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  1. #1 Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    Since it rained on the first day of QingMing holidays (清明, Chinese Memorial Day), I wasn’t planning on going out originally. Besides, most my Chinese riding buddies have done their rapeseed flower tours in last few weeks without me. Then on the second day of QingMing the sun came out shining gloriously. Not being able to resist it, I decided to ride my JH600 out towards AnHui to see if any rapeseed flowers left. The destination is ShiTan (石潭), famous for its beautiful scenery and panoramic display of rapeseed blossom.

    First stop: Oriental Land (东方绿舟), 20KM outside of Shanghai Proper. Although a change of scene from Shanghai’s office buildings, shops, restaurants, bars and dreadful city traffic, these battleships and missiles are fakes.


    After Oriental Land, the traffic thins out and the ride becomes more enjoyable.


    I always take my first rest break at Dianshan Lake淀山湖. Believe it or not, this lake is named after a Shan (山,mountain). A friend of mine actually spent time looking for mountain Dian (淀山) and indeed found it right next to the lake somewhere, at the impressive height of about 20 meters. That “mountain” was not on my itinerary.


    Official story about Dianshan Lake.



    The town of Zhenze震泽 declares itself as the “historical culture town” and puts its name on this horrendous power station towering over guodao 318.



    TaiPuHe (太浦河) is a canal connecting the great Tai lake (太湖) to Shanghai. It is usually a busy waterway, but not today on holidays. Rapeseed flowers made it much more pleasing than otherwise.







    The first real “mountain” 100km west of Shanghai.



    On the outskirt of Anji, a market of Anji white tea. This is a market for tea leaves freshly picked same day from the field. The tea processing plant collects them from farmers here. They are called chaqing(茶青). White tea is highly valued green tea, retailed over 2000 RMB per half kilo for those produced before Chinese Memorial Day (清明节).


    Note that they are all embryonic buds, picked by hand. White tea has the best "look" and color in comparison with other green teas, one of the important aspects of high-end teas.




    After passing by the chaqing market, I found a small side road leading to a large area of white tea plantation. This is the height of the season and a large number of tea pickers are out working in the fields.











    A gathering of older women not working in the field. My picture taking was spotted by some of them, and immediately they stopped talking to each other and all lined up against the wall looking defensively at me. I quickly withdrew and rode away, not dared to take another picture. My apology for disturbing their peaceful afternoon.



    At the foot of the tea fields, there are two tombs of different style. A traditional one sits next to a Christian burial in harmony.
    Last edited by milton; 06-15-2011 at 07:17 AM.
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  2. #2 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    Further down the road, I saw this massive inventory of huge rocks. Note how small that guy is on the lower right.



    Between Anji and Linan (临安) there is a nice spread of mountains. I always enjoy passing through it. This is a couple of pictures of this gateway.




    I was looking for the TianHuangPing Dam (天荒坪) but failed to find it. I ended up at this “sight”, which costs a bit of money to get in. This pile of artificial landmark really turned me off so I didn’t go in. 5 or 6 years ago, Anji had only a single sight, 天荒坪. Then the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon put it on the map by revealing its beautiful bamboo forestry. Local people got creative and invented 20 some new sights since the movie. Now the signs for various sights are everywhere and I can’t find the dam any more.



    After passing LinAn, I got on shengDao 102 and started to see some rapeseed blossom.





    Last edited by milton; 04-12-2011 at 09:24 AM.
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  3. #3 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    At around 6:30pm I decided to stay at ChangHua (昌化) for the night. ChangHua is of decent size, and more importantly offers a few massage parlors. We all know how important those facilities are after a day’s riding.
    Next day I wanted to make an early start, got up at 6am and intended to head out. Unfortunately my JH600 wouldn’t start. After turning the ignition key the warning lights just flashed and wouldn’t fire. I have been riding this humongous thing every day to work without much problems. It just had to frustrate me right in the middle of my trip 400KM away from Shanghai. A few f&^% words did not work. I am pretty sure local mechanic won’t be able to help, as the problem apparently is electrical and ECU related. Without much option, I woke up Mr. Liu (刘志东) at 6:30am. He was pretty gracious about it and promised to call Jialing factory in ChongQing at 8:00am. Then we found out later ChongQing is off that day (Memorial Day). Fortunately we were able to get hold of the regional support guy in AnHui, Lao Li. Remote diagnosis pointed to a fault with the anti-theft mechanism, most likely due to the wiring connecting the ignition key assembly to the instrument panel, which in turn connects to the ECU. Pretending knowing what I was doing, I fumbled through that rats nest of wires under the ignition key and actually found a cut on one of the wires. By just squeezing the still attached wire around the cut, I managed to start the bike.

    Not willing to abort my tour, I decided to take a risk and rode out the rest of the trip. It was 11am when I finally headed out after losing 5 hours. What a bummer.

    The day was nice and my mind quickly recovered from my bike trouble. The ride wasn’t too interesting until I hit YuLingGuan (昱岭关), which leads one into Anhui, a very important military site historically.



    After leaving ZheJiang, the AnHui side of the road, shengdao (省道 324) is noticeably bumpier and in disrepair. However, the scenery is considerably better with lots more rapeseed flowers lining the road.







    The beautiful town of SanYang (三阳).









    On the AnHui side the tea production is not as highly priced as AnJi white tea, but it is still a good cash crop. The pickers all carry a rattan basket on their back.

    Last edited by milton; 04-12-2011 at 11:50 PM.
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  4. #4 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    The toll road, on which we are not allowed to ride, runs in parallel with our slower but substantially more scenic road.


    Getting there is a lot more interesting on the Anhui side.






    Don’t remember the name of this little town. It can certainly boast the most scenic backyard in China.


    Motorcycle touring through roads lined with rapeseed blossom. Forgot to include my bike into the picture. Talking about the bike, I continued to have problem starting it. However, it always managed to fire after my playing the same trick of squeezing around the cut on the wire. I hoped I was not pushing too hard my luck.
    Last edited by milton; 04-12-2011 at 11:52 PM.
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  5. #5 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    Finally I reached XiaKeng (霞坑), where I started to see the sign for ShiTan (石潭), known as the “Photographers’ Base” (摄影基地). Below is a shop selling some local pastry. Since I couldn’t recognize two words out of the four from the shop sign, I decided to try one. I was not impressed.




    XiaKeng is just like any other small towns we have to pass through, so many of them, with a thoroughfare going through the center of the town. It’s not difficult to imagine how this road evolved from its original small dirt path into this tarmac with teeming cars and trucks. I don't think local townspeople ever adjusted their mind around the road. They walk on it as if it’s still a dirt path generations of them grew up on without the faintest idea about traffic regulations, right of way, passing to the right, silly things like those. Intruders like us on motorcycles with our full-face helmet and protective armor, looked to them like creatures from mars, now complain about how messy the traffic is in their towns.




    Finally I reached ShiTan. Although the peak photograph season is over, there are still lots of people with fancy photograph gears gathered there. Cars are not allowed on the “base” but we bikers are able to ride up. The path leading to the sights is quite steep and challenging. Focusing too much on negotiating the turns, I overshot the best sights and went straight to the top which did not offer the best lookout.




    After getting off, taking one picture from the less than ideal spot on the mountain top, I discovered to my greatest fear that the bike trouble acted up again and this time my luck ran out. The old trick of squeezing the wire stopped working. Then after blindly fooling around with the wire, connecting and squeezing it from all different angles, again like I knew what I was doing, the angel of luck eventually took pity on me and got the engine turned over after 30 panic stricken minutes. I wouldn’t dare to shut off the engine again and quickly descent from the “Photographers’ Base” with a total of 1 picture from a spot with no photographers around. I must say my precious single picture did absolutely no justice to the stunning scenery there. Regrettably also that I was not able to make record of that steep, full of reverse radius, very difficult ultra-twisty road.

    Well, there is always next year. Let me borrow a picture from a photographer friend of mine:



    I rode straight back to ChangHua in 2 hours without stopping, drinking or shutting off the engine in order not to trigger the anti-theft mechanism. Then I realized that that bad wire must be attended to as sooner or later I needed to pull out the key at least once to open the gas tank for re-fueling. So I found a mechanic in ChangHua who actually worked on a JH600B before (that was a JH600B with a sidecar driven by none other than our very own Nostalgia I believe). He un-mounted the instrument panel and reattached the wire with duct tapes. Luckily it was a duct tape job, not an ECU job. It worked fine.
    My holidays were reaching an end. I traced back where I came from towards Shanghai, but avoided the mountain path between Anji and LinAn for lack of time, stayed overnight in a small town when it got dark and was back in office about noon on Wednesday.
    Last edited by milton; 05-08-2011 at 12:32 PM.
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  6. #6 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    The route:

    Last edited by milton; 04-11-2011 at 04:16 AM.
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  7. #7 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    Administrator-tron CrazyCarl's Avatar
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    Nice report Milton, and nice photos too!

    You get the funky wire permanently fixed?

    CC
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  8. #8 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyCarl View Post
    Nice report Milton, and nice photos too!

    You get the funky wire permanently fixed?

    CC
    Glad you enjoyed my report.
    Jialing in ChongQing is the only source of parts for JH600. So our Jialing contact in Shanghai is ordering a new wire for me from ChongQing. In the meantime my funky wire is held together by a few pieces of duct tapes. Motokai just had a bad wire fixed in the same nest of wire at the front underneath the instrument panel. Need to get more duct tapes.
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  9. #9 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    Administrator-tron CrazyCarl's Avatar
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    How long did it take for the problem to occur?

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  10. #10 Re: Rapeseed Blossom 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyCarl View Post
    How long did it take for the problem to occur?

    CC
    Mine started to occur after 8000KM. Motokai is at about the same mileage.
    There is a big bundle of wires hiding between the ignition key assembly and the instrument panel, which moves around when the steering wheel turns. Apparently some of the wires don't last well after many kilometers of stresses.
    Last edited by milton; 04-12-2011 at 12:27 AM.
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