Around China in 100 Days

Huangshan to Hangzhou – Day 20

We rode out from Huangshan and onto the G324 towards Hangzhou.

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Lulu told me of a place called Xiatai (下呔), known to many Chinese people as a beautiful place in this area. The very small turnoff to the village (I would have passed right by it) led us up a thin concrete path among terraces of blooming yellow rapeseed flowers to a small village at the top of a valley covered in yellow.

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The road changed from slightly old and worn to excellent asphalt at the Yulingguan pass (昱岭关), the Anhui/Zhejiang border, and I was confident of making Hangzhou in good time. We had the goal of getting to the Lifan shop, just outside Hangzhou (on the far eastern side), so that we could get the bikes serviced and looked at properly. “No problem” I thought “I have a GPS, we can go anywhere”.

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It started to get dark before we found a place to stay. We had already been on the road for 11 hours and I thought it would be a good idea to find the Lifan shop (or a place near it) so that it would be easy to get to in the morning. However, I didn’t know exactly how to get there (because the map on my GPS is a bit old), only that it was on the other side of Hangzhou, and that I needed to find a road leading south-east.

With my GPS zoomed right in, I didn’t realise we were in the centre of the city until we drove along a lakefront. Lulu pulled up beside me at a traffic light and let me know, very clearly, that we were in the centre of the city (right beside Hangzhou’s famous Xihu, or the west lake), and we shouldn’t be there. We then spent a rather stressful hour or so, trying to get back out of the city before the dreaded traffic police found us and gave us a traffic fine. We made like the lines of electric scooters (as much as motorcycles loaded up with bags can) on the road fringes and ducked down alleys when we saw police cars in the rear-view mirrors.

We passed under the city’s ring road and found ourselves on a national highway, a place we were finally within our rights to be. The problem now was to find a place to stay for two very tired motorcyclists. It was more than an hour, in suddenly very cold air, to find a guest-house cheap enough to stay at. The idiot navigator (me) volunteered to pay for separate rooms for the night, as relations had frozen in the cold Hangzhou air.

Hangzhou – Day 21

We had another chat in the morning morning. I apologised for the previous night’s decisions and promised that we won’t drive at night again, unless absolutely necessary.

We decided not to go get the bikes serviced at the Lifan shop. They were running fine and it was too much hassle to try and find a road leading in the opposite direction to which we should be going just for a simple service. I would have rather paid for another shop to do it than waste time and energy like that.

We bussed into Hangzhou, the first time using a bus on the trip, and we got to where we needed to be without too much hassle. Lulu met with a friend, LaoHu, she met in Kuala Lumpur while traveling last year. Soon after arriving in Malaysia, she had her bags stolen, but she continued her travels nonetheless. She offered to lend me her bike to ride around Xihu while they caught up together.

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I went back to the restaurant to get Lulu and we were off around a different part of the lake.

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We walked to the Qinghefang Old street market after dinner and bought a couple of things, before taking two buses out to our guest-house.

With all the walking, it wasn’t exactly a day for recovery, but the chilled-out atmosphere of the places we visited was definitely relaxing. And we weren’t arguing. There was that too.

Hangzhou to Qixing - Day 22

I had a flat back tyre in need of attention, so I had to get that some air (which I learnt was "Da qi"）before we headed off in the morning.

I found navigating around Hangzhou so much easier in the daytime. Our destination was Shanghai, some 200 kilometres away, but we still needed to get our bikes serviced.

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We stopped at a service station in Renhe, Zhejiang, a place affiliated with Lifan. Lulu’s bike got lavished with care from one mechanic, while my bike had engine oil smeared and slapped all over it in the worst case of an easy job I’ve ever seen. My poor degraded bike. I was also concerned about vibration coming from the front wheel. I didn't know what was wrong, so I got my (fairly disappointing mechanic by this point) to give it the once over. He had a bit of a drive around for a minute or two and came back with the answer I was already expecting: "No problems". If it aint broke, don't fix it, I thought.

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For most of the day we spent driving through towns, dodging all kinds of vehicles swerving into our path, not that that was out of the ordinary, just that we spent more time dodging death than usual. There wasn't much to speak of in terms of scenery and the drive was fairly boring, but at least the weather was nice for most of the day.

Once during one of our rest stops, one of us (I can't remember who, probably me) brought up the topic of the future of the expedition and once more we were arguing unintelligibly at each other, accomplishing nothing except to get the other's blood boiling.

We stopped at dusk in Qixing (sticking as close as possible to my pledge of no night driving), near Jiaxing, in Zhejiang, and parked up in the lobby of the first guest house we came to.

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this IS great reading, keep it coming. its great to come home from work and have something to read like this.. very inspiring.

We were still some distance from Shanghai, so we took a bus to Jiaxing train station, where we hopped on a train to the Shanghainan train station. We metro-ed to Renmin square for lunch, followed by a visit to the nearest ICBC, where we put the last of our cash donations into the fundraising account. We had decided to close the account because we wouldn't be seeking cash donations from Chinese people any more, mainly because we no longer thought we could get around the restrictions on donations to foreign NGOs inside China. I would continue to do my best to encourage donations from sources outside China.


From there we walked to the Bund, Shanghai's famous historical riverbank, for a good gawk at both sides of the Huangpu river and the iconic Shanghai skyline.

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Then the Shanghai museum for a dose of history and culture.

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We met Ada, another of Lulu's friends (who helped her get the place in her Chevrolet commercial), who showed us around Tianzifang and found us a restaurant which had excellent xiaolongbao.

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After dinner, Lulu went off to see more friends and I took the metro to Pudong, on the eastern side of the Huangpu.

Riding the elevator up the Shanghai World Financial Centre made me feel like I had walked into a 3D version of Halo, but the view at the top was definitely impressive.

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I walked around Pudong for a while, and tried to find a novel way across the river to the youth hostel on the other side, but it was too late. The lights on the Oriental Pearl tower had gone out and the Bund sightseeing tunnel (I had been told not to waste my money on it, but I wanted to try it anyway) had closed. I made my way back to the metro, swiped through the turnstile and waited for the next train. The board said it was a 15 minute wait. So I waited, and when the clock reached T -10 minutes, it changed back to 15 minutes. I waited some more. A train rushed past with its lights out and then an announcement in Chinese came over the station speakers. The board changed again and I knew that I wasn't going to take the metro that night. I made my way back up towards the exit to find the roller doors had been pulled down and locked. I had been locked into a metro station in Pudong. Bugger!

Someone must have seen the strange foreigner on the security cameras, wandering around like a lost child, and someone came out from somewhere and unlocked the doors for me. My last option was the taxi, the (relatively) stress-free (and boring) way to get where you need to be in a completely new city, especially when you have Chinese characters in your travel guide.

Shanghai – Day 24

I had a western-style, rooftop breakfast at the Captain’s youth hostel facing the Pudong skyline.

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We met Maria Tree from the Half the Sky Foundation office in Shanghai. It was really great to see her and talk about what she’s doing and what we’re doing with the trip. She explained the finer details of HTS’ activities to Lulu in Chinese and made herself understood much easier than I could. This was the high point of our visit to Shanghai，and turned out to be instrumental to the continuation of the journey, because it meant that Lulu and I now understand each other when it comes to the fundraising part. I came out of the restaurant feeling like a load had been lifted from my shoulders.

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Lulu went to the art museum and then to meet some of her friends that had just arrived in Shanghai while I trained back to Jiaxing. Lulu missed the last train and had a sleepless night in the Shanghainan train station.

Shanghai to Danyang – Day 25




Overall, an unremarkable day. Plenty of buildings, traffic, roads, concrete. The day was overcast, smoggy and a little cold and I was wearing my gloves, so I was reluctant to bring out the camera because that would mean half an hour of trying to get my gloves (the largest the shop had!!) back on. I would realise later in the trip, that the hardest (yet one of the most important) item to get right for an undertaking like this must be gloves, at least in China anyway.

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We drove past Taihu lake, heading north on the G104, and we decided not to head to Nanjing. It was a little out of the way, there are motorcycle restrictions inside the city, and it would take a good day to have a look around and see the sights, a day we didn’t really have. I also wanted to make up some time and get to Beijing as fast as possible over the next couple of days because we were way behind schedule. So we opted for the boring option and canned our Nanjing plans, heading instead to Zhenjiang.



We started looking for a place in Danyang and as we came across a promising hotel, we noticed a crowd milling around a guy covered in blood, a crashed motorcycle nearby. A police car and an ambulance arrived not long after, and the crowd quickly dispersed, but the reminder of what can happen when driving a motorcycle stayed with us.

Danyang to Huai’an – Day 26

The sun peeped out from the clouds mid-morning, warming my jacket and the air rushing past as I drove down towards Zhengjiang. Getting up this morning was hard, as always after a rest day throws out the daily rhythm, but a tasty egg fried rice breakfast cured the blurred vision and creaky bones.

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Not knowing eactly how we would cross the ChangJiang, we drove through Zhenjiang which had apparently banned motorcycles registered outside Jiangsu (after noticing the noticing the "No motorcycles" road sign). Driving skittishly through to the banks of the Yangtze where the GPS had led us and, expecting to see a bridge across the river, instead we drove up to a ferry terminal.

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Several kuai and 20 minutes later we were on the road at the other side.

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We crossed into Anhui on the S312 (and noticed a significant decrease in road quality right at the provincial border), past Tianchang, or 天长 and back into Jiangsu to stop for the night in an industrial city called Huai’an (淮安) which is the birthplace of Zhou Enlai, first premier of the People’s Republic of China.

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Awesome report Lulu & Jeremy ! Thanks a lot for sharing, it's also inspiring in terms of road and routes !

One question : I see you're both using the GDW saddle bags. We've been discussing about them in this thread, would you care giving us a review on them ? How are they holding up ? Strong points, weaknesses ?

Zaozhuang to Ji’nan – Day 28

We visited the Mencius (also known as Mengzi or 孟子) temple in Zoucheng. Mencius is a prominent figure in Confucianism, being the second most famous Confucianist after Confucius himself. He wandered around China for 40 years during the Warring States Period (403–221 BCE), trying to convert rulers and lords along the way.

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While it would have been great to hike Taishan, a mountain climbed by the most famous people in Chinese history (and also the most climbed mountain in China), we were already way behind where we needed to be. I doubted our muscles could get us up to the top and it would have taken the best part of a day so we had to give it a pass.

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Lulu had organised to do a lecture at ’Where?’(那儿) cafe in Ji’nan, the capital of Shandong, which I wasn’t interested in at that time. About thirty people turned up and she was busy talking when I left to try and find myself a place to sleep (she planned to sleep on the couch in the cafe). One place said “Fine, just take your bags off and put them in the office, you need to wait” (in Chinese, so that’s the approximate meaning I got from it). So I went back and waited at the cafe. Going back about an hour later, the owner told me he cant take foreigners, so I would have to find somewhere else to stay. I put the bags back on the bike, and then Lvcuiyi, the owner of the cafe, asked me to do a short TV interview for a reporter friend of his about what we are doing after which he suggested I put my bags in the cafe until Lulu finished her presentation. After that we could find a place for me to stay.

We were in Shandong during Qingming, or the Tomb sweeping festival, so there were plenty of people out burning paper to honour their ancestors.

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But after Lulu finished, Some of Lvcuiyi’s friends invited us to a traditional Shandong dinner, which was very tasty and went quite late.

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By then, the hostels had closed. So I was offered a place to stay, and I asked if it was alright if I paid them for their hospitality (as I said I would, I still felt like a bit of an idiot). I spent about 10 minutes trying to explain why I wanted to pay for a night’s stay. I think a couple of the guys got it. We left our bags at the cafe (30 minutes walk away) and, dead on my feet, I traipsed up the stairs of a student dormitory and flopped on the couch at 2am.