Hubei, Sichuan and the Three Gorges of Yangtze River

Three of us spent 10 days on the road, starting from Shanghai and ending in Chengdu 成都, from 9/3 to 9/12. The plan was to visit the Three Gorges of Yangtze River and its surroundings, including Shennonjia 神农架，Enshi Canyon 恩施大峡谷 and 张家界. We were all riding JH600, with mine just over 14K km in mileage and other two almost new 2011 models. We covered about 2800km in total distance for the trip.

Our bikes:

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The background is the biggest dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam on Yangtze River, 长江三峡大坝.

I am not sure about the “web identity” of my fellow riders, and therefore will just refer them as R1 and R2.

It was a tough trip. The rain had been following us since the third day, which just about totally blanketed the interesting part of the trip after getting passed Yichang宜昌. In the rain the visibility was rather poor with tricky road condition, especially in the mountains. From a distance the mountains were belted by clouds showing great ephemeral beauty. However, those clouds typically spelled medium to heavy rain when we actually placed ourselves in them. And there was no getting there without riding through the twisties from mountain to mountain in the rain.

Besides, the dark grey sky ruined all my photo-takings, giving the fact that I was only capable of using my camera in dummy mode and not knowing how to compensate for the poor light. The below picture is a good representation of what we had been seeing during the trip over the span of 10 days:


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However, it was not without rewards, such as:


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I still have their coordinates, which are not in Shanghai by the way.




Day 1 & 2

We left Shanghai on the night of the 2nd and stayed in Huzhou. That trimmed away 120km off the total distance. The plan was to get across Anhui and reach Hubei through G318 then hop on G50 in Hubei as we were told Hubei allows motorcycles on the expressway. Then we ran into an extremely bad bone-jarring section of G318 in Guangde with the immaculate expressway right next to us, which changed our plan. We decided to crash the expressway tollgate in Anhui. We managed to get on the G50 earlier in Anhui and entered into Hubei on expressway G50, claiming our tickets at the tollgate. The guards in Hubei obliged and we made good distance in the first day and got off at Huangshi 黄石.This is the first of our expressway receipts:


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Later traveling on expressway from Huangshi to Yichang 宜昌 was more money: 285 rmb, but we paid it happily.


The first 2 days were uneventful, with only the following picture to share:


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Notice that this unfortunate event took place right in front of a police station, which I guess saved them a 911 call. The turned-over truck had been lying there for2 days.



In Huangshi, there was a chilling warning sign in front of an ATM:


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Translation: Those criminals identified in the event of a bank robbery or armored cash carrier robbery can be legally shot on the spot.


This is indeed a reflection of the Chinese-styled legal system.


In the service area of Hubei expressway, no longer feeling like gate crashers, we toll ticket holders chatted away with other automobile riders:



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There was still daylight by the time we reached Yichang in the second day, so we went ahead and visited Xiling Gorge 西陵峡, the gorges downstream from the big dam.


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And got across the Yangtze River by ferry a few times and quickly became disoriented about which side of the Yangtze we were on:


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Surprisingly, the “big dam” that everyone accuses of changing the global climate and severely affecting the ecological condition is not all as massive as I had envisioned, even considering the fact that current construction is only the first half of the project with the other half still ongoing. It did raise the water level from the original 66m to the current average 175m now, which translates into an enormous amount of water and bounds to produce significant environmental impacts.



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We were quite happy at this point, warm and dry, in nice scenery not knowing what was in store for us weather-wise:

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We stayed in Zigui 秭归, with high expectation on what to come in the days following.

Day 3
Now the nice scenery started to kick in along the roads from Zigui to Shennonjia 神农架 on S209. It was stunning even in the mist. It reminded me of the vast greenness of Zhejiang and Qiandaohu, except that everything was bigger and grander.

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A wrong turn took us to this establishment that offered tea tasting:



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This used to be a place accessible only by pulling oneself up along the steel chains, hence the name Chain Cliff 链子崖.

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Our bikes had always been the talk of the ferry. Later on R2 compiled a FAQ to ease our effort of explaining.


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Little village along the way:

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Shennontan 神农坛, the least attractive sight, completely spoiled by that pair of silly horns:


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A sign at the gate. Make sure to jot down the “Cheat Hotline“. You never know when you might need it.

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We stayed in this nice binguan in Muyu木鱼, with excellent view from the window. By dinner time it started to drizzle. From this point on there would be nothing but rain for the remains of our trip.
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Day 4
The rain of the previous night dragged into the second day without any sign of letup. Without much option, we ventured into the rain and aimed for the peak of Shennonjia 神农顶. As I have mentioned before, there was absolutely nothing to see in the mountains with rain pouring. But we did reach the “entrance” to the peak and record our visit. We were not in the mood to switch vehicles and pay 60rmb bus fare plus entry fees in order to reach the peak, as the peak at over 3000m was probably going to be nothing but thick fog.

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Descended from the peak, we turned around towards Yangtze River again and headed for Wushan巫山, hoping the weather would treat us better next day. It was all rain but the ride was great. Pavement soaked and cleansed by rain water is not that bad to ride on.


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By 6:30pm we’ve had enough of the rain and decided to call it a day. We found a binguan at Yanduhe沿渡河, not quite the Wushan we hoped for in the morning.



Day 5

No matter how heavy the rain was, in some of the waterways hardly any water was detected. I was told that water project was a very popular thing local governments engage themselves in. There were over 100 water projects going on around the big dam. Everybody is trying to corner the water resources and raises the GDP at the same time. If the construction of the world’s largest dam is justified, who is there to argue against some local small GDP-boosting dam. Between ecology and GDP, guess what is more relevant.
At the tiny town of Yanduhe, outside the binguan there was also one of those water projects:

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We continued our trip towards Wushan. The rain came and went on the plain, but there were always downpours in the mountains. But the scenery was good as ever:


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A mountain defaced, in the name of the progress and higher GDP:


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We finally reached the town of Wushan, where the old and more famous Wushan Gorges are located. From a distance it could almost be mistaken as Mediterranean. Later on when we actually rode through it, it turned out to be rather rundown.


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Before entering into town, we passed by this “White Emperor’s City” 白帝城, which is where one of the emperors Liu Bei刘备 died in the historical period of The Three Kingdoms 三国演义. It was probably one of his palaces, well protected by being in the middle of the Yangtze.


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Part of the old Wusha Gorges, with water level 100m higher than its historical level:

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Day 6
We started out our day 6 with a heated discussion about whether we ought to venture into Enshi canyon(恩施大峡谷) in the rain, which is only supposed to be 50km away, or instead veer to north to see if it was possible to escape the heavy cloud and reach dry land somehow. Since we were “almost there” anyway, we decided to give Enshi a try, which turned out to be the longest 50 km of our trip.

The first thing that went wrong took place only 15km away from Wushan 巫山. There was a long tunnel of at least 5km with nice dry road surface inside of it. After getting through it in 5th gear most of the way, immediately after at 100 meter away there was another very short tunnel of about 200 meters with complete different surface texture only lightly covered in rain water. It wound to the left at the exit. As we all know how tricky the lightly moistured road can be. R1 in the lead momentarily lost traction, fish-tailed but recovered from it. Before he was able to signal the hazard with his arm, my bike at around 60kmps also fish-tailed and unfortunately was not able to recover after swinging from left to right then back to left a couple of times. Off I went with a hard left-side landing, during which I managed to push the bike away from me, with both the bike and me sliding along the road for another 10 meters. Fortunately apart from the landing there was no other serious impact.

There was no picture of the getoff because we were busy signaling and directing the incoming traffics from running over the bike and the rider. There were a few scrapes left on the protectors of my left elbow and left knee, and some small patches of abrasions on my naked left hand, which was not in a glove due to the rain. The Adlo tail box took the brunt of the impact and broke from its seat with contents sprinkling the road. The clutch foot rest was bent, the left engine guard broken and the left signal light cover gone. Fortunately they were all repairable, with me completely sound to ride again.

After picking up myself from the ground with only my pride injured and the evil tunnel in the background:


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A bit of damage control with anti-biotic:

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We used a bundle of duct tapes to create a housing for the broken signal light, which miraculously remained working:


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After collecting myself a bit from the fall and discovering no additional damages, we decided to push on.
The entrance to Tianken 天坑, which is a natural 210m deep hole in the ground:


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We were not in the mood to check out that deep hole in pouring rain. After taking a few pictures, we moved on.

15 minutes later we saw this landslide blocking the whole path with a sign telling us to find an alternate route. We walked up to see if there was any possibility for our bikes to get pass it somehow:


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And we found this over the bend:


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There was no way of getting through the road block. After asking around, some locals told us there was a detour of village roads, about 10km long, not completely paved, which could take us around the landslide and get back to the main route. The village road looked innocent enough in the beginning, with some cute little waterfalls to lure in the accidental visitors:

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We were happy to give it a try. Both R1 and R2 also remarked that our Jialings were made and meant for this kind of “off roads”. So we merrily got on it. It was about 6pm in the afternoon. The spirit was high as we were about to test the full potential of our steeds.
After about 5 km into it, the nice pavement reached its end and the nightmare descended upon us.


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The second half was nothing but mud, big and small holes, pebbles, rocks, steep incline and sharp uphill turns covered with piles of more mud, soaked in god knows how many days of rain. Regardless how uneven it was, our Jialings were surprisingly maneuverable in the first gear if the surface was hard enough, but totally failed on soft mud. (Motokai warned us once before on this subject.) Unfortunately it was too late for us to back out of that hellish path. It took us 6 hours in total darkness to make the rest of the 5 km with countless falls. Due to the slippery road surface, it took at least 2 guys to pick up the bike after falling down. In some of the muddy turns, R2 had to help me out by riding my bike for me, with his 2 long legs tapping from side to side to get out of those tight muddy spots, leaving me behind to climb out of it on foot. So I probably hiked about 1.5 km out of the 5, which was mighty strenuous under the circumstance. All 3 Jianlings had their battery warning lights flashing, which was quite scary. Just picture us trapped there in total darkness with our batteries cooked.


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Me hiking without my bike:

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And a grave to add to our weariness:


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Finally after eternity we reached the end of that horrific road and I really had to head off the urge to kiss the concrete pavement presented to us at the end, totally exhausted and dehydrated. We were all relieved and ecstatic after surviving the 6-hour ordeal:

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My bike suffered a battery of injuries. The foot rest for the clutch was bent again, with the rear brake paddle also bent and rendered useless. The left passenger foot rest fell off. We had to give up on the Adlo box as it wouldn’t stay attached to the bike by the stretchable strings. But I was just happy to get out of that black hole without bodily injuries. The other 2 Jialings fared considerably better, protected by their 2 big side luggage boxes.


We headed for Jianshi 建始 in the opposite direction from Enshi, as it was a whopping 15km closer than our originally planned destination. We just wanted to find any decent place to rest. It took another hour for us to reach Jianshi, and for me in 2nd gear all the way without the rear brake. We checked in at the first lifesaving binguan we found at 2:30 am.

Day 7
After the “experience” of afore night, R1 and R2 announced that they wouldn’t get up until mid-day. I was happy to take advantage of the morning to have my bike fixed. Jianshi was a true bike town, with its main street lined with large number of bike shops. Our binguan even installed an unusually long steep ramp allowing the motorcycles to ride up to the second floor directly from the ground level:

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My bike was serviced by this guy. The most frequently used tool was that big hammer by his side:

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Halfway through the repair, it rained again and the roadside service area was nicely transformed into a protected service station:

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The list of things this guy had fixed:
A pair of front reflection mirrors (12 rmb)
Bent clutch foot rest
Bent brake paddle
Bent luggage rack
Broken left engine guard:unbent, welded and spray-painted black
Bent hand guards
The kick stand position sensor (otherwise it wouldn’t start on anything other than neutral): rebuilt and reattached.
The guy did an excellent job with his hammer and other tools. After 3 hours of labor, the bike rode well, felt almost like new (maybe exaggerated a bit here). The grand total came to be 30 rmb, including that pair of reflection mirrors. In other word, the hourly rate of his competent professional labor was 6 rmb. On my way back to the binguan, I stopped for 2 kilos of local oranges which cost me 20 rmb for about 10 oranges. Then I was really puzzled about the value of rmb in the countryside.

After the bike was fixed and washed, we pushed on towards Chengdu 成都.


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At around 7pm the troops were plenty tired and not motivated to cover any more kilometers. We stopped at Lichuan 利川 before the day is totally out.

On our way to dinner, a sign caught our attention. This store would take care of all your needs of a) toothache, b) naming your children “scientifically” and c) sexually transmitted diseases. Talk about one-stop shop.

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Day 8
Next 2 days were spent traveling up to Chengdu, where I was to ship my bike back to Shanghai and take the plane myself. R1 would park his bike at his friend's and engage in some business meetings there. R2 would just take easy in order to regroup for the second leg of his trip, wandering around in the city and sit idly in those famous Chengdu tea houses. We would all take easy on these 2 days, as the “off roads” of the day before really took their toll. Needless to say, the 张家界 is out of our reach at this point.

However, nothing ever went as planned.

The day started out nice enough, dry at least. I believe we were mostly on S404 and S302:

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This was not cloud and mist covering the mountains, but a range of coal mines. The smell wasn’t pleasant:

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The weather was nicer than before and we all turned more playful. We were trying to capture our teammates blasting through the turn:

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Here was a picture of the ever present mobile base station. Regardless how desolate or remote the places were we always got excellent cell reception.

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In Chongqing, we were not allowed to get gas directly from the pump and forced to use the “safer” alternative. The most aggravating aspect of this idiotic approach was not being able to fill up completely:

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Shortly after 2pm, we huddled for a conference. R1’s patience for our slow pace ran out and wanted to take the highway to Chengdu. R2 and I were quite averse to expressways unless it is really necessary. Once one got on the expressway, the trip would no longer be “experienced” and everything blur out. We didn’t think we had seen enough of Sichuan and therefore were not too sad to let R1 go by himself, after which we continued our wandering about trying to reach G318.

One happy rider:

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Every square inch of the land had been cultivated:

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We wandered back to Yangtze River again at Zhonxian 忠县：

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This was around 6pm and the night was about to fall after our getting on G318 a little while. There wasn’t much more to be seen or “experienced” for the day. We both got bored by the Guodao rater quickly. We decided to venture onto the expressway and tried to reach Chengdu quickly, which basically would draw our trip to an end. We both thought we’ve had so much trip in us that it’d be wise to wind it down nice and easy by the expressway. Little did we know what was in the cards for us.

We successfully got onto the expressway. By now we had worked out a routine in crashing the tollgate. In the dark we’d ride side by side before approaching the toll booth, faking like a car with 2 headlights from a distance. By the time we reached it, we split up and hurried through the gap, ignoring the customary cries from the toll collectors.

We progressed nicely on the G42 but about 11pm it began to rain again. The expressway was full of trucks, the road became treacherous and the visibility deteriorated quickly caused by the blinding glare on the visor covered with rain droplets. We decided to get off and leave the rest of the trip to tomorrow. We took the first exit coming up at Hongtuohe红陀河, which turned out to be a grave mistake. I’d never forget this exit. We found ourselves on the southwest side of the river Tuohe 陀河, the wrong side, which is very sparsely populated and studded only with a few small villages without any facilities. All the activities were by the northeast of the river with the expressway as the only means of getting across. By this time it is really coming down. We stopped under the G42 overpass to check the map. Apart from getting back through the expressway, the only other way to get to the civilization is some village roads of about 50km. We had no intention in venturing into the rain in total darkness on some village roads of unknown condition, so we decided to settle right under the overpass for the night. At least it was nicely covered and dry. We were not equipped for camping, so we collected some corn stalks and made a makeshift bed out of them.

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Day 9
We each had less than 3 hours of sleep, if you could call it that, and waited lying down from 4 am to 6:30 am for the daylight. My first glimpse of the surroundings in the morning after getting out of “bed”:

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We got on the village road for a while. After 20 minutes or so, guess what, surprise!! We were greeted with 20 km more of these:

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We really did not need this in the last day of the trip, especially on the wake of that hellish pass 2 nights before. Nevertheless, we managed to get over it safely. I was glad to report that I had only one fall in the mud, which bent the left engine guard again. I was amazed at how wholesome I was after riding through such a torturous road.

We brought our bikes to a car wash, totally covered in mud. The pressurized water jet presented the best cleaning option for both the machine and the riders:

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Well, we were still nowhere close to completing our trip. Chengdu was still 150 km away and there were more excitements to come.

After the struggle with that terrible road, my bike developed a leak in the cooling system。 It turned out that one of the tie rods of the radiator hose went loose, which was easy enough to fix. It is nearly impossible to find coolant in the roadside motorcycle stand in the country, so I had to make do with local “spring water” for cooling.
At about 2:30pm, Chengdu was 100km within reach and we were content to just wind up the trip nice and easy via the boring G318.

There were many toll booths along the way. At Jianyang 简阳 tollgate, there was only a narrow gap for motorcycles to pass, which did not pose any difficulty for us. Then on the next fill-up at a gas station, to my greatest distress, my green GDW saddlebags had disappeared on me, with my camera bag and more importantly my passport in it. I booked my flight for Shanghai a few days earlier, which was scheduled for 7:40am next morning. Without the passport, I had to forfeit my flight ticket and would be pretty much trapped in Chengdu.

We went back to the motorcycle service stand 15 km earlier and couldn’t find them. Then the lifesaving phone call came in. My bags were found by the conductor of a local bus heading for Chengdu. My guess was that they were tangled up by the road block and stripped off without my knowing it at 简阳 tollgate. Fortunately my cell number was found recorded in one of the documents inside the bags. Since the bus was moving, going from stop to stop to collect passengers, the conductor suggested to us to try to catch the bus before its entering onto the highway for Chengdu, as we might not be able to reclaim it that night once it reached Chengdu and turned over to “the office” which was not clear how long it would remain open.

All that conversation with the conductor was assisted by a passersby showing great interests in our big bikes, as I wasn’t able to understand fully the local dialect and no ideas about those stations from which we may be able to catch the bus and retrieve my bags. In order to recover my passport in time for the air travel next morning, we decided to try to speed up and beat all the G318 traffic to capture the bus in less than 30 kms. The passersby was willing to be the guide, so I took him on as a pillion. 3 miles after hurrying onto G318, my pillion tapped on my shoulder and announced that we ought to give up on the attempt of capturing the bus, as my bike with me at the helm was too slow moving to have any possibility of getting ahead of the bus. He also offered to ride the bike for me instead if we still wanted to retrieve the bags that day. This was when I made the stupidest decision in my life and went along with his offer, reversed the role and made myself the pillion. The guy was quite happy to mount onto the driver seat and off we went. In no time we left R2 in the dust and managed to overtake all the buses, cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, goats, dogs, pigs and anything coming our way in both directions of G318. Later on R2 told me that he was averaging 120km on G318 and still not able to catch up, which reflected how crazy that chase was. I was on the back of the bike with my hands tight on the seat racks bearing down over his shoulder fighting for my life at speed well over 120km on a guodao in the busy afternoon traffic. Obviously there was no chance of picture taking for that joy ride. After 20 km riding like mad on G318, the chase went to an abrupt end, as his approach to maximize the speed of my poor Jialing, revving the gas hard and shifting between 4th and 5th gear unremittingly at high revolution, decimated the clutch. I wasn’t feeling bad at all for losing the clutch and just absolutely thankful for having survived the chase with all my limbs and head still attached to the torso. The guy apologized for not being able to have done any faster, blaming on his lack of protection of a helmet, hailed a bus passing by for Chengdu and disappeared on me. Later on R2 showed up like after forever, and continued on the effort of intercepting the bus in saner speed. Actually the bus was nice enough waiting at the entrance ramp of G42, with all passengers outside the bus chatting and waiting for us. I wasn’t there to thank them and R2 did the formalities for me. At around 7 pm my saddlebags were miraculously recovered and my passport on hand ready for the early morning flight.

Although there were train stations along the G318, they were not big enough to accept motorcycle shipment. So we called on all the logistics firms in Jianyang door to door and finally found a truck willing to ship our bikes to Chengdu. We put both bikes onto the truck, mobilized 5 guys on the other end in Chengdu to lower them down and parked at a friend’s apartment compound for the night. Later that night I also decided to leave my bike in Chengdu and fly back again from Shanghai in the upcoming 10/1 holidays for more excitements.

Throughout the course of that fateful day, the last day of the trip, I absolutely had no idea if I’d be able to make it to the airport for the flight in the next morning. It was the longest day of my life.

JH600
Our Jialings had worked marvelously throughout the trip. They all took quite a bit abuses along the way, but managed to perform without a hitch. Obviously we couldn’t fault them for those bent foot rests, bent engine guards, broken signal lights, leaky coolant hose and assorted other injuries, which were inflicted upon them by us human riders. For my busted clutch, well, it was a bit premature, but about time at 17k km of its useful life. That mad chase probably pushed it over the edge.
One can really go to distance with them by bringing plenty of spares for those parts protruding out of the machine plus a set of clutch friction disks. Consider them as consumables if you want to go “off roads”. Clearly keeping them upright would help prolong their lives tremendously.

Holy Shit Milton…best ride report EVER! :clap:

A true "if it can go wrong, it will" adventure.

My wife and I did a bunch of riding in some of those areas when we rode from Guangdong to Hubei for our wedding. There are some beautiful sights, as well as some brutal roads, in that area. We got very lucky at Shennongjia 神农架, as we arrived late in the afternoon and there was some local official, big wig hanging out at the entrance who liked my V-Strom. He asked where we were going and I told him we were on our way to get married in Wuhan. He thought that was cool and told us we didn't have enough time to see the park that day, but if we came back early in the morning he would let us take the bike in. What was even better was that he met us there an hour before they opened and let us in before any of the busses and cars were allowed in. It was a beautiful sunny day and we had the whole park to ourselves, amazing China moment for me.

Thanks for sharing such a great story with us.

Cheers!
ChinaV

ditto on ChinaV's post. An incredible ride report. Thanks for making the effort of sharing. Also great to hear about the JH600's endurance.

I can't imagine the horror/terror/fear of riding pillion with a Kamikaze pilot. Man, I get terrified with someone else at the controls just going down the street at 30 km/h.

Milton, you've definitely demonstrated you have brass ones! :thumbsup:

_______________________________________(speechless).
....amazing ride report. Glad to know you made it safely out of all of those "moments"!
Can't wait to meet up and hear more!!

* Oh and after seeing a certain photo that referenced uncertain coordinates, maybe you want to change your MCM name to R3?? :naughty:

Unfriggingbelievable, Milton. Good thing you and your fellow riders are all in your 30s. Guys my age can't do that shit....

thanks for sharing, and glad you survived the mud and abrasions and lived to tell the tale!

We all owe you a No-Bike Night!

cheers

Seems I'm not the only one. Just when you say to yourself "Ok, enough riding, I just want to get there now" China road gods come to get you, and it's always painful.
Congratulations and thanks for sharing an epic RR.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by euphonius

...., Milton. Good thing you and your fellow riders are all in your 30s. Guys my age can't do that shit....

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Yeh, right, in my 30s. If I were in my 30s, how would that leave you? 5? Now guess which one of us young riders has your inner tube?

I will accept the No-Bike Night anytime.

Cheers!

Dear ChinaV, LJH, Motokai, Euphonius, Slabo,

My pleasure that you enjoyed my RR. It was fun to write it after the fact, but on reflection I am just very thankful that I finished it scot-free. I hope my next one won't have those "epic" moments of this trip.

Cheers!

Absolutely brilliant ride report Milton !! I was hooked from the beginning, thank you so much for sharing all this adventure !

I spotted your GDW saddlebags and meant to ask you about them, as I was planning to buy them to tour with the YBR 250 : how did they fare generally speaking ? Are they big enough for a long trip ? Waterproof ? Why did they go off the bike at the tollgate, a problem with them or did you scrape the gate with them ? ;-))

GDW saddlebags were great. It is inexpensive, easy to get on/off the bike, waterproof, voluminous and acting as a reasonable protection to your bike when falling down. It came in 2 different colors with the black one looking better but not as waterproof.

The reason that my saddlebags went off at the tollgate was simply due to my laziness. After filling up with stuff and weight, they stayed on the bike pretty well so I did not bother tying them down to the racks. Ordinarily my Adlo tail box would have prevented them from getting dragged off. However, at the time of that incident my Adlo box was not mounted to the bike, which was damaged and discarded due to a previous mishap. I'd definitely do it differently next time.

Cheers!

Great, thanks for the bags review !

Congratulations again !

PS : you didn't share the story with those 2 girls, come on mate, what's behind it ? ;-)

Thats an excellent adventure. Thanks for posting, and great to see Hubei in the forum.

I was wondering Milton, how would the JH600 be with a passenger and fully loaded with side-boxes etc?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MGAlbion

...how would the JH600 be with a passenger and fully loaded with side-boxes etc?

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Dear MGAlbion,

Look no further than this delightful thread from Pfaelzer about a two-up ride through Fujian.

Now, there is a caveat: Pfaelzer's Jialing is easily the most modified JH600 on the planet, with a better shock and better wheels in particularly, so your mileage may vary. And I speak with almost no experience riding two-up.

But Pfaelzer and I are both in the 90-100kg range (more than a tad more than the lithe Milton and welterweight Motokai) with the same panniers, and I've ridden thousands of kilometers under load. The bike shows tremendous heart. She just gives and gives and gives.

Hope that's useful!

cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by euphonius

Dear MGAlbion,

Look no further than this delightful thread from Pfaelzer about a two-up ride through Fujian.

Now, there is a caveat: Pfaelzer's Jialing is easily the most modified JH600 on the planet, with a better shock and better wheels in particularly, so your mileage may vary. And I speak with almost no experience riding two-up.

But Pfaelzer and I are both in the 90-100kg range (more than a tad more than the lithe Milton and welterweight Motokai) with the same panniers, and I've ridden thousands of kilometers under load. The bike shows tremendous heart. She just gives and gives and gives.

Hope that's useful!

cheers

---

Thanks Euphonius, if they arent the two most ideal posts for me, i dont know what are! Damn, Pfaelzer's got some style.
Ive got to get round the posts a bit more, but having been away for so long there is so much to read,

Thanks again.

You'll also note that your fellow Wuhan expat, Bob S, is quite knowledgeable about the JH600, having owned one for about a year in Shenzhen before rebasing via Thailand to the Hubei capital.

He's moving to smaller bikes, but is a lifelong motorcyclist and knows his stuff!

Keep us posted if (when) you go for the JH600, or anything else.

cheers!

Excellent thread Milton, and despite it all a BIG rewarding smile was felt by all after the fact, once the dust had settled (or as in this case, the mud had dried or else unceremoniously washed off in a haze of high pressure water vapor). Seems that the Jialing is proving it's worth in conditions less than ideal, which is heartening to read about.

As a side note and this is not intended as a snide or anything to you guys who have a JH600 in the slightest - so no hate mail please! A good riding buddy just tried out a early model Jialing JH600 that is being sold by its original owner for a very low price (one of the first to roll of the Jialing assembly line). My friend who likes fairly big capacity motorcycles of all descriptions rode the JH600 for a few hours but walked away very underwhelmed, so much so that he wouldn't even make the seller (also a mutual friend & fellow rider) an offer. My buddy's view of the Jialing is that it's way slower and very under-powered than the CFMoto Jetmax scooter. Unfortunately I was not with the group of friends at the time, though I was in phone contact and eager to hear the news and the possibility of perhaps buying a used early model JH600. Not sure if there's much difference between the first models and those that Jialing are producing today?

Finally a few of us will be riding from Ningbo into Jiangxi (again) before heading down to Guangxi (Guilin & Yangshuo), then over towards Shenzhen before riding back up again trying to stick to the coastline, for the mid-autumn festival holiday period. That is if all comes to plan. There'll probably be a mix of 1000cc+ cruisers, BMW's and a few Harleys, with some dual-sports bikes in there too, though not all riders will do the Guangxi section. If this come's off I will do my bit to put together a ride report and some photos, though I tend to just like riding and stop only when needing to, so I'll see.

Spent Saturday riding with a mixture of 12 Harley Davidson bikes (all Chinese owned and legally plated down here) and two Dragstar 1100cc bikes which didn't look out of place in the bunch at all until me and my buddy removed our helmets to reveal 2 laowa's.

Anyway Milton, a great RR.
:thumbsup::riding:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bikerdoc

My buddy's view of the Jialing is that it's way slower and very under-powered than the CFMoto Jetmax scooter.

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Check again with your buddy on which Jialing he was on! :riding:
Really, not fair to compare the CFMoto Jetmax scooter has a 250 to the Jialing 150 scooter! :deal:

And let me know when you're ready for a Bridge Crossing! :thumbsup:
http://www.kostic.niu.edu/hangzhou_bay_bridge.jpg

hahaha, yes it was a JH600 and not a Jialing scoot... in fact the Jialing JH600 owner rode with us back in October 2009 when a group of us did Zhejiang and Jiangxi. I was impressed at that time, since all the bikes were large road bikes and the Jialing was the only dual purpose bike in the group which blasted past all of us when we had to navigate some of the harsher road reconstruction sections. My comment at that time, was and still is, that type of bike is ideal for the majority of the less-than-ideal road conditions so frequently encountered in China. Albeit, perhaps with some slightly better dual purpose/dirt tyres.

The JH600 in question is not being ridden that much any more by the rider in question. I should add that at the time when I'd expressed more than a passing interest in buying a new JH600, his question was; how much? which I'd replied that at the time the JH600 was around cny32000, and his reply was he'd not pay anything above cny9000 max. He'd had to have the complete front end -forks, head bearings etc., replaced under warranty which is perhaps why he felt the way he did.

The Jetmax, is far from a scooter as one can get except for the walk thru design and use of CVT clutch, it carves into corners, gets there damn quick, and stays planted into corners provided the road surface isn't up the snuff, plus it will hit 140km/h and sit on 120km/h all day long without getting too busy. In fact the Jetmax CF250T-6A is like chalk-and-cheese compared to my 2007 CF250T-ViP Fashion.

I'm into coming to SH this week, before the Oct holiday week.