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 Quanzhou it runs 99 km to Quanzhou; allow about 1 h 30 of riding. It goes by way of Sites of Cizao Kilns, Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu and back through Sites of Cizao Kilns. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
North of Quanzhou, where the city fades into granite hills and orchards, the road runs up to the foot of Qingyuan Mountain and a figure that stops most visitors for a moment. The Lao Tze statue is a seated old man with a long beard, carved out of a natural boulder, and it has been there since the Song dynasty, roughly a thousand years. It is among the largest carved Taoist figures in China, and because the stone was never moved, the whole thing feels grown rather than built.
Read the complete Statue of Lao Tze write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Statue of Lao Tze is where the day begins. Next is Sites of Cizao Kilns.
A thousand years ago, Quanzhou was one of the greatest ports in the world, the place Marco Polo called Zaitun, where ships from Persia, Arabia, India and Southeast Asia came to trade for silk, tea and porcelain. The ceramics that filled those ships were made in kilns in the hills around the city, and the Cizao kilns, near Jinjiang, were among the most important. Long dragon kilns, built up the slopes of the hills, were fired with wood, producing huge quantities of pottery for export. Shards from Cizao have been found across Asia and as far away as East Africa. Since 2021 the kiln sites have been part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China.
Read the complete Sites of Cizao Kilns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sites of Cizao Kilns comes up about 22 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu. Next is back through Sites of Cizao Kilns.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sites of Cizao Kilns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sites of Cizao Kilns, late in the day. Next is Statue of Lao Tze.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Statue of Lao Tze write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Statue of Lao Tze. That is the ride.
Statue of Lao Tze → Sites of Cizao Kilns is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sites of Cizao Kilns → Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yu → back through Sites of Cizao Kilns is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sites of Cizao Kilns → Statue of Lao Tze is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.