Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple → Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions → Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu → back through Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Jiuri Mountain Wind-Praying Inscriptions → back through Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Statue of Mani in Cao'an Temple → Liusheng Pagoda is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.