Around China in 100 Days

[felix]

this is such a cool ride report!

[ChinaV]

this is such a cool ride report!

+1 Yes it is... I like how it drifts in and out of the hardships of the road vs the hardships of dealing with each other.

Thanks, and keep it coming

Cheers!
ChinaV

[Roadrunner]

Alashan Youqi to Zhangye – Day 51

The next morning I woke up not quite refreshed and with very sore legs, even though I had a solid 10 hours sleep. I set about packing and greeted Lulu as she woke up and started packing her things. Silence. Oh dear, it continues. Usually in the morning we would discuss where we were heading to for the day but not this morning. She took her things outside and tied everything onto the bike. “Where are you going?”. Silence. I was quite anxious at this point, thinking back to our conversation in Hohhot, and I thought she had given up on the partnership, either wanting to continue by herself or head straight back to Chongqing by herself. I took one last photo of Lulu packing her things, thinking this was be the end of our journey together, and she drove out onto the road. Luckily I had packed my things onto my bike because I suddenly had a brainwave through my fatigue-induced stupidity. Follow her. It doesn’t matter where she goes, follow her and make sure she is safe.



I caught up with her outside town and wondered where she was going. She soon stopped at a roadworks to ask the roadworkers something in Chinese (she was asking if there was a petrol station on the way). I waited. She got back on her bike, ignoring me, and drove back the way we came. After a while she stopped to have a break. Still with the silent treatment, I thought it was best to swallow my pride and apologise for what happened the previous night. The silent treatment ended and we talked. Apparently her eyesight really isn’t very good at all, something that concerned me a little at the time as eyesight is fairly important when driving a motorcycle. But we were back to business-as-usual. I breathed a sigh of relief and we headed back to town for petrol.

Back on the road to Gansu we soon passed the provincial border into the Beishan mountains, twisting through their desolate canyons and down the other side into the Hexi Corridor, the flat finger of land between the Qilian Shan and Beishan where the Silk Road used to pass through on its way into central Asia from China.



After the featurless plains of Inner Mongolia, the tree lined roads of Gansu were a nice change. I noticed Gansu is much more fertile than Inner Mongolia at this time of year.



We made it into Zhangye before three and decided to stop for the day because Lulu felt ill. It wasn’t too hard to find a place too stay and, even better, the place had a shower!! It was the first time since Ningxia that we were able to wash and the feeling was amazing.

Needless to say, I let Lulu choose her bed this time.

[Roadrunner]

Zhangye to Jiayuguan – Day 52

We were up late the next day and the guest house owner was severeley unimpressed with our tardiness. We were confident that we would get to Jiayuguan before dark so we wanted to take it easy.

It was a fairly unremarkable day on the bike. The green fringes lining the roads continued to be a nice touch. We stopped at a new temple under construction, and avoided being charged for entry because the ticket booth hadn’t been completed yet.



The day before, coming down from the Beishan mountain range, I was disappointed not to have seen the Qilian Shan in the distance, given that this Hexi “Corridor” was supposedly bordered on two sides by mountains. However, as we drove closer to Jiayuguan, I started to see the white peaks through the dusty haze.





Despite our own assurances, we did get into Jiayuguan after dark and it took a while to figure out where we could find an appropriate guest house. We managed to find a nice place with a very helpful lady who walked around in the dark for half an hour to help me park the bikes because she couldn’t offer any secure parking.

[Roadrunner]

Jiayuguan to Qiyi Bingchuan – Day 53

Lulu decided to take a day off because she still wasn’t feeling well, but I wanted to go to the July 1st Glacier (Qiyi Bingchuan or 七一冰川). I had never seen a glacier before (even though the South Island of New Zealand has many) and the guidebook said it was 90kms away so I figured that it should have been an easy 180 km day.



About 50 kms in, the roads started to get really bad until they just turned to gravel. While it was hard work controlling the bike and managing a decent speed, the scenery was quite spectacular. I drove past one or two chortens covered in Buddhist prayer flags at the passes.



I passed the 90 km mark and, while I was deep, and high up, in the mountains, I couldn’t imagine where nearby there would be a glacier. I thought back to information in the guidebook and realised I had been reading the information for the train line that goes to Jingtieshan (镜铁山), a town near the glacier, not this road. Pretty sure that it couldn’t be too far, I kept going.

I drove up a gravel road in the middle of the flat floor of a massive valley to a low building and a barrier barring the road forward. The guy at the tourist centre said it would cost 101 rmb (NZ$20) to get in (Which I found to be outrageous for a natural sight without maintainence costs or significant overheads, but I have since realised that very few tourist attractions in China come free). I showed him my (expired) student card and got a 50 rmb discount, which lessened the pain a little.



I parked the bike in the carpark and took what little I had brought with me up the first flight of steps. I was up over 4000 metres above sea level and within minutes my lungs were screaming for air. Sitting on a bike for weeks doesn't do much for my aerobic fitness.

It took me almost an hour to get the 3 kilometres from the carpark to the glacier, with supportive messages painted on the rocks, at least my money might be going towards something as valuable as this, and not a fleet of brand new Audis for the local tourism board.



Getting to the top and was worth the hike. The mere sense of achievement in getting to the top made the view, and the atmosphere, all the more magical. I tried to take a picture that would capture the moment, but the result didn’t quite do it. I was at over 4300 metres, with no-one around for miles, and just the pristine atmosphere and beauty to behold.



Needless to say, the walk down was much easier but the sun was starting to set behind the western ridge of the valley and I knew it would start to get darn cold soon. I tossed up whether to go back to Jiayuguan or stay the night at Jingtieshan, probably not more than 10 kilometres away. I decided to leg it back to Jiayuguan, mainly because it would be easier to get to the other places in Jiayuguan if I slept there. I still think about whether going to Jingtieshan would have been a much more rewarding experience.

Dusk had fallen and I still had 30 kms of exhausting riding on bad roads, made worse by driving in the dark, dodging trucks and their massive dust clouds, and worrying whether I had enough petrol to get me out of the mountains. After a couple more hours of driving it was a great feeling to get back on to tarmac, because I knew that it would be no sweat to get back, and the nearest petrol station was just around the corner.
I finally got back to Jiayuguan after 250 kilometres and nearly 14 hours of travel.

[euphonius]

Dear Roadrunner,

Excellent report, a real stemwinder. Starting to read like a coming of age novel!

Thank you also for your (belated) sensitivity toward Lulu and her eyesight. My primary work here in China is in the anti-blindness field. A bunch of us met Lulu when she passed through Shanghai after your ride last year, and we had a great time. What I'm about to say is unrelated to Lulu, except in the broader China context.

(public health message)
This country, for all its brilliance and history and rapid development and bullet trains and skyscrapers and export prowess, has some decidedly unscientific views when it comes to eyesight. One is that when people start suffering from cataract (a normal manifestation of aging just like gray hair), it means not that they should seek medical help but that their "candle has burned to the end" and their useful life is over. As a result, China has one of the world's lowest rates of cataract surgery, even though it's the world's single most common surgery and can restore full vision in 15 minutes or less at very low cost.

Another, and far more pernicious in my opinion, is the very widespread view that giving children eyeglasses actually makes their vision worse. I'm not making this up. Though this view is widely held across China, it's particularly common in poorer regions, and leads to a very malicious cycle of low educational attainment due to uncorrected poor vision, leading to another generation of low socio-economic attainment and chronic poverty. Myopia, or nearsightedness, is extremely common in children in Asia, including China. The primary and secondary school dropout statistics in western China are really depressing, and much of this could be alleviated if myopic children would just wear spectacles -- but their seemingly well-intentioned parents just won't let them. Sad

This is all the more ironic in the context of China's cities, where these days it seems every other girl (and many a boy) is wearing fashion eyeglasses with no lenses at all! Imagine! Wearing spectacles just to look cool, while millions of children are spurning real spectacles due to medical ignorance!

Again, I know nothing about Lulu's vision and don't remember whether she had or wore glasses, but I do hope that if she does have refractive error or other vision issues that she'll see an eye doctor or at least visit an optical shop and get spectacles with the correct, current prescription. She'll be a lot safer on the bike, and far happier in life, if she can correct her vision.

(/public health message)

And now we return to our regularly scheduled ride report...

cheers

[Roadrunner]

Jiayuguan – Day 54

We had a couple of items on the list for today. Jiayuguan fort (嘉峪关堡), something I had been looking forward to for while, and the western end of the Great Wall of China. We got on my bike, because there was no point in driving two bikes around when just one would do.

The day before we got there was the last day of the low season and overnight the ticket prices to enter the fort had doubled to 120 RMB. I tried my sneaky student-card-discount trick but they would have none of it and so I had to fork over the cash. Lulu went off to find a secret way in, a way that wouldn’t involve her paying a fen.
The fort was built in 1372 during the Ming dynasty and was used to control the Hexi corridor, so was very strategic militarily, with the Qilian Shan mountains to the South and the Beishan mountains and Gobi desert to the north. The fort’s outer wall is connected with the westernmost part of the Great Wall, and is considered the start (or end) of the Great Wall.





Apart from a courtyard quarter that had antique style buildings and dioramas of how the people dressed in the Ming Dynasty, the interior of the fort was fairly unremarkable, and I don’t feel that it fully justified the 120rmb admission fee. The walls and guard towers outside the fort were just as impressive as the ones inside. That being said, it was the only fort that we visited on the journey, and you have to try everything once.



After a trip to the fort museum, which was fairly good (although most of the writing was in Chinese) we drove to the Overhanging Great Wall, where I got in for free because I had my fort pass with me. The wall had recently been repaired, so it was easy to climb to the top tower and view the environs of Jiayuguan under a stunning blue sky.



On the way back to the hotel I was running low on petrol so I stopped at a station to fill up. I asked Lulu for a bit of petrol money to offset what I had spent by driving on my own money. She refused. She said I should have told her what I would be asking for before she got on the bike in the morning (as if it would change her mind about sitting on the back of the bike). This isn’t the way they do these kinds of things back home. I said that I wouldn’t leave the station until she gave me 10 kuai (NZ$2). Not much to get bent out of shape about, but I felt like there was a principle at state; reciprocity. I scratch your back, you scratch mine kind of thing. I wasn't going to subsidise her movements for the next couple of months because of dubious cultural misunderstandings or personal differences.

I leaned on my bike and waited stubbornly for her stubbornness to evaporate. Of course, it didn’t, and she walked off.

I drove after her and she yelled at me that she was walking home. “Get on the bloody bike Lulu!”. She had no idea how to get home, but she didn't care. She just kept walking. I guess there was a principle a stake for her as well. Nothing I could do. My tactics had failed. I drove back to the hotel still fuming. I started to feel quite guilty while I was washing my clothes, and texted her to let me know if she needed a lift. She called back a little later, after it got dark, and asked me to pick her up. We had both had time to cool our heels and recognise the stupidity of our disagreement and apologised to one another, sorting our misunderstandings out yet again.

A conflicted and exhausting end to an otherwise pleasant day.

[Roadrunner]

Jiayuguan to Bulongjixiang – Day 55

We got started at 12 with no definite town as a goal. Dunhuang was 450 kms and two days drive away, and there was no point in trying to rush it all in one day.



We drove out of Jiayuguan, also known as the mouth of China, where the Hexi corridor is known as the throat of China. Exiles were once cast (or spewed forth) out onto the harsh landscapes west of Jiayuguan for their crimes, when banishment was considered a fate worse than death. Surely it can’t be all that bad.

We had to wrestle with our handle bars to keep the bikes going straight in the wind, with dust gusts and spells of rain serving to vary our battle against the elements.



A couple of kilometres after Yumen city, the G312 deteriorated to gravel, sand and very fine dirt (Fesh fesh?). I had been a little concerned about this part of the route because the ‘National Highway’ was neither on my GPS map nor google maps when I checked. As this was the only way any motorcycle could get to Xinjiang (car, buses, etc could take the expressway, forbidden for motorcycles) I thought there must be a road. And there was. Just not a very good one.

Not long after we started to hit some bad bits of road, something seriously frightening happened. Lulu was driving in front, as usual, and going a little faster than usual when I saw a big pothole coming up fast. In a split second she had hit the pothole, lost control and the bike slid out, with the front wheel crashing into a concrete post, spinning the bike around 180 degrees and kicking up a cloud of dust. I nearly had a heart-attack, dropped my bike before it had stopped moving and ran over to her.




Lulu's crash - http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzE4ODc0NTQ4.html - Sorry about the swearing. My video editing skills aren't much to speak of.








She was conscious. I lifted the bike off her so she could move her left leg out and sit upright. Everything seemed to be moving fine, so I assumed nothing was broken or seriously hurt. I took her helmet off. She was dazed but ok. I told her she was very lucky (and I felt lucky too) not to have hurt herself. We surveyed the scene and identified what the problem was. Apparently she didn’t see the pothole at all and had no time to brake, so now I would drive in front whenever we had asphalt roads with potholes. We resolved to stop for the night at the next place we could find. I could tell she was still in shock. I was also shocked, just because she didn’t seem to have any injuries at all, apart from the sore shoulder she had had for the past month. I was very impressed with the gear we were wearing, but mostly I was incredibly surprised at how well Lulu handled the accident. Within half an hour she was up and driving again. Absolutely amazing!

We drove on, and the roads started getting worse, slowing us down even more which, combined with the setting sun, made it feel like a prospective bed was very far away.



After a couple more hours following road that ran beside the expressway, competing with trucks for space we came across the first substantial building we had seen since the crash. They did have a bed, but only one, in a room shared with male truckers, meaning Lulu couldn’t stay there. “No thanks”. Lulu got the directions, but apparently I heard her wrong and continued along the road we were came in on. Lulu caught up and exploded at me for not listening. The guy at the guest-house told us to go another way. I said we should try this road anyway, because that was the way the trucks were going.

We kept heading along the road, trying to follow the trucks who were going much faster than us at this point in the day. About 10 kms past that last building the ‘road’ petered out into a construction site. Clearly this wasn’t the way the trucks get to Xinjiang. I drove around “Off-road” looking for a way forward but there was no-go, and I was getting exhausted supporting the bike every time it wanted to fall over. We must have missed the turnoff somewhere in the dark and decided to go back. But Lulu’s battery had other things to say about it. No starter. So I ended up push-starting it a couple of times, which did nothing for my energy levels or mood (I would realise a couple of hours later that I could have used the kick-starter. Dumbass!!).



We headed back to the solitary building and, because we were too slow to follow the trucks to find the way they were taking, made a turn down the suspiciously dirty road (because it was a dirt road). We took very uncertain guesses about where to go when we came to forks until we finally came to a road that was both asphalt and on the GPS map. Great! “There should be a town around here somewhere”. So we spent the next hour or so driving through massive puddles and chasing lights appearing in the distance which turned out just to be industrial or railroad construction complexes. Lulu’s front tyre got a puncture, but it only took 10 minutes to pump it up and keep on looking.





Not long after that, at around three o’clock in the morning, we finally came to a town. All the lights were off and no shops open and Lulu had to get a truck driver to tell us where to look for a guest-house. Thank God they didn’t have a problem with me being a foreigner.

[Serpentza]

mate, good on you for leaping to the rescue like that after she went down, I'd like to recommend you make her wear a full face helmet, those open face things aren't the safest.

Glad she's okay!

[Roadrunner]

Bulongjixiang to Dunhuang – Day 56

We got up around midday and before we started we had to visit the repair shop to get Lulu’s battery and tyre looked at. All the guy could do was fix the tyre. The battery would have to wait until Dunhuang.

After a late brunch I sat out on the steps and set about entertaining some of the local school kids that had stopped for a gawk. I didn’t need to do much really.



Acting on the tips from the repairman, we headed in the general direction of where the G312 should be with help from the GPS and soon we were on a road hugging the expressway and used by the trucks with which we had a love-hate relationship. It looked to be heading to Guazhou and hopefully we would find the road that would lead us to Dunhuang.

Sure enough, after an hour or so, we found the turnoff and were back onto a flat, black strip of tarmac. The road was great, if a little boring, all the way to the outskirts of Dunhuang.



Apart from the endless wasteland to the right, heading out into the Tarim basin, and Helan-shan style mountains to our right, we saw a couple of mounds of packed dirt in the vague shape of a tower. These were the early rammed-earth watch towers of the Han dynasty built around 2000 years ago and were used to guard this part of the silk road.



Lulu had been told about a hostel to stay at just outside of the town near the sand dunes; The Dunhuang Zephyr International Youth Hostel. We arrived at a great looking place with an open air loft restaurant and excellent music playing. It had a distinctly Indian feel and I felt very comfortable there. I had to watch their pet dogs though. They were a bit nippy.

For dinner we had some great noddles with vegetables and sauce and very tender mutton washed down with a hard earned beer.