Fantastic Fujian Adventure

As we all know, the Universiade is happening in Shenzhen at the moment.. and that makes Shenzhen the last place anyone wants to be... sooo

Captain Pikey (Tom) and Maverick AH (Winston) took a little time off to do a daring dash from Shenzhen through Guangdong, Fujian and even a little foray into Zhejiang or Jiangxi (will know in a day or two as we're still on the trip).

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Maverick AH

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Captain Pikey


The main focus was to see what Fujian was all about, we picked out a well known scenic spot (Wu Yi Shan) as our destination and homebase, it would take us 3 days of riding to reach our destinantion, we'd set up camp and go play in the surrounding mountains before heading back to Shenzhen.

First let's look at the bikes:
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My bike, China's most proven and toughest bike, the old QM200 (seen above in the MCM logo) all the power of this 200cc air-cooled monster still there, even after years of abuse.

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Captian Pikey's brand new Yingang 250cc water-cooled dual front disc monster (which sucks offroad as you'll find out later)

Now that we've seen the bikes I'll let you know how the trip has gone so far...

Friday night we hired a van to take us out past Xiao Mei Sha beach (since that area was swarming with traffic police due to it being the opening day of the Universiade), we arrived at about 9:30 in the evening and cracked on for about 2 hours to Huizhou where we found a dodgey little hotel for the night and had a few cold ones.

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Beers

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Awful looking Chicken... I do not like my food staring me down

We decided to get a move on, so we planned to leave 8am and try to cover as much distance as possible
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Early morning in grotty Huizhou

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We rode on till about 12pm and stopped for some noodles and an Ice-cream somewhere in Guangdong, we'd covered some good solid kms and so pressed on.

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Stopping only for the occasional fuel top up, we sped through non-descript urban and industrial wasteland towns until finally arriving in Jiaoling, Meizhou at about 3:30

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We had covered about 400kms and were right on the border of Guangdong and Fujian...

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View from our hotel window.. for some reason the hotels were quite expensive and so we decided to try and share a dual room... Big, big, big mistake since Captain Pikey snores like a drowning bilge rat with a throat infection, at least that put an end to any ideas of sharing rooms for the rest of the trip...

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Locals... they just seem to have so much time (and tatoos) on their hands..

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we went out to do some minor bike repairs and murder a few dozen beers

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Captain Pikey gets his name from his Pikey bike mods, like this lovely GPS mount shade fashioned from bits of steel, plastic a grinder, drill and some paint

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The next day was to be another 400+- km haul, we once again left at 8am... although as we were starting up I noticed that my oil was a bit low so we quickly found a bike shop (that was amazingly open at 8am) and got an oil-change, before 8:30 we were on the road again.....

We'd crossed the border and entered into Fujian quite early in the morning, the roads were starting to look pretty good, ChinaV had warned us that the roads in Fujian were really bad.. but we had no idea what he was on about (after asking some locals we found out that all the roads we were riding on were new and only completed last year)..

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Doing self-portrait shots one handed at 90km/h is stupid.. but looks cool

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Some sort of typical communist momument thing

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Take a look at the expression on the local grandpa's face as he eyes out Tom

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Things started to look pretty, there was some awesome scenery and lucky me some dirt road to scream through on my QM :)

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Tom was just about to find out how good his new dual disc brakes were...

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While I was taking this photo waiting for Captain Pikey to catch up (I'm much faster on the dirt), Captain Pikey was dropping his bike, finding out just how good his new brakes vs. just how loose the dirt was... not a bad fall, nothing broken or bent, just a few scratches that should buff out.

Next up on the Fantastic Fujian Adventure... We arrive in Jianning, get horribly drunk on local firewater, see some awesome things... stick around for the next installment, coming to a computer near you.

Nice keep it coming. Fujian must be the only eastern province which isn´t so much industrialized and still good for riding on and offroad

i could definitely go go a TsingTao :naughty: right now thanks for the ride report and the dry throat LoL

Great - this is at least a 3-bagger!
:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

Good stuff so far, please do go on! I was in wuyishan earlier this year but not on a bike (it was a work trip, with the matching hats and guides with flags and everything. Never again.) and the whole time i was just wishing for a pair of wheels and a motor. Enjoy it guys!

By the way, is there anyone in guangdong who's not riding one of chinaV's ex bikes?

Where we last left off, Capt. Pikey had just taken a tumble in the dirt and we'd started to hit some nice looking roads...

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Some of the nice stuff we were riding through.

We pushed on without incident until arriving in Jianning

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After checking in and taking a shower, we hopped into some local transport and asked the driver to take us to a "good tasting" restaurant.. unfortunately being the Chinese Hungry Ghost festival, all the nice places were closed.

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We walked around until we found a reasonable place and set into drinking (tonight was going to be probably the biggest bender of the trip).

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We finised quite a few local beers and also a bottle of disgusting tasting local firewater, we then hit the shops looking to try all sorts of different local drinks, we came across this brand with a silly looking foreign guy on it... but we didn't buy that one..

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The big river winding through the center of town looked seriously inviting, so Tom and I found our way down to the river

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Tom, testing the waters

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It's really awesome to sit with your feet in the water drinking as the sun starts to set, the perfect ending to long ride.

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Capt. Pikey with some more of the local horrible booze (that tasted like medicine mixed with sherry).

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Since we'd covered good ground, we decided that we'd leave at about 10am the next morning instead of the usual 8am.

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So far, only issues with the bike were the tightening of Tom's chain and a slightly iffy starter on my QM.

Things were however going to get a lot more interesting on this trip, we'd barely hit the tip of the ice-berg.

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We had more than quite a few more drinks, checked out some local bbq stalls and then hit the sack.

Nice thread! Keep it coming.



By the way, that goofy foreigner....

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...is none other than Bora Milutinović, the Serbian football coach and former player who coached China's World Cup squad during the 2002 round. Though "Milu" was the first coach to take four different national teams beyond the first round (in different years, of course), he failed to do so with China, which was no surprise.

I do remember him doing lots of advertising back in the day. Nice to know he's found himself a boozy legacy in the People's Republic. Somehow I doubt he's getting any royalties, though.

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Right, so next morning we were both hungover as all hell, I arrived downstairs at the appointed time, but Capt. Pikey was no where to be found, I pottered around the area buying hangover cures in the form of water, ice-cream, tea-eggs etc and sent a message and eventually phoned Capt. Pikey to wake him up, he shortly appeared looking like hell, but then again that's pretty much how I felt, we both sweat out several pints of sweat as we tied our luggage onto our bikes in the hot 38degree C heat.

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Wearing full riding gear in the hot sun and extreme humidity is not a lot of fun... but taking it off is a mission and then you'd just have to put it back on again... safety first!

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Searching for hangover cures...

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Soon we were back on the road, flying fast taking corners and being cooled by the air (much like my QM's engine).

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Capt. Pikey had his jacket open for cooling effect, but got pretty badly sunburnt in the process.

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We couldn't have asked for better weather (actually we could.. about 15 degrees cooler would have been nice), it was sunshine and heat every day of the trip.

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There were some incredible roads through valleys, huge open spaces where we could really open up the bikes and fly through...

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... a full throttle moment... one handed (since I was taking the picture)

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Our usual thing was to stop after the first 100~150kms for a quick break, fill up my Qingqi (since it only gets +-200kms on a tank) and get a cold drink.

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We stopped at a little shop which sold these brilliant Chili eggs and dirty sausages (the owner explaining to us how the dog roaming around his store was going to be winter food at some point), right next door was a mechanic with surprisingly good equipment fixing up an old 3 wheeled truck/car thing that had a 200cc motorbike engine powering it.. that was awesome, hangovers almost completely sweat out, we hit the road again.

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Captain Pikey's brake oil well mount had cracked so he had to stop and pikey the thing, as he did that I went to fill up, now here's the thing, Tom had been insisting on putting 97 octane fuel in his Yingang which is way more expensive, and well to be honest pointless since it's only a 250cc engine, basically the same fuel with some additives to boost the octane is not a cleaner fuel in my opinion, but each to his own, I stuck to 93 the whole time (and later Tom would change his mind too.. but there's a story to that).

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The locals had lost their pool balls and substituted rocks instead.

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After fixing his bike, we head out, we were getting close to Wuyishan, in fact about 70~80kms out the roads started to really become amazingly beautiful.. clean new, tree-lined and surrounded by pink flowers...

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Nice....

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Relaxing and pretty...

That is until a farmer on a tractor emerged from behind all those nice flowers and trees directly in front of Tom who was really gunning it through the nice scenery, he reacted quick enough to avoid it, but it was the closest call of the trip (there were plenty others), I thought I'd be scraping him off the road, but we made it through that one... always have to be awake when riding in China.

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As we started pulling into Wuyishan, you could start to see the tea plantations (evidently the local specialty), we were almost there... it had been a long day and my arse was killing me (that Qingqi is not comfortable to ride over long distance).

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As you near the city, things start to get very touristy, lots of "scenic spots" and tour busses etc.. thank goodness both Tom and I don't go for that sort of thing.

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After getting sorted at a nice hotel called the "friendship hotel" (this would be our home for the next three days), we set out to get a few things fixed, namely tank bags, riding pants and bags etc that had been torn and needed to be stitched up again.

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After a stupidly expensive meal (don't order local mushrooms without asking the price.. one stupid fried mushroom dish was 68rmb) and drinking the really crap tasting local beer (stay away from Sedrin and Icool...) we called it an early night, we had earned it.. long day over the next day would have us seeing some of the best scenery I've ever seen in China, and some of the best roads on this trip.

Get ready for a lot of green... since what we were to see on this day was pretty much... well green..

We'd plotted out a small route which was to take us through some crazy looking twisties and mountains, it wasn't a very long trip, but seemed to come to a dead end somewhere in the mountains, so we decided to just head out and see where it led. (P.S I'll share all the maps once I've renamed them nicely on my server at the end of the report).

Getting out of Wuyishan took a while, we had quite a bit of traffic to get through (and fake police cars.. pic coming later), anyway once out of the city things started to really take shape.

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Sometimes you just have to stop and take a pic.

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We finally got off the bigger roads and started climbing up these awesome little mountain roads through a forest.

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We occasionally stopped for a photo or two and let the bikes cool down, Tom was way up ahead enjoying what he likes best, twisties.

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Green, green and more green.. P.S Tom had accidently switched on the heated grips on his Yingang.. and was wondering why his hands were getting so hot.

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Some of this stuff just makes you say wow.. I personally can't stand Chinese architecture old or new since it's always in a state of disrepair, but this, this is true man made beauty, the shaping of the land over hundreds of years.. hang on this isn't the discovery channel, back to the ride.


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bikes..

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After hitting a few dead ends, we finally reached the final dead end at the top of the mountain, there was a farm house built into a cliff and we climbed up onto a hill to take some photos.

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Sorry.. flickr doesn't like the big panorama shots, will try get a better photo host.

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It was really stunning up there, almost no sound at all.

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Could have spent a long time up there, but pictures were taken and it was time to get back on the bikes.

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Some farmer with a dodgey hat..

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So we turned back down and really enjoyed the hell out of the ride back into town, tomorrow would be our longest single ride on this trip... we'd be going all the way into Jaingxi province... we had to get back, drink beer and get ready for the day ahead.


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Yes, I do take photos of myself, yes it's lame, that's just the way I am ;)

Coming up next in the Fantastic Fujian adventure... I take a tumble, we drink cheap red wine and turn a biscuit into a cake... stay tuned

Seems like your having fun. We just got back ourselves from a few days out. Im on a qingqi also. Same iffy starter, especially when it's hot. Iv given it some (heavy duty ->) abuse but it held up great.

Just wondering tho... ive been thinkin about changin the tires myself but i thought those off road tyres were a bit shyte on road, my stock tyres have been pretty good off and on road so far. What do you reckon? Is it worth the change over?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by corporal_clegg

Seems like your having fun. We just got back ourselves from a few days out. Im on a qingqi also. Same iffy starter, especially when it's hot. Iv given it some (heavy duty ->) abuse but it held up great.

Just wondering tho... ive been thinkin about changin the tires myself but i thought those off road tyres were a bit shyte on road, my stock tyres have been pretty good off and on road so far. What do you reckon? Is it worth the change over?

---

The tyres I had on were the "Eternal Rise" brand, they were excellent tyres but yes shyte for the road really, kept me upright (They wore out pretty quick as you'll see later, basically we rode 3060kms and it was about time to put on a new rear tyre after that), make the bike look good and well they weren't actually bad at all around the corners, and wonderful on the dirt. What a lot of people do is put on the Super Motard wheels for bike trips, it makes sense, buy a new set of motard wheels with they tyres on, swap over the wheels for your trip (Motard wheels are way more comfortable and better for corners.. better in the wet too), then you can swap back to your other wheels if you want to do some offroad etc.

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This is what we were seeing the day before.. our landscape was to change drastically...

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Today was going to be our biggest outride of the trip, we therefore thought it'd be a good idea to leave at 7am, which we did, we were quite close to the Jaingxi border and so we did our usual Fuel stop and cracked on into Jiangxi.

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As soon as we left Fujian the roads started to turn to shyte, more traffic, worse roads... but there were still some good roads out there.

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Here's an example of one of the better roads.. but still Jiangxi was quite a dissapointment in comparison to Fujian... at least at first.

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The locals in Jaingxi were really friendly, truck drivers actually pulled over to let you past on small roads, they'd smile and wave as you drove by.. all in all very nice.

For some reason our map led us onto a Highway, which is the last place you want to be, you see you sometimes come across toll booths on smaller roads which let bikes through for free, so we just assumed this was one of those and next minute we were going full speed on a scary highway with big trucks screaming past buffeting us with their slipstreams.. it was rather hairy since A) You're not supposed to be there B) It's boring.. just ride straight and throttle pinned C) Dangerous as all hell with cars speeding past at much higher speeds than our bikes could handle.

After getting through the highway (sneaking past the booth on the other side), negotiating some rather dull roads, we came to a small village (that picture above with Tom chatting with the locals), from there we went up a hill and found this:

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I'd say the best riding was around this lake, the roads were small but fun with the occasional truck.

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Back on the road again, there was some nice scenery, some rivers etc, but still in my opinion nothing like what we'd seen the day before.

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Tom up ahead on his Yingang

... something was about to happen...

Coffee break! More when I get back, stay tuned!

Coffee break is over, lunch has been had and now it's time to continue...

Alright so now we had hit some very nice little roads (like in the picture above) rather quiet, almost no traffic, just the kind I enjoy riding on the QM, especially since the corners were tight but not too tight, lots of nice straights and bends.

Anyway, before I continue on about the roads let's get back to what happened first, and one of the many excuses I'm going to try and concoct for what happened next.

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We stopped in a small village to take a break and also to get a cold drink, usually a coke or in my case the occasional Wang Lao ji.

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In this particular village we bought some "coke" but after drinking it realised that it was fake coke with "中国人自己的可乐" (Chinese people's own cola) Proudly written on the label, so I guess there were lots of chemicals and too much caffine in that drink Excuse no.1

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My front shock oil seals had ruptured the day before, leaking shock oil all over the place and occasionally onto my front tyre Excuse no.2 also, I hadn't realised it yet, but I had five broken spokes on my rear wheel Excuse no.3

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Getting into the zone on those small roads I started to get a little overzealous, taking the corners at full speed, laying the bike down a little too low (especially since it's a crosser), but really having a blast.. that is until I hit an S bend, tight left, tight right and then OMG loose sand and big rocks and a bridge thing... I braked hard and tried to still take the corner and the front wheel slipped out and my knee took the full impact of the fall.. right on a nice big pebble rock thing...

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Here you can see some instant coffee that fell out of my backpack, that's where I landed.. lovely soft surface...

Anyway, I could make up all the excuses in the world, but the truth is, I was just overdoing it. Luckily I was wearing riding pants with knee pads built in, my knee still got buggered, swollen and ached for the rest of the trip, but at least I didn't break anything... After bending the front wheel straight and dusting myself off I was back in the saddle, and as Captain. Pikey will attest then went and did the complete opposite of what most people would, I rode even faster..

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Basically my knee was hurting so much that by riding aggressively and focusing on the road it took my mind off the pain, so I whizzed along and actually other than the pain really enjoyed the next part of the ride.. (above is a fake cop that made me chuckle.. this province is filled with fake cops and cop cars.. quite cool, I prefer them to the real thing).

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We stopped about 100km-+ out from our destination, we were having trouble with our GPS phones charging, basically it was so hot (38deg C) and a combination of the heat/sun and the fact that we were charging our phones from the bikes built in chargers were causing the batteries in our phones to reach critical heat levels and actually do the opposite of charge and discharge instead... we were GPS less, so we pulled into a petrol station, pulled the batteries from the phones, let them cool then started a charge without turning the phones back on, we would from now on be using a ladder system, one person would lead for the morning whilst the other would keep his phone off, then the other person would turn his phone on whilst the first person would turn their phone off and let it charge etc.

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We finally got back into town after riding 460kms, it was my birthday so we decided to first go and try fix my broken spokes and then go out and have dinner/drinks, while waiting for the bike mechanic to come back from somewhere we had dinner no.1 and beers no.1, in the end no one could fix the spokes and so we simply went back to the hotel, dumped the bikes and went to the food street right next to our hotel, Tom with a bottle of cheap red wine stuffed into his shorts.

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I took plenty of videos on this trip and will have them up on youtube eventually, but basically we drank, stuck a candle onto a buscuit (well tried) and had BBQ until we were pretty much catatonic, head back to the hotel and planned to leave at about 10am, we were to start our journey back.. but not the same way we came, we were going to go down the Eastern side of Fujian.

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P.S why the hell would anyone want to eat bee grubs?

Next on the Fantastic Fujian adventure... my QM mysteriously transforms, Tom gets clawed by a dinosaur and we meet an interesting biker gang.

Stay tuned

Alright, so drinking cheap red wine and lots of beer usually results in a bad hangover, and this was no exception... however today we had a plan... I was worried that riding with 5 broken spokes wasn't exactly the safest thing to do, so we'd push on in the morning to a city called Nanping, a sort of halfway city between us and our destination of Minqing, it was a rather uneventful morning, some awesome roads leading out of Wuyishan, and all in all a pretty good ride..

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Here you can see one of the fake police cars, this one had solar cells to keep the lights flashing, others were parked directly next to power lines with cables going in through the windows powering the lights :)

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I imagine these things would be rather convincing at night and may cause tourists to slow down thinking there really are police cars there :eek2:

Anyway, we made really good time, we didn't stop at all, just rode directly to Nanping... much to the discomfort of our arses.. damn it can get uncomfortable riding long distance after a few days.

Our mission was to 1) Fix my spokes 2) Try to see about removing a nail that was stuck in Tom's rear tyre 3) See if I could fix my iffy starter.

Arriving in town we stopped at quite a few little bike shops, but none of them had any spokes, Tom had a good idea and we searched for "Yamaha" on google maps, as there is usually a big bike area in these sorts of cities, and I did indeed find a "yamaha service center" not to far off, so we set out to find it.

Once arriving we were once again told that there were no spokes but I should ask next door... sure enough the guy in this little shop had some old second hand rusty spokes... but I was pretty much willing to accept anything so asked him to go ahead and also fix my starter issue.

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He did a great job on the starter by replacing the wires and corroded connections on the coil... the spokes however... I've never seen a more shyte job in my life, in order to replace the spokes he didn't take off the wheel.. simply used a pair of tongs to force the tyre open, then tried to thread the pokes through by bending them in several places... I couldn't stand watching this massacre so we went off to get lunch.

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We had a great lunch in a great little place.. I must add that we'd been sweating pints of sweat the whole time trying to get the bikes sorted in the horrible humid heat, so a lunch break with cold orange juice an aircon and a fan was much needed.

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The shop next door had sprayed some water onto the nail sticking out of Tom's rear tyre and air was indeed escaping, so we thought now would be a good time to learn how to repair a tubeless tyre (since Tom had bought a really nice little kit), however these guys didn't exactly do a great job.. in fact they did an appauling job (as you'll see later)...

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While all this was going on, some dodgey guy selling snakes, mushrooms, frogs and one of those freaky dinosaur crocodile turtle things came by trying to sell the stuff as food.. he wanted 1600 for that turtle thing.. must be a real specialty, anyway Tom decided to pick it up and got clawed twice by the bugger ;)

Okay.. so back to the spokes... I've never seen a worse job in my life, all the spokes he installed were bent and zig-zagged, the incorrect length, graunched, rusty and well just shyte... the wheel was now wonky... but what the hell, at least there was something holding the wheel together, so we hit the road again on the way to Minqing....

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Stopping for fuel just out of Nanping I noticed that the nut on the top of my triple clamp was missing.... this is never a good thing, this bike was starting to show its age, just about everything that can go wrong was starting to do so.. (luckily in China you can basically make a new bike out of parts for almost no cost). We spotted a shop selling 3wheeler cars and bikes and 5rmb later I had a new nut fitted...

When we return, the fun really starts as things go awry in Longyan!

Stay tuned

... okay, when last we left off, we'd undergone some suspect repairs, been attacked by a prehistoric beast and well it was hot, our arses were hurting like baby faced prison inmates and we needed to get to our destination..

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Whizzing on through to Minqing...

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While there was some pretty okay scenery along the way, to be honest we were in such a rush I didn't even have time to whip out the camera one handed to take a good shot.. only one or two flimsy shots.

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Warning, objects in the rear-view mirror are way too bloody close.

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The city was pretty big compared to what we'd been staying in recently.. even had a KFC and a small local burger knock off thing called "My choice" where you could buy a beef burger for 5RMB (it tasted like it was worth 5RMB)..
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anyway my junk food yearning quenched.. we strolled around a bit, had a few beers and hit the sack really early... our next day was going to take us all the way to longyan.. and this is where the fun would start.

But first we had a day of dirt ahead of us (well at least a good couple of hours.. YAY)...

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We left early.. very early, I think we got out the city at about 7am and stopped about an hour or so later in a little village to fill up with petrol.. what I didn't realise is that this was one of the last times I'd be filling the old Qingqi up..

ChinaV had told us that the roads leading up to Zhanping (if completed by now) would be great... well they weren't yet completed, but to be honest that's what I was hoping for.. some real dirt to play around in on the Qingqi.

Stay tuned.. while I upload more pics!

that big cloud up there before coffee looks like a big angry duck face... kindof

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The roads we were taking were pretty awesome, nice mountainous, very little traffic.. after a while we stopped for a drink and asked the locals how far it was to Zhanping, they told us we should go back the way we came as the road from here to Zhanping was a "红土路" Hong tu lu (red dirt road), well Captain. Pikey has a "Slow and steady on the dirt, lots of engine braking" motto which is perfect and sound avdice for the type of bike he was riding.. for me my dirt motto is "drive like a maniac and enjoy the hell out of it" which is what I did... :)

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Basically the road was still under construction, so there were sections where you could ride on one side of the concrete, but most of the time you were riding on the dirt, gravel and mud next to the roads being made.

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Some nice scenery along the way :)

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These tractor thingies have been jury rigged to pour water all over the engines as a cooling method (much like the trucks do with their brakes).. making lots of mud all over the place.

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The Yingang looking pretty

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Tom, taking it slow and steady...

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The Qingqi, soaking up the view.

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I was really having fun on the dirt (but what I didn't realise is that by riding the way I was I was going to break a further 6 rear spokes).

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Not sure what's going on here, camoflage? Sun protection? Art?

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More scenery..

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Tom on his Yingang... (take note of the state of the rear tyre)

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We'd hit a fork, we could continue along the dirt construction, or go down some nice finished roads, we decided to stick with our original route and continued down the dirt and construction.. it wouldn't last all that much longer and we'd soon be in Zhanping.

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There was the occasional no go area (even the Qingqi wouldn't make it over this without pulleys and ropes), but there was always a way around via some temporary dodgey road.

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The occasional awesome scenery..

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This certainly was the Qingqi's day, lots of dirt, lots of fun.

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By this time I'd broken away from Tom and had plenty of time to stop and take the occasional picture..

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This evening was going to be one hell of an interesting one, and Tom's shyte rear tyre would be to blame.

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If you look closely you can see Tom in the distance turning the corner :)

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These were some of the better dirt sections, less mud, fewer bumps.

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This route is going to be brilliant once all this construction finishes.

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More scenery you ask? Yes damnit, I had time on my hands with Capt. Pikey wallowing in slow and steadyness.

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Muddied up, the way she should be and the way she left me (more about that later).

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The roads turned back to concrete... we were over the worst.

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So finally we were in Zhanping, we'd been keeping an eye on Tom's rear tyre, an almost new Eternal rise Street tyre.. and it was now pretty much completely bald.. this after just about 2000+-kms riding..

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Tom was content to just leave it and keep on pushing.. that is until he decided to clean it up with some water for a proper photo of how bald it was..

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When water was poured on, we could clearly see air escaping from some small punctures.. not just one but many.. this tyre wasn't going to make the trip...

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My tyre had also worn down more than half... but was still fine.. my spokes weren't, you can't see them in the picture, but already a few had broken.. by the time we'd reached our destination one of them would have fallen out and a few more would have broken :P

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Tom had the good idea of buying some inner tubes in case his tubeless tyre went flat.. and so we did and pushed on to Longyan.. where things would get interesting.

RR continued.. just as soon as more pics are uploaded.. and I've had my coffee

This report shows all aspects of abroad trip in China. Thanks guys for the work to bring this alive here. Makes me almost feel "homesick"...

Can't wait for the rest of the story. Really Great!!!:clap::clap::clap:

Cheers,
AW.

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Last we left off, we'd crossed the dirt roads, noticed that Tom's tyre was about to give up the ghost and still had quite a few kms to go before we hit longyan.. also the dirt had slowed us down quite a lot and so it was starting to get a little late... there was no time to lose, and no time to take pictures, we needed to get to longyan and find a replacement tyre for tom or this trip could get iffy (tyre problems are the worst).

.. To cut a long story short, we arrived in Longyan, Tom's chain was so loose it was slapping up against the chain guard making a horrible noise everytime he decelerated, his tyre was looking a little less than pumped up, I was on 6 broken spokes, a search for "yamaha" turned up nothing, all the small pikey bike shops didn't have tyres or spokes, and it was looking dismal, one guy said we should ask a motorbike taxi and he'd show us the way, with no time to lose (and 10RMB later) we were following a motorcycle taxi through some pretty awful traffic.. We eventually arrived in the "motorbike" area of town and exhausted as we were (420+kms that day) we started going from shop to shop asking for A)A new tyre for Tom B) new spokes for me.... Bloody Yamaha guys were useless and simply told us to go look somewhere else (more of a go away we don't care), same with most of the others... we were giving up hope when we spotted a Honda dealership.

The honda guys and girls were great, the didn't turn us away, but actually got their mechanics to come out and take a look, a lot of chatting later they were sorry to inform us that they didn't have that sort of tyre as none of the bikes they've ever sold have tyres that big.. they also didn't have spokes... however one of them told us to go down the road and take a right at a big rural credit building.. and we should find what we need... and so we did just that.. and this is what we found.

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I spotted it first, a 1000cc Ninja, then a line of beautiful Jap bikes all in a row... We'd come to the right place.

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This was a little specialist shop dealing in smuggled in HK bikes.. and there were some pretty special bikes there...

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Not only bikes, but a whole little local motorbike gang who have a special relationship with the local cops and so ride freely in and around the city (but more about them later).. I actually test rode the Honda RR in this shot.. scary scary fast that thing.. not my style.. and not a bike-trip bike..

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R1... pretty

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Ninja... very pretty

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Arguably the show stealer... let's see that one again with Capt. Pikey at the helm..

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We both agreed that while this is a dream bike.. it's also an instant death bike in China... too fast and powerful.

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She was as interested in me as I was in the bikes.. Nothing like a lot of attention to flatter the ego and inflate one's head.

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(Tom and the Laoban posing with the old shyte tyre) First thing.. do you have a new tyre? Yes.. the boss trotted into the back and produced a very nice looking re-moulded Dunlop tyre (not only good looking, but wider than the one that was on the yingang) it was a no-brainer and within a few minutes they'd whipped off the old piece of shyte Eternal rise and getting to work on putting the new tyre on and tightening the chain (by taking out some links).

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Just to show you what a shyte job that other guy had done at repairing the previous puncture.. there were piles of tyre plugs inside the old tyre...

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While fixing an engine in the shop, the boss flung this mouse out who had been hiding in one of the cylinders... it was still alive and happily drinking water on the pavement.. :P

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This is where things started to go downhill.. The guy was fixing what looked (and was marked as) to me like a CB400, a newer one I thought as I didn't quite recognise it, I've always loved CBs and Bandits and well pretty much any of the naked jap bikes of the 80's and 90's... (we were exhausted, still in our kit and about 6 beers down by this point) but here's the thing, I made him an offer (since he said he'd have the bike fixed by evening, I told him I'd buy it and trade in my qingqi, but he refused, kept saying it was a "fake honda".. fake Honda? I asked him were it was from.. "Japan" he said.. Hmm a fake Honda from Japan?? This didn't make sense, it had Honda CB400 markings and they were not crappy stickers, proper decals under a clear-coat?? very very odd...

I would only find out later after the trip by doing some research online that this was infact a Kawasaki Balius(ZR 250) 250cc inline 4... Why the hell would someone want to rebrand a Kawasaki as a Honda?? I think Kawasakis are great!

Anyway, the word got out that there was a drunken foreigner looking to buy a CB..

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Anyway, we met all of the members of the local biker gang, they escorted us to a nearby hotel and helped us get all checked in (it was awesome to be led and flanked by the likes of R-1s and 1000cc Ninjas). Then The Ninja guy (who I suspect was the leader) came to pick us up and take us to dinner, which consisted of some awesome local specialties and of course the local 40percent alcohol Rice-liquor...
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That is not soup.. that is rice-liquor

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After dinner we were supposed to meet the rest of the gang for bbq and beer, so we ended up back at the shop... Thing is, both Tom and I were a little concerned that we were both rather un-sober and riding around town with these guys..

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Capt. Pikey's bike with his nice new wider tyre (front tyre will have to get sorted sometime too)..

Then it happened, lots of drinking and hanging around the shop.. and next thing I woke up sans Qingqi, a large chunk of my bank account missing and this parked downstairs:
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Yay...

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Happy as a pig in shyte!

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My new baby!

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All loaded up and ready to go!

I would suggest to not make impulsive drunken purchases in the dark (especially before you've taken her for a test drive).. but in this case I came out tops.. what a wonderful machine, The engine is in perfect condition, everything was working great! (especially since I remember a drunken haze the night before demanding that the regulator and battery be replaced and testing that it was charging).. I now had a real bike to finish off this trip in style! (and yes, engine and chassis numbers match up and it really is a real Honda CB400 Super Four VersionS VF2 1996 model).

Next up.. our last two days.. flying back to Shenzhen with a smile on my face!

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Things had changed now, when we left I was the guy on the old knackered Qingqi following tom on his new, quick and powerful Yingang.. Now I had the bigger and more powerful bike :).. thing is I still ended up trailing most of the time other than on the straights as my new bike's front alloy was a bit bent and was making taking corners at speed a bit too hairy (this is a problem that will swiftly be resolved).

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Still Happy :)

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Capt. Pikey at the helm of his Yingang

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The Yingang is evidently styled after the CB (or similar bike) so now things looked more uniform.. Being a lifelong enduro and crosser rider, I was still coming to terms with a bike that revs up past 12k revs and has a 4cyl engine with a kickarse powerband (the riding position was alien to me too).

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Taking photos one-handed was a little more tricky on the CB..

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Our destination was a small city called "Zijin" Which although the tones and characters are different, basically means tissue paper, although more resembling toilet paper if you ask me.. a really grotty little place..

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(My one handed camera technique was improving) We had been making really good time and covered really good distance.. my new bike was a whole other ballgame.. an absolute killer on the straights... we were back in Guangdong and would reach our "tissue paper" destination soon.

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More nice scenery.. but that was going to change

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In case anyone is wondering what it says on my helmet, the one side says Taipei city (from my Taiwan road trips) and the other side says Shenzhen city (since that's where I live).

We had arrived...
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The horrible view from my hotel.. and even worse those trucks would not stop hooting through the night.. but I wasn't aware of that yet.. we'd covered really good distance and it was time to go in search of beer.. This was our last night on the trip after all.

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We found a wonderful little 2 storey beer garden a short walk from the hotel, so we set about doing what we do best (other than riding of course).

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Drinking beer...

This would be our last night on the trip, but our trip wasn't over yet, we still had quite a day ahead of us....

Coming up, Capt. Pikey learns that bolting along on new tyres isn't always that fun....

Dude, congratufuckinglations on the new bike! What a beauty, i hope she keeps going for a long time! I bought a bike drunk once too, but it was only one of those mini motox bikes. Not my wisest purchase but i had good fun with it i guess.

Thanks a lot for the great report. Nothing like a pair of alcoholics on a road trip for good stories!

Wow, great bike and great time.

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The next morning we were up pretty early, we didn't have too far to cover (maybe 2~300kms+- can't remember).. Yes that's my bike in the hotel lobby, if possible you should always park your bike inside the lobby, or alternatively a private guarded parking lot... This particular hotel even had a car parked on the marble floor...

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The morning roads were a treat, lovely relaxed small roads winding through valleys, very little traffic.. perfect little concrete roads, we rode without incident for a time and finally hit a small village somewhere near Huidong where we would stop for breakfast.. This is where the nice roads would end.

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This is the river right next to where we parked, this little village starts after this bridge and doesn't go far.. An interesting little place where our breakfast consisted of shop bought instant noodles and or dirty sausages.

What was to follow was pretty awful, I didn't take any photos, but it's a road we'd been on before (on the Great Guangdong Adventure), not sure how long but probably about 10kms+- (I stand corrected) of utter rubbish dirt road filled with slow moving construction trucks carrying loads of sand/gravel etc.. basically a dusty bumpy mess... and now that I was on my new bike I had no choice but to follow the "slow and steady, lots of engine braking" mantra... it seemed endless, but thankfully did eventually come to and end.. and then we hit what was last time one of my favourite roads in Guandong..
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This pretty, tree-lined road winds around for a few kms with some very nice corners, excellent scenery and almost no traffic.
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The great thing is that this road is within a few hours ride from Shenzhen.. very possible to do a day trip up there just to hit this road and the surrounding countryside.

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Like all good things, that road too finally came to an end and we were back in Urban shyte, Tom had starred the correct place on his map so that we would be able to easily find the correct turnoff into Shenzhen (It's difficult to spot since all these streets look the same).

We basically pushed on, lots of traffic, lots of stares at our bikes (since they really do look out of place), the occasional motorcycle taxi guy leaning over and asking us questions.. we'd planned to meet our hired van at 2pm so we were on a clock... we arrived early at 1pm, enough time to have a few beers and chat about our bikes.
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Before I give you a rundown on the bikes and the problems we had, there's one more little twist... while looking over the bikes I spotted something sticking out of Tom's new rear tyre...
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There is something really wrong about this.. Last trip out the only person to get a puncture was Tom, and in fact we never did fix it properly, we ended up having to completely strip off the rear wheel of his bike no less than three times on the last trip, and on this trip again he'd gotten 2 punctures... At least with tubeless tyres it's much less of a pain to fix, and irritated as he was, Tom pulled out this bolt and fixed the problem lightning quick with his special repair kit (after having learnt all the tricks and how not to do it from the previous guys).

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Our guy arrived in his brilliant Ford Transit, our bikes were loaded and we were on our way back to our bike shed.. this journey was not without incident, but I'll elaborate later.

Coming up next.. a review of the bikes and how they performed.

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Let's start with the bikes that we left Shenzhen with.

The looker:
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2010(maybe 11? not sure) Yingang YG250-6 almost new, only one previous owner who cleaned it daily with a toothbrush and lots of love.

Impossible to keep up with Tom on his new bike (perhaps once I get used to the CB I'll stand a chance), never did a bike more suit its rider.

What went wrong on this trip:
With the bike?
Nothing..
However some other bits let the bike down:
Loose chain..
The chain had to be tightened a few times (it had reached the near 5k end of life time).
Rear tyre..
I think the rear tyre going bald was a combination of it being a shyte tyre and Tom's "enjoy every minute of the twisties" riding style.
Puncture magnet..
Perhaps in next year's model they'll remove this additional feature.

All in all a wonderful bike, excellent handling around the corners, bloody fast on the straights, reliable and a real looker, had me jealous especially when locals would comment on how much better his bike was than the Qingqi :)

Old faithful
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2006 Qingi QM200GY, over 40,000kms on it (perhaps more) Ridden hard and put away wet by pretty much all of its previous owners (except ChinaV and CC of course).

Since most of the time I was trying to keep up with Tom on his lovely new Yingang, I was maxing out the revs quite a lot :)

What went wrong on this trip:
Spokes, spokes and more spokes..
a total of 11 broken rear spokes.. and they're difficult to find... if you're riding something like this, I suggest carrying a few extra spokes with you (they're small and easy to store).
Starter wasn't kicking in...
This was due to corroded connections on and around the coil.. simple, strip off the connections, replace the nuts and wires if you can.
Front fork oil seals ruptured...
This is simply from age and abuse, if oil starts leaking out your forks, don't panic.. just try to wipe the excess oil off with a rag or something, it's only really a problem if the oil leaks onto your front brakes or tyre (I rode close to 2000kms like this, really not an issue).
Tripple clamp center nut went missing...
Vibration, age, abuse... just buy a new one and stick it on.
Clutch slippage...
Although not yet a problem, the clutch was feeling a little worn and gave the occasional rough pull-off.. not a huge problem, the bike would have been ridable ages before having to think of replacing this.
Rubbish rear brakes...
I'd put in new brake shoes on the last trip.. but that didn't help, sure they were cheap brake shoes.. but to be honest I hardly used the rear brakes.. since they were rubbish.. upgrade to discs if you don't have them already.

All in all, tough and reliable but showing its age and heading into that downward spiral of everything that can break will.

The foreigner
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1996 Honda CB400 Super Four Version S 49980kms on the clock when I bought it, obviously been in a crash or two, been ridden badly by people who don't know how to ride..

Couldn't really push it because of that bent front alloy, but managed to burn some carbon off the valves hitting the powerband a few times on the trip, wonderful bike with so much potential.

What went wrong on this trip:
Bent front alloy...
Since I bought it drunk I didn't notice.. oh well, too late will get a new alloy from the Guangzhou bike market (or HK if I have to).
Knackered front tyre...
probably due to the bent alloy
Coolant...
After a long day's ride the coolant had dropped from "upper level" to "lower level" probably a tiny fracture in the radiator since the radiator has had a few knocks.. may as well just get a new one.
Riding position...
I'm still adjusting, it'll take another long trip before I'm ready to throw this thing around corners.

All in all.. wonderful bikes, wonderful trip.


That concludes the Fantastic Fujian Adventure, I will be posting a "highlights" bit and of course links to all the videos that'll be up on youtube one of these days. (Oh yes and also the maps).

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

That was cool man. Nice trip. What does put away wet mean? It's really sad to imagine the qingqi so worn down. Mine's just got over 3000 km on it and it's been perfect so far (apart from some cosmetic stuff, cuts and bruises...achem and some minor electrical stuff).

The new bike's class tho. Shame about the little bits and pieces tho, it's to be expected, it's easy to get screwed here even sober. You didn't do too bad for being drunk. Bet you'll be missing the dirt tho.

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Originally Posted by corporal_clegg

That was cool man. Nice trip. What does put away wet mean? It's really sad to imagine the qingqi so worn down. Mine's just got over 3000 km on it and it's been perfect so far (apart from some cosmetic stuff, cuts and bruises...achem and some minor electrical stuff).

The new bike's class tho. Shame about the little bits and pieces tho, it's to be expected, it's easy to get screwed here even sober. You didn't do too bad for being drunk. Bet you'll be missing the dirt tho.

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Hey there Clegg, The pharse refers to how someone mistreats their horse. The horse was "ridden hard" (ridden fast and/or over a long distance) and "put away wet" (returned to the stable or corral without having the horse's sweat wiped off with a cloth or blanket).

Well you can expect your Qingqi to just keep on going, fantastic bikes (probably China's most reliable by my experience).. and yes I'll be missing the dirt, I'll have to get another crosser somewhere down the line (when I'm feeling rich again). :)