Black and Blue in Taihang Shan 太行山

[milton]

Located to the south of China's Inner-Mongolia Plateau is the world's largest loess plateau 黄土高原, formed by accumulation of wind-blown silt and clay. Loess is homogeneous, porous, friable, pale yellow or buff and forms the most breathtaking landscape:



Three of us JH600 riders made a trip on the Qingming 清明 week to the mountainous area of this loess plateau known as Taihang Shan 太行山, with Motokai and me set out from Shanghai on 2 black bikes, joined on the second day by Barry on a slower but equally handsome blue Jialing from Beijing. For the Shanghai gang the “value index” may be a bit low, costing 4 days for getting there and back with only 3 days for the fun stuff. However, that is the cost of living in the warm and sandstorm free beautiful Shanghai. The plan was to ride to Taihang Shan 太行山 and spend a few days there and later perhaps meet with Felix somewhere close to Xi’an for the second half of the trip. For Shanghai gang we would train our bikes back to Shanghai from either Xi’an or Zhengzhou 郑州.

Three JH600s in front of a Jialing dealership just before entering Wangmangling 王莽岭, the owner of which had never seen our kind of Jialings before:




The highlights of the trip are:
1. Loess plateau
2. Taihang Shan 太行山 and hand-dug “hanging tunnels” 挂壁公路
3. Longmen grottos 龙门石窟







The weather couldn’t have been better, with only a couple of hours of rain on the first day arriving at Xuzhou 徐州 and the rest of the trip warm and dry.

[milton]

Day 1 and 2:
Getting there: Xuzhou 徐州 and Anyang 安阳

The first two days were spent on the road galloping towards Anyang 安阳, where we were to rendezvous with Barry coming down from Beijing. This part of the trip was simply for getting there, going through totally flat terrains with very little sceneries. From Shanghai we made a short ride to Taihai ferry 台海汽渡 to get across the Yangtze River to Jiangsu 江苏. After getting off the ferry, it was guodao 国道 G204 to Yancheng 盐城 and some other guodaos going west to Xuzhou 徐州. Those guodaos are mostly divided and wide with fairly light traffic during Qingming holidays. It was quite pleasant and relaxed going through those green wheat fields lining both sides of the road. We took very few breaks as it was difficult to find shaded rest areas. There were just too few trees large enough to cast decent sized shades.






We arrived at Xuzhou around 8 pm after getting rained on for about 2 hours on the way in. We were cold and stiff with hands totally numb. After checking into a hotel, we ventured out to find food, which brought us into the freezing rain more. It wasn’t too pleasant.

Xuzhou is the ancient Chu 楚 territories and full of history and culture. People there are straightforward and laud, not as refined as those south of Yangtze. Its food has its own unique style, spicy but not very hot. Motokai and I had a good dinner of local Xuzhou dishes:




Delicious fish balls of fresh-water fish:




Since we made good time the first day, covering almost 800km, we decided to do some sightseeing around Xuzhou in the morning.


View from Yunlong Shan 云龙山:






In Xuzhou museum, we were presented with the following world famous gold-threaded jade cover 金缕衣 of an emperor, and his empress in equally impressive silver-threaded jade cover 银缕衣:







Xuzhou museum:




We left Xuzhou before noon and headed for Anyang 安阳 to meet up with Barry. Along the way we passed Heze 菏泽 and Dongming 东明, crossed the Yellow River the first time via the Great Yellow River Bridge 黄河大桥 at Dongming.
The Yellow River is called "the cradle of Chinese civilization" as its basin was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilizations and the most prosperous region in early Chinese history.

The muddy flow of yellow river:




The sight of Yellow River is known to elicit strong patriotic feeling from Chinese people, but Motokai was just happy to take a nap on the bridge over the mother river of China:




Shortly after crossing the Yellow River we entered into Henan 河南, which had the most chaotic traffic conditions and the worst possible roads. People there obviously had no idea of what traffic rules are. The roads were teeming with people on cars, trucks, tricycles, motorcycles, e-bikes, tractors, horses, pigs, water buffaloes, donkeys, goats; you name it, but all arbitrarily determining their own routes and directions in total ignorance of all other vehicles supposedly sharing the road. Amazingly they were all super conscious of the poor road condition and did everything possible to avoid any pot holes, frequently going to the extreme left to circumvent them, again in total ignorance of the incoming traffic. One had to look at those vehicles very carefully in order to tell which direction they were headed. It was both scary and comical at the same time.

We met up with Barry and his slow blue bike around 7:00pm and checked into Anyang hotel for the night. For dinner we ate at a very nice little restaurant specializing in local Anyang cuisine. Can’t recall its name but it’s definitely something worthwhile to seek out if ever we were in Anyang again.

The triangular things are “blood pancakes”:











All in all, it was quite nice to be able to stay in an inexpensive clean hotel and finish the day with unfamiliar but delicious food. We almost forgot about the exhausting ride in the horrendous Henan traffic earlier during the day. It was a good day.

[MotoKai]

Getting there is half the fun. Or in this case "2 days of the fun"!

Riding with Milton is a great experience - particularly his insights into places of interest, cultural contexts, Chinese history and most importantly FOOD! Which each meal Milton would seek out the local specialties 特菜 (tecai). And after a hard days (and sometimes nights) ride, it's quite a luxury to have Milton managing the ordering. The food was always good, even the Blood Pancakes!

Here are some pics of the Black Bikes "Getting There".....

Black Bikes Getting There Map: Days 1-2 (Shanghai to Anyang, Henan)

Day-1 Ferry leaving Shanghai crossing the Changjiang (on way to destination Xuzhou).
The day started out sunny & beautiful, but we would be caught in the rain for the last 2 hours of the ride (in the dark and on the expressway). The crosswinds were quite strong so it was a challenge to keep your line when riding over the painted arrows on the road.

Where's Milton?
.

Milton checking out some of the not-so-historic landmarks along the G204.

Day-2 Morning in Xuzhou - checking out the historic and cultural sites

Crossing into Shandong before hitting the rough roads to Anyang, Henan.

[Barry]

Been lazy day 1 & 2, barely took any pictures.

Day 1
I left BJ through the mountains in the west to Laiyuan and continued further to Fuping where I stayed on Monday night.

Day 2
I left Fuping early in the morning on a truck road through the mountains, and ended up taking the boring roads all the way to Anyang. Where I met the black bike (Craig) and the glue bike (Milton) after I had found us a decent place to stay.

[milton]

Day 3: Taihang Shan
We left Anyang early and headed for Taihang Shan passing Linzhou 林州 and Rencun 任村. The plan was to go through Hongtiguan 虹梯关 village along route X670. The road condition was again quite poor, but the scenery more than made up for it.




Taihang Shan region is quite arid without much crop or vegetation to speak of. The dusty dark brown terrain is spectacularly rugged. However, there are large parcels of land evidently still being cultivated but without much to show for. The life here must be pretty harsh. However you could still see people in the field fighting their one thousand year losing battle:








Us taking a break with Barry’s pink T-shirt and blue bike the only bright colors in sight:




More rare colors:



A village built by brick and clay almost invisible to the landscape:




The first tunnel we came across in Taihang Shan:




We had lunch at a really small village; noodles at 6 kuai each. The blue bike was leaking oil, so we decided to pull into Huguan 壶关 for repair. Later on we were told by a mechanic that the blue bike was missing a gasket at where the stator wires exiting the engine. Since there was no possibility to get the right gasket in the middle of Taihang Shan and the leaks were not that major (yet), Barry decided to keep going with oil dripping and staining the tail end of his blue bike. Had this kept up the back of the blue bike would have turned black, which was probably what the blue bike had wanted all along subconciously.

We checked into Huguan Hotel for the night. It was more money than Anyang but comfortable. We did have a run-in with the local police, who dared not to let us pass by without properly registering our documents. After copying our documents, this uncommunicative cop took us to a small restaurant full of rowdy locals with people queuing for tables.

Not being able to get a table, the cop walked around the restaurant to “find” us one. We didn’t know how he managed it but we soon were given a table with the cop attending:




The food was again excellent, different but tasty.

[milton]

Day 4:The Tunnels On my way to the breakfast in the morning, much to my surprise, I found Barry and Motokai actually getting their fingers dirty working on MY bike, tightening the chain with Barry’s shining new wrench set and checking the coolant level. Owning little tools and knowing almost nil about bikes, I was lucky to have these bike buddies to travel with.



On our way to the tunnels, we followed Barry’s GPS but ended up in some small village roads. The cement roads were in good shape, the sky crystal clear, and the air cool and fresh, all the perfect elements for a great morning ride. We took a short cut here, through the road on the right of the picture, to Shuzhangzhen 树掌镇：



The reason that I was there all by myself was due to the fact Motokai and Barry had gone on ahead of me to explore the short cut. This was the typical marching pattern: with Motokai or Barry leading upfront, with me almost always taking the last place, slow, wise, not easily tempted by cheap thrills over the twisties and always free to take pictures whenever I feel like it. Fortunately I was on a black bike; otherwise I’d have been even slower.

After Shuzhangzhen we headed for Wangmangling 王莽岭, around which there are several famous tunnels carved into the side of the mountain. Constructed in the seventies by hands and primitive tools those tunnels used to be the only way small villages in the areas can be reached. The tunnels are basically narrow roads about 5 meters high and 4 meters wide, carved into the cliff close to its edge with openings along one side of the insane pathway through which one can peek at the outside breathtaking scenery over the drop.

The one we visited was Kunshan tunnel 昆山隧道，not the more famous Guoliang 郭亮 tunnel or Xiyagou (锡崖沟) tunnel. After strenuous negotiation with the guys guarding the entrances of those sights, we got a discount on the admissions for all the sights by promising not to actually enter them (except Kunshan tunnel). It was just fine for us as we were keen to make time for meeting Felix in Luoyang洛阳 that night.

Kunshan tunnel, which is empty due to the exorbitant entry fee:













Just gotten out of the tunnel:



After the tunnel it was lunch hour already. We walked up and asked the villager of this house “Can we eat here”? Yes and we did.



Too tall Barry:



Waiting for our noodles in the courtyard:



While his daughter was working in the kitchen, this retired former steelworker extended his very warm welcome by writing his welcome speech on this piece of paper:




, which says “Welcome to visit my home, from a Chinese citizen, People’s Republic of China” quite formerly. He also collected some wild “flowers” to decorate the lunch table.





Notice how Barry finally came to terms with the village food. From this point on he ate whatever the locals served us, including tofu, blood pancakes, donkey meat, etc., but was nevertheless steadfast against the lamb.

After lunch it took us full 10 minutes to bid farewell to the old man and his family. Heading for Luoyang洛阳 the first part of the guodao was horrendous, completely torn apart by identical looking coal trucks. For a dark moment we all had this ghastly thought that we might be doomed to this terrible road all the way to Luoyang, by then we’d be comatose. Fortunately it was brief. We even took a picture break over the beautiful dam along the road:



From the lookout one can see the “hanging tunnel” specifically designed for coal trucks . It must be the most beautiful truck route in the country. Too bad we wouldn’t dare to stop inside the tunnel for pictures:



We could have been stopped to pay for the sight of this tunnel and dam if not because of the coal trucks. By the way, for the admission of those sights we visited in the morning the Shanxi part was 120 kuai and Henan another 120 kuai. \

In order to ride with Felix on day 5, we got on the expressway from the north of Jiyuan 济阳 after it got dark. The expressway was in excellent shape as usual, but the gusty wind made it challenging to hold a steady line. We did notice that sections of the road were quite scenic, unlike most of the boring expressways. We passed Luoyang 洛阳 downtown into Longmen 龙门 around 8 pm and found out that Felix didn’t even leave Xi’an.

[milton]

Been lazy day 1 & 2, barely took any pictures.

....
I left Fuping early in the morning on a truck road through the mountains, and ended up taking the boring roads all the way to Anyang. Where I met the black bike (Craig) and the glue bike (Milton) after I had found us a decent place to stay.

By now we must have established that glue is our best friend. I have the glue to thank for my bike not leaking motor oil, unlike some blue ones. Just avoid blue glue though.

[MotoKai]

By now we must have established that glue is your best friend. I have the glue to thank for my bike not leaking motor oil, unlike some blue ones. Just avoid blue glue though.

A little background for everyone on The Blue & The Glue....

Some JH600 Riders already know that there is an issue with the rubber chain guard that lays on the swingarm to protect the chain. The problem occurs when this rubber guard comes off either from i. deterioration/it just wears down ii. the eyelets where it's screwed down just break.

When this guard comes off it can move into the front sprocket and be a nuisance. During my first days of riding the JH600 in 2010 my rubber guard came off and flew into the front sprocket and forced the chain off and the force of this broke the sprocket cover open - not a good thing. Well the widely used solution is to GLUE down this rubber guard, which most Black Bikes do (but apparently not all Blue Bikes).

Milton: Seems to like this fix so much he now uses glue for ALL OF HIS FIXES. Gluing wires together, gluing broken turn signals back on, etc.
But for some reason, still refused to glue down his soft bags that hang off his bike!
Barry: Has 30,000kms on his blue bike, of which he's ridden 20,000km of them.....and all without using any glue!



Well I'll let Barry share the details of his "missing gasket", but I will say that during this Taihang Shan ride he lost yet another rubber chain guard, and bits went into the front sprocket. This is what happens when you're not a glue fan. And this surely led to the Case Of The Missing Gasket.

Here are some additional photos of Days 3+4:

[MotoKai]

Day-3

[MotoKai]

Day-4