Month: July 2019

10 July – China (Shanxi) – ~120 miles

A short day, but one of the grimiest, filthiest, sootiest.
There was an option to take the well-known, safe and comfortable, G108 up to Pingyao, but some of chose to take the unknown new road, the S224, for part of the trip.
Like all newly found diversions, it initially seemed a nice sweet alternative. Four lanes (each way) of empty road, clean. Not particularly interesting – but an easy way to get where one is going. Then – warning signs – a random car parked in the middle of the four lanes, hazard lights flashing. First thought “Okay – maybe a warning for an upcoming hazard”. Then – another car, in the 3rd lane, hazard lights going, slowly turning back out to the third lane. “Odd… hazard-warning guys with very poor danger awareness”. A third example – completely halted in the middle of this “highway” – I glanced inside – saw the car packed full of very young people, the driver very very nervously hunched over the steering wheel. Fourth car exhibiting similarly odd behaviour – the same. These were teenagers learning how to drive (apparently very early learners) – in the middle of a four-lane highway. I gave them even more leeway after that.
And then – the red trucks again.

I am meaning to look up how many trucks there are in China – and specifically, the red ones, and whether they are perhaps state-owned.
Today – many, many red trucks – the majority carting coal.
I don’t know how many red trucks I overtook – it would probably be hundreds. I do know how many I overtook in a standard deemed appropriate in NZ or UK law – zero.
Yesterdays little mining town, where the colour seemed to disappear from the air, and everything was just a dirty dark-grey or black… was nearly the entirety of today’s ride. There were little “dust-devils” of soot flying around in the road. During some rain, I glanced down at the wind-visor, the water dripping down it was far from transparent. After the rain, the stuff left on my helmet visor – yuck. Other riders got into the shower in their full waterproof kits – and apparently the runoff was something to behold.

And – I thought that was just the nasty S224.
But – apparently – the G108 knew of my little misdemeanor/diversion – and decided to punish my infidelity with more of the same.

But – eventually got to Pingyao – dirty, but in some sunshine, and made my way into the old city. The old city is surrounded by wall/moats – with no cars allowed inside. Bikes… yeah, sure – rules don’t apply to motorbikes, as we all know. Snaked my way through some very small alleys/dirt-tracks – to find our hotel – in enough time to wander around the old city for the afternoon. Lovely place – all re-built rather than original (apparently) – but very much a tourist-trap “old Chinese city”. Albeit the vast VAST majority of tourists are chinese. Even in a tourist-trap like this, we are the subject of photos, shock, etc.
Difficult to get any decent photos of the general town, and wasn’t really too bothered to do so once cold beers were found, but a couple of cursory attempts…

09 July – China (Shaanxi-Shanxi) – ~263 miles

A fairly boring day – just eating up the miles.
Not a single photo or video taken.

Arrived in Linfen after the said 263 miles of not-much.
If there were any highlights of the day, they might include such non-events as…
walking out to the bike this morning to find it with no rear wheel, and the support crew working on it to fix the rear brake not sitting right
going very carefully in the early wet, with brand new tyres
crossing a ridiculous bridge with a 1.8 metre height restriction, into the grimiest dingiest town seen yet… just a small village of coal-mining and depression.

Xian – the last “break” in riding before the final push into Beijing.

Went to see the Terracotta Warriors with the rest of the group – hoping that in the 15 years since I saw them, they’d have progressed with excavating more of them.
Nope. They’ve spent the last 15 years building a commercial complex out the front – complete with all the tourist-tat which used to be pushed in your face by hawkers; and big gaudy KFC, Subway, McDonalds, etc, etc.
The actual archeological site(s) – looked exactly the same as my hazy old memories, down to the information plaque explaining that the Chinese had discovered chrome-plating 2,200 years before Germany in 1930s and Americans in 1950s… “How awesome it is!”.

Group dinner last night, at a place specialising in dumplings. Including many dumplings which resemble the contents… duck dumplings twisted to look like a duck, pork dumplings with little pig faces on them, etc, etc. And several beers had in the night heat down in the bar-quarter.

And other than that – just a lazy day today. Shopping in the market for some fake-brand-name bags to shift all the luggage into in about a week’s time. Let some fish eat all the filth off my feet – which would have been a feast for them, after an hour or two of wandering around Xi’an in (very slippery) jandals in the rain.
Couldn’t find the area of town which I’m sure last time had establishments aggressively selling “mah-sah-jay! mah-sah-jay!”

06 July – China (Shaanxi) – ~120 miles

A short ride into Xian, where we’ve got an entire 3 nights in the same bed.
75 miles of awesome road, twisties through greenery, following rivers – and a little bit of a wrong turn which took me through a panda-park. Many times during today’s ride, I thought “this could be New Zealand”.
And then 45 miles of just highway and city.
Even with the short ride – it was hot enough that I’d resolved to get a swim in, near the end of the 75 miles… but just as I’d decided “next place I see, I’m in…” – the road climbed, the way to the river started being blocked by fences and cliffs… and I never got my shot.

Now in Xian – staying across the road from the central Bell Tower – my view is directly onto the thing. Went searching in the laowei-bar district for any place showing the Super-Rugby final, but couldn’t find it. Instead – a couple of the local craft beers at Xian’s sole brewpub – where the staff seemed to find such an idea a huge distraction from their planned itinerary of doing nothing.

The cellphone was dead today, so photos had to be taken on the backup old-school camera, and therefore of minimal quantity and quality… but here’s all of them…

04-05 July – China (Sichuan-Shaanxi) – 438 miles

So close to the end now, it sometimes feels like just that…”just the final thousand miles to get to Beijing”.
The last two days, I’ve fallen asleep on the bike – but that’s due to me, tired, stuck behind a vehicle, not bothering to wake up and just keep it crazy. A bit of water, I’ve typically been better.
But… it has been two days of waking up, leaving in gloomy/dreary weather, and doing nothing more than “battling” the traffic… which can be fun, considering it consists of all the outrageous manoeuvres one wouldn’t normally consider outside of Asia.

Both yesterday (to Guangyuan) and today (to Foping), the G108 had the same story – several hours of battling the local “red trucks”, and then an afternoon of nice twisty roads. It reminded me somewhat of the agenda through Europe – where that seemed a deliberate tactic of the route; but here… it’s just this one road, with multiple personalities which seem to fit that same agenda quite nicely.

Yesterday – visited a couple of temples… I’m pretty “temple-d out just now”, but figured I might as well see as much as I can as the days-left are dwindling…
Temple-Complex-#1 – nice, fine.
Temple-Complex-#2 – sold/advertised as the “Temple of the God of Literature” – which obviously intrigued me. It turned out one of the mini-temples was to one of the kings who fancied himself as a it of a writer, therefore his temple/statue made him a god of literature.
Life as a lord/king in those days was pretty sweet, apparently.

Did have a touch of the round-magic-stone which apparently made one guy a god, and also a bit of a lie-down/kip in the stone bed which allowed some other guy to have dreams come true.
Also tied my little red thing to the wall, assuming I was supposed to write my name and “wish” on it. On reviewing every other such tag – it was actually “name, and date”. Still… safe travels all…

02-03 July – China (Sichuan) – 110 miles

Left Mount Emei – not sure if I ever really got a decent view of the mountain itself. I saw something in the rear-view mirror – one of those nice hill/mountain pictures where there are multiple layers, each one a different shade/colour – but nothing that jumped out as justifying the title of “China’s #1 Mountain”.
But – did stop off in Leshan, and have a quick look at the largest Buddha statue IN THE WORLD! That was alright. Fairly big.

Then the ride to Chengdu – fairly short, and nothing spectacular about it scenery or road-wise. Rather, the traffic. Constant traffic, and some fun to be had when you just bought into the local driving style. Every rider in the evening was saying something like “I should be in jail”, “I broke every single road rule today”, “I can’t believe some of the things I did today”, etc, etc. And yes – me included. Running red lights – several. Overtaking on the outside of the road – many times. Squeezing through gaps which didn’t really exist – yes. Using the sidewalk to overtake… yeah, sure, nobody else was using it. Overtaking when there wasn’t really room, but just yelling at the oncoming traffic to “move over” – that’s how things get done.
Several times during the day I had the thought “I am really going to need to make sure I cleanse myself of these habits before I get back to riding in NZ or the UK”.
But – eventually got to Chengdu, and a lovely hotel – “the Pearl of Chengdu”, apparently.
And, got talked into joining everybody at that most horrible of establishments – the ex-pat Irish Pub. And a good night was had by all.

Today, a little jaded, visited some pandas. I very nearly passed on the opportunity again (last time I was in Chengdu, we got off the bus – tried to figure out how to visit the pandas, it seemed too hard, and we got back on another bus to head onwards)… but talked myself into battling through the hangover.
And, yeah – Giant Pandas. They’re kinda cute. And, it turns out, used to be trained by chinese warlords as weapons/soldiers. I can’t figure out what my reaction would be if I saw a Giant Panda approaching me on a battlefield… melt with “awww… how cute!”, or run away yelling “holy shit… they’ve got monsters!”.
So, Pandas – several hours wandering around the rather large complex, amongst many many loud chinese tourists. Not great hangover cure. Saw a couple-dozen of the Giant black-and-white variety, and by the time I got to the section of the little red fellas – I was happy with just seeing a couple.
Eventually headed into town, wandered some local streets – before trying to get back to the hotel. Taxis – would not stop. Long story, but the combination of rush-hour and rain… I could not get a taxi for about 3 hours. Started walking, then realised that the show we had booked for that night was where I’d started walking from – walked back – and caught the second half of a “Changing Faces” Opera show… which was quite interesting. Too tired to really explain much of that just now, but there was some finger-pupper stuff, some sort of chinese-pantomime skit, and then the actual “Changing Faces” – where the “actors(?)” would change their masks and/or clothing in a split-second… sometimes out in the crowd right in front of people… so quick you can’t see how it’s done.