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Friday, May 24, 2019

Answers to a Special Return in China

Nicki in Haikou was the first person to correctly guess part of the significance of a location I recently came across on the first night of my return to a city in China. It is where I took the photo currently used in the header image at the top of this blog. After posting a third photo of the location, Nicki then became the first person to respond with the correct city without me providing extra hints not in the posts here.

Rather curious, I asked her how she did it. She replied, "Third photo.... I can read". I had checked that no signs in the photos displayed the city's name before sharing them, so I wondered what I had overlooked. It didn't take me long to now find it.

Here is a closeup photo of one of the non-cone-shaped traffic cones plainly in view in the third photo:

traffic cone with advertisement for the Yulin Ruidong Hospital


I have seen traffic cones with advertising for at least two different hospitals in numerous parts of the city. In this case, the advertising is for the Yulin Ruidong Hospital (玉林瑞东医院). And yes, the Yulin Ruidong Hospital is unsurprisingly in . . . . Yulin — a city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Although the text on the cones is rather fuzzy if you significantly enlarge the third photo at the highest resolution I shared, it is good enough.

So I award the prize for this edition of "Name the City" to Nicki. I even have a special prize in mind, though admittedly it's something I was planning to do anyway. I won't reveal what it is, but when it happens readers here should be able to recognize it. Nicki certainly will.

Sam Crane, who teaches contemporary Chinese politics and ancient Chinese philosophy at Williams College, deserves an honorable mention for my favorite incorrect guess that I received — Guangzhou. There are several aspects of the third scene, including the architecture, which may have lead me to consider Guangzhou too had I never been to this location in Yulin. After I provided some hints that didn't involve traffic cones he correctly figured out the city as well.

This was a tough one, folks. I wouldn't have expected anybody to correctly identify the city without digging deep into my blogging history, recalling some of my earliest posts over 8 years ago, having much familiarity with Yulin, or receiving additional hints. There is still more I have to share about why the location is significant to me and my blogging. That shall come later, as will more about Yulin.

Finally, a piece of advice: never ignore traffic cones.

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