Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Great trip and great report. Nice tip about the bike size on the train btw.
With regards to changing oil, I just buy the oil at a bike shop ( Castrol 15/40 if I can get it) and let the guy change it. They just charge for the oil so why get your hands dirty I reckon. I do keep an eye on the guys tools though and if he starts to approach with a 12" crescent I get out my own socket.
Nice ride and glad to see the heatstroke episode ended well.
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Excellent ride report. I am jealous of your language skills in Mandarin. 11 years here married to a local and I still suck at Mandarin. Looks like you guys had the experience of a lifetime. Well done.
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
@zhu. I usually do the same thing. Near by my house, I had a great place that I went to. They had a good selection of good quality oil. They were fast and cheap. They always threw in a free wash too. Last time I went, they tried to use an imperial wrench on my metric bolt. I lost my shit and told the manager that I'd never come back. Luckily, a shop a block away offers the same service. Both of my local shops are car focused. The bike shops WILL NOT give me service. Even an oil change is too difficult. Coming with this experience to life on the road lead me to search for car repair places before I looked for bike shops. This ended up being a mistake in Turpan. We actually passed a huge Japanese brand dealership with Japanese style business model. They had a big entrance for repairs and service. It looked like I was at home. I kicked myself because ten minutes before I had just chinky-rigged a rusty metal bar onto the back of my bike. That's the trouble with finding places when you're on the road. You just never know what the city/town has until you live there or spend enough time to weed out the gold from the shit.
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
Yeah you can never be sure what is around the corner or over the next hill. I carry three kg of tools with me and I'm always looking at what I can get rid of, but I used every single one of those tools at some point. Err except my tyre levers on the last trip, the only puncture I got was outside a bike shop with a fridge full of ice coffee and a comfy chair... So I just let the guy have at it. Still don't think I will be leaving the levers at home.
Re: China, West to East (Urumqi,Xining,Xian,Yantai)
It's all Gaosu from Turpan to Hami. You don't gain any elevation either, so it's all just hot. Really hot. The sun beats on you, and the wind, normally cooling, when it blows, blows hot as hell. When you move at the same speed as the wind, the sweat pools above your eyes. The engine sheds heat between your legs, unable to get wind past the cooling fins or through the radiator. When you don't ride with the wind, it tries to tear you from the road. The rocks are surreal and dead. We made stops every 50 km's or so, to go to the bathroom or relieve our asses. The best bathroom spots were animal overpasses. Designed to handle the water that would occur during flash floods, these tunnels were easily large enough for an animal to sneak through. Squatting in one was comfortable and semi-private. Usually, it wasn't too tough to sneak down into one from the highway. Leaving Xinjiang, the security on the Gaosu become much more strict.
The first fuel stop we made, I got to fill up at the pump. Then I figured out why "safety" means using a teapot. I was tired and staring off into space while the attendant filled up the tank. She shoved the nozzle into the tank and squeezed the trigger, locking it in place. Then she too starred off into space, as if my tank held 50-100L. Two seconds later gas was flying everywhere. It covered our bags, the seat. I looked at her with clear resonant disdain. Then she said the Chinese phrase that I hate the most, "不好意思“。It means "a bad meaning". People say this to me when they mean, "I'm sorry", or "I can't help you", or "Oh, well.". What it really means is, "I've lost face because of you, so leave now, and save me some face." The next gas station we used the teapots. But they were full of dust because we were the first customers and they had been left out all night. So I take the teapots in and try to explain that they need to be washed. An young man agreed that gas stations should be able to provide clean teapots and if the teapots are dirty, the customer shouldn't have to pay for it. So he washed the teapots for me. From Turpan to Hami is about a little less than 370 km's.
We got into Hami around 4pm. I went around the ring road and tried to take an exit from the Gaosu, but some silly monkey dumped a few truck loads of sand on the exit ramp. Whatever, that shit doesn't stop a dirtbike. Had to find a bank to get some cash. Baidu Ditu makes that really easy. Then we needed some snack food. This meant, we wanted a real supermarket. Not a chaoshi that sells some beer and chips. The way we found this was stopping on the side of the road and waiting till we found a reasonably intelligent person walking by, staring at us. Then I asked them where the nearest chaoshi was. "NO, not little tiny chaoshi, a real big chaoshi." This gathered a puzzled look, but the meaning was understood and I got the name of the well known underground place that sold an actual selection of food. The name was all I needed to plug into the map app and found it in 5 mins. I waited beside the bike while Andrea went in and bought stuff. It seemed easier to do this than to unpack all the stuff, lock it all down, and cover it with the tarp. I waited for over an hour before Andrea called and explained that she went out the wrong exit and the security guard wouldn't let her back into the store so she could cross to the other side and leave by the correct exit. The security guard said that the water she just bought and had the receipt for could be clear explosives and it was simply not possible to reenter. So, she had to walk about two km's around the building to find me. This task is not something Andrea is designed for. I navigate...Andrea makes sure I don't punch idiots who get in my way. I'm also not allowed to scream at idiots. When she got back, she was in tears. In the mean time I had the time to meet a cute little old Uighur man who insisted that I need to buy a Uighur style hat. He was particularly insistent that it should be a similar pattern to his little cap.
From there, we drove to a place called the melon garden. We drove 20km's out of town to the garden just as it was about to close. This meant that the guard was no where to be found. We checked-out the greenhouse. This place was cool. They grow melons for different purposes and breed some to be sweet. Some to be small enough for one person to eat in one sitting. Some need to be able to grow without irrigation or in intense sunlight. Each melon plant grows straight up and is hung about seven feet above the roots. The melons hand heavily from this vine. Thousands of plants all hanging there interbreeding with each other. We only had a few minutes before the park closed. From there, we took some back roads and looked for a fallowed field for a campsite. We found one. It was off the main road, but beside and in sight of a tiny, dusty road. We stopped and ate supper. It was crackers and some spicy red bean dip. I wrote in my journal and Andrea set up the tent. A nearby shepherd was bringing his sheep from the pasture as the sunset turned to twilight.
Just typing this next part makes me get angry.
A man in a red Hyundai Tiburon pulls over and leads his friend into the field to talk to us. He is clearly a Han guy, his friend is Uighur. He tells us he is a local resident. I ask if he owns the fallowed field. He says no. Then he says we can't sleep here, we need to register first. The Uighur friend has an expression on his face that says, "This is a waste of time. Lets just leave these guys." But the Han is oblivious to that social cue. So, we pack everything up and are about to ride away. We should have just rode away but he convinces me to stay. He says maybe the police will allow us to register and then continue to sleep here. We wait ten more minutes. It's totally pitch black out.
Then the police show up. Not one car. About six cars altogether. Two vans with lights flashing. All of a sudden about twenty Uighur men are standing around. A tall Uighur uniformed officer comes out and wants to see our passports. I'm calm and relaxed. Andrea is nervous, but holding together. The police decide that there is no problem. They offer me a cigarette. I decline. We are, obviously not allowed to camp. Not just in an unused field, but anywhere. There is no place in Hami that someone can go to pitch a tent. I'm not surprised. They tell me that we need to return to their police office and register then we can find a hotel. They tell me that both Andrea and I will ride in the van and some other guy will drive my bike. I politely tell them that idea is unacceptable. I drive my bike and Andrea can ride in the van.
In the van, the two police officers are very kind and try to make Andrea a little more relaxed. They ask questions. One of the officers practices his English a little. Inside the station, they take our passports again and begin filling out paperwork. The tall uniformed cop asks me to have a seat instead of standing. At first I refuse but Andrea reminds me that we should listen to what they say. So, I sit. We get our passports back. It's well after midnight.
Andrea and I have been going since dawn. We're tired and on edge. It's clear that the officers all feel bad for the situation. The officer who has a few words of English comes in and says to us, "Welcome to Hami". Andrea is overcome with irony and it shows on her face in the form of a hushed exhale. I smile awkwardly. The meaning behind our reactions was regretfully clear. Next, the tall cop brings us a melon. We refuse three times. The fourth time, he simply puts it in my lap. Next, he asks if we want to get some food. I decline that as well. He let us refuse that one. Next, is the trouble of finding a hotel room.
The officer with a little English volunteers to help us find a cheap room in town. Andrea and I get on the bike, and he leads us to into the city. We stop next to a skuzzy little convenience store. It's all locked up for the night. The cop calls a number and a big fat man comes from the back and unlocks the door. He takes me behind the building, through a dark parking lot, up two flights of stairs and into a little hobbit room with two wood platforms that didn't have any form of mattresses. For this room, he wants 100 yuan. I tell him the most I will pay is 50 yuan. We do not come to an agreement. There was just no way I wanted to leave the bike in a totally dark parking lot. So, back on the road and the cops find another hotel. This one has a posted room rate of 150 yuan, but the cops get the price down to 100 yuan for me. I check out the room and find out why the room rate dropped so easily. The mattress is covered in bed bug eggs. There were no actual bugs or dead bugs and the floors were stone. It was about 1:30 in the morning. I agreed to the room and we said goodbye to the cops. Then we brought our stuff into the room and set it on the desk and furniture raised off the floor. We fell asleep on our air mattress on the floor. Not once did we see a bug. It was just the eggs in the bed.
Through the whole situation, everybody was calm and rational. The cops were friendly and very helpful. I'm fairly certain that they thought the whole situation a waste of time, but a required waste of time. The law is the law. The Uighur police officers saw that the law was carried out in a courteous and hospitible manner. The motivation for why the Han called the police is still unclear. He was just randomly driving along, when he saw two foreigners standing next to a tent in a field during sunset. Something about that situation made him think that the best possible thing he could do is to call the police. He did not own the field, nor did he know the person who owned the field. All I know is he was really happy when the police all showed up. He was like a little puppy, dancing around in circles and waging his curly little tail.