26 Jan 2015
18. China - Pt.1
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Officially the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.). It’s the second largest country by land area and has a population of 1.35 Billion - that’s 1350 millions (Britain has just 64 million). Mandarin is the main language, with nearly a billion native speakers - more than any other language. Being so wide, it spans five time-zones, but since1949 has operated under just one; 8:00 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, but unofficially the Xinjiang province (and Tibet) also use GMT +6:00.
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A brief sprint across the Kyrgyzstan/China no-mans land divide and we’re at the first Chinese border. Having read on the internet that travellers entering here had to take a taxi 120km to the official customs building at Wuqia / Uluqqat did seem somewhat strange, nevertheless we hand our passports over to Officer Grumpy then enter the small building and as requested (or is that ordered in China?) take a seat and wait our call. Soon we’re called and told all our bags and panniers will be x-rayed, and then inspected to ensure we have non-communist offensive material such as ‘The Pro’s and Cons of Democracy’ by J.R Hartley. A sign on the wall informed visitors how the Chinese border was Fast, Efficient & Simple so I could only assume we’d come to the wrong place as what we endured was more a case of Laurel and Hardy, with no specific officer in charge or anyone informing us of the actual process.
With our panniers clipped back on we we’re tempted to just ride away - bypassing the compulsory taxi ride, but we couldn’t as they still had our passports, and the only way we’d get them back was to arrange for one of the awaiting taxis to take us on the 120km trip, whereby the taxi driver collects the passports from the building - no doubt a nice little undercover racket going on there with both parties involved, okay it was only about £10 each but the fact we was in a new country the last thing we wanted to do was be cocooned in a vehicle! We tried the old “but we’ve got no money for a taxi” trick but no doubt having heard that old chestnut before we’re told by Officer Grumpy “Then go back to Kyrgyzstan”.
Having been closed for nine days the border had its fair share of new customers and now most of the minibus taxi’s had gone, with just a few vehicles remaining. One of them was a small crew-cab pick-up truck and we realise that that was our only way we’d be moving any further into China. With a bit of haggling we soon load and lash our bikes onto the truck, using our panniers as ‘packing’ against each others bikes.
Soon we’re driving along through endless awesome scenery, the four of us gutted about our vehicular imprisonment. The sky was a crisp clear blue, the road smooth as silk, we slowly meander down in altitude through the mountain sided valley plateau, a light blue crash barrier gave the road an almost race-track feel, with just a few villages and little traffic we’re soon at the city of Wuqia / Uluqqat where our passports would be entry stamped.
Dropped off at the new border building and handed our passports we enter and join the Foreigners queue. Upon being served, the attendant takes a double look at me and my passport photo, stamps my passport then directs me over to the customs police. Unsure as to what the problem is I’m told to wait. Five minutes later a couple of policeman appear and say - in their finest Engrish - that the person in the passport photo was not me! Admittedly, having lost weight whilst cycling I did look slightly different, so showing them some older passport photos I carry for visa application, and some new one’s I’d got in Bishkek I explain - in my finest Chinese sign language - that I’d simply lost weight. Nattering amongst themselves, with a few laughs between them they eventually hand my passport back. Another queue to join to sign we have nothing to declare, then yet another luggage x-ray scan and were officially in China!
The province we’d entered was XinJiang, said as Jing-Jang with the J’s pronounced as the J in ‘Bonjour’. It one of the five autonomous regions, meaning it has its own local government and to a certain degree is self governing. Our plan was to head to the closest [tourist] city of Kashgar, a city with just 350,000 inhabitants - later we would find out this is comparable to a British village!
Stocking up on a few supplies for the 100km ride to Kashgar we decide to try our first Chinese dinner, here’s a photo of the Mark and Russ as we all tuck into it, perfecting the use of chopsticks!
Cycling out of Wuqia / Uluqqat felt absolutely awesomely amazing brilliant!!!! We were cycling along, in China, in bloody China! Beaming like Cheshire cats, like a child on Christmas morning with his first Lego set! I think this sign said “Welcome to China boys”, or at least in my happy little mind it did!
Out of town and on the [still] smooth road, aided along by a slight tail wind we were chewing out the kilometres.
After about 45km the sun slowly started to drop as dusk drew in so we looked for a suitable place to camp, with the next exit quite a distance we were fortunate enough to see a break in the motorway fence, turning off it led into a gravel area, agreeing it would be ideal to camp, although out in the [now] strong gusty wind. Up around the corner I’d spotted some pre-fab units, closer inspection proved them to be a derelict road-workers compound from when the motorway was built, a gap in the front gate meant we could wheel our bikes straight in and choose a suitable room, this was an excellent start to free-camping in China!
Wakey wakey lads, rise-and-shine and on ya bikes!...I was always first up…I guess it comes with age!
A 50km dash and we’re soon in the centre of Kashgar, a city with a rich history of over 2,000 years and served as a trading post and strategically important city on the Silk Route between China, the Middle East, and Europe.
From here we’d be planning our next move. Mark would take a train to Inner Mongolia to visit a friend whilst Russ, Jake and myself wanted to cycle as much as possible which meant the measly 30-day visa would have to be extended at another city that we could get to within the time remaining on our present visa else pay the hefty penalty for over-stayed foreigners. In the old historic part of the city we booked in at the hostel and decide to take the following day off…which was coincidentally my birthday!!
Being in a predominantly Islamic province made it feel more-like Turkey, calls for prayer, ladies wearing Burkas and much of the similar food. We were informed that this isn’t the real China, but would appear the further east we travelled. The streets were a hive-of-activity with various goods being made, food vendors, fruit n’ vegetable sellers, groups of men praying, mopeds zipping around.
Visiting the supermarket proved fun, supermarket?, fun? Westerners are somewhat of a novelty and the excess of shop-floor workers were most intrigued at our bemusement, the fact we hadn’t seen a supermarket since Turkey made it a novelty for us, let alone at some of the strange products that were available, there were many promotional zones with product pre-recorded messages being blared out in Chinese so it was all rather amusing for us, fortunately I didn’t quite have enough money for the vacuum-sealed chicken-feet snack or the ‘clone’ Red Bull drink.
It was amusing spotting many of the English translational errors on packets and signs, this one in the supermarket’s jewellery department really made us laugh, we had no idea what was trying to be said, do you? Just wait until you see some of the motorway road signs!!
My birthday celebration turned into a flop. Being Islamic the pubs and bars were few and far between and upon finding one we were told we firstly pay for a room - a karaoke room - and then beers on top. Sadly singing karaoke to two other guys in a Chinese bar was not on this tour’s to-do list, and with the price of one beer we could buy two back at the hostel, so needless to say that’s where we headed. Many of the city’s main roads have pedestrian bridges to cross and here I was able to get a good night-shot.
…….back at the hostel.
At the hostel I met a Frenchman, Xavier, whom had just ridden the epic Karakorum Highway and the following day was flying back to Germany where he worked, explaining the situation with “The Adventures of Tom’s Mug” he said he’d gladly take it back to Europe, giving him Tom’s email address and informing Tom of Xavier’s the mug - like a baton in a relay race - was now passed to him .
Back to the tour’s planning and our final decision was to ride together around/through the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, extending our visas in the city of Lanzhou ~ 3000km’s away. Now on the 4th day of our visa’s 30 days meant a rather regimental ride with little time (none!) for rest days in order to get to Lanzhou in time. Departing Kashgar we head back along the 20km main road we’d entered upon before reaching the rather quiet motorway. An hour or so further along the road becomes conned-off with traffic being lead back to the old single lane road. Following this for a bit we could see that the adjacent [new] motorway still had sections being worked on hence unopened to traffic but decided we had nothing to loose by trying to sneak back on ourselves. Regularly along the motorway were drainage gulley’s allowing flash-flood water to pass under without eroding the road’s foundations, as the motorway had a barbed-wire fence running along it the gulley’s proved an ideal entry point for cyclists! The road we’d been on can just be seen in the back-ground.
This is what we had, two pristine lanes of virginal tarmac, with choice of east or westbound carriage….we was loving China!
Due to wind blowing the desert dust and sand particles into the air visibility for the first 10 days or so was only a few kilometres so at times the cycling was rather mundane - not that there was anything to see apart from sand and rocks but fortunately we had reasonable banter to occupy ourselves, or me trying to teach Russ and Jake how to wolf-whistle (my assumption as to why they couldn’t do this was as they’d grown up with mobile phones and if their mate was down the road they’d simply send a text-message, whereas when I was young we’d whistle!).
We soon got into the routine of riding a minimum of 120km each day, although it did start to seem like a mission, as opposed to a tour - we’d get up, have breakfast and a cuppa, ride 40km, stop for 15 minutes, ride another 40km, stop for a ½ hour lunch, ride another 40km, start to look for camp-spot, stop, set camp, cook noodles, eat dinner, sleep <repeat>
Rather than detailing each day to Lanzhou I’ve subdivided it into events, the first being places we slept. Due to the time it takes to erect a tent, then the following morning pack it away we preferred not to use them, and to be honest China proved relatively easy to find somewhere sheltered, even if it was a dirty derelict building, a vandalised pre-fab or under the motorway in a drainage gulley it was a pretty good part of the journey - in all it took 24 day’s to reach Lanzhou and we rode 3,317 km.
Exiting the motorway every 2-3 days or so to re-stock on food in the cities was always interesting. The locals were always curious as we rode into town and many times would gather around as though we were street entertainers. People were friendly enough and we met various characters along the way, both in the cities and at service stations. Road signs within Xinjiang province were in Chinese and Arabic so unbeknown to us crossing into the second province of Gansu proved refreshing as now the signs were in Chinese and English, although once again the translation on some of them caused much laughter, with little else to photograph it did help pass away our ‘40km chunks’ of the day. Here’s a photo slideshow of some of the signs.
Truck Surfing!!
A term that most folk wouldn’t’ of heard before - maybe because we came up with it. It’s not big, it’s not clever, but it’s bloody fun! Slowly cycling along up a long gradual ascent whilst hearing the groans of an approaching slow moving truck, as the usually over-loaded lorry crawls past just slightly faster, what do you do? Hang on to it and let it do the work! As dangerous as it may sound we soon came up with a method to minimise any risks and maximise the fun. Many of the trucks had flat-bed trailers with an excess of goods lashed onto them by either a huge tarp or net, these were secured along its length by ratchets that the rope securing the tarp/net was tightened down by, this gives a perfect point to hang on to. Most articulated trucks with box trailers had no safe place to hold on to so we let those pass by, this soon became a daily ritual, in fact one morning we’d been on the bikes less than 60 seconds and we we’re chasing after a slowly accelerating truck that had just gone through a toll booth! He gladly pulled us ~10km before we decided to let go. The speeds varied from uphill climbs at ~20-30 km/h to 60km/h on a flat! If we got to the end of the day without a Truck-Surf then we’d had a bad day!
Here’s the boys hanging on to one that I missed;
Upon stream-lining the method for our new ‘sport’ we came up with a procedure:
a) If a sprint is needed to catch a truck that’s about to pass then the lightest bike starts at the back, but - as the trailer passes moves over and hangs onto it at the front, with the heaviest bike being at the front grabbing hold of the trailer at the rear.
b) If the driver’s mate/wife waves a steel bar or throws a cup of coffee out the window at you then immediately let go as their not happy, this happens about 20% of the time.
c) If the drivers mate/wife points a camera / iphone at you then pose you’re best international smile, they love it!
d) Last-on, first off. When departing the vehicle, the cyclist at the rear of the trailer should let go first, then the middle cyclist, then lastly the cyclist at the front - this ensures if you’re being pulled fast that when you let go and slow down/wobble that you don’t crash/rear-end each other.
e) Cycling in such a line and close proximity of each other restricts the visibility of the middle and rear cyclist’s, therefore the lead cyclist keeps an eye out for any approaching debris and informs those behind him.
f) If on an ascent, once the top is reached then let go, this allows the driver to start the descent without concern for others…and normally the descent is quicker on a bicycle!
g) If the driver pulls into a lay by then follow him in and thank him, taking his photo.
h) If anyone of the group fails to grab hold of the passing trailer then let go after 4-5km, this avoids anyone getting grouchy as they’ve had to cycle whilst you’ve been pulled without any effort.
Soon we're Truck-Surfing anything than moves faster than us;
We soon found that service stations exit slips proved a successful place for a Truck-Surf pick-up, like fleas jumping from the carpet onto a dog we were true parasites of the motorway. Most trailers were so overloaded that the driver couldn’t see us in his mirrors and we’d chuckle away to ourselves knowing he’d be oblivious to our presence as we were pulled many-a kilometres.
One morning on a climb we had over-taken an escorted lorry carrying an over-sized load, in fact the trailer had 10 axles, with 4 wheels on each side of the axle - that’s 80 wheels just on the trailer! A while later we’d stopped for a melon and he slowly crawls past us, both sides waving to each other. Back on the road and yet again we soon overtake him, leaving him in the dust as we crack out another 40km. Later on the road levelled out and after stopping at a service station for our lunch break as we head back to the motorway we notice the lorry approaching us, and at an ideal Truck-Surf speed! Russ and Jake burst-sprint ahead and are soon hanging on, whilst my tank-like bike takes slightly longer to catch, but by then the passenger in the escort vehicle was leaning out the window, shouting at the boys to let go - more a case of concern for their safety with the trailer being so big. By then I’d caught the escort vehicle and - moving at the same speed as the lorry - ask if I can hang on to their vehicle, which they joyfully agree to. By now, Russ and Jake had taken the next best option and rode behind the lorry, taking full advantage of its huge slipstream. After not long the passenger in the escort vehicle is passing me food, we were doing about 35km/h and he’s passing me cakes, bananas and even offered me a cigarette! After implying that I hadn’t got a third hand to peel the banana he rests it on my handlebar bag for later, whilst passing me more fairy cakes we contently watch as Russ and Jake pound out the kilometres! Soon the truck stops for some axle adjustment (each of them independently adjustable from a hydraulic control box at the rear of the trailer) and also for some melon, which they gladly shared with us.
The record distance we were pulled was 14km on a mountain pass ascent, here’s the driver and his truck. This gave us an amazing descent of which normally the trucks are rather slow at due to continually braking, the truck trailers brakes are water cooled, with small metal hoses that spray each of the hubs from a tank on the trailer, on a descent steaming water can be seen coming from the wheels as the water turns into steam.
As we travelled further east a few low mountain climbs led us through some excellent scenic areas, not much in the way of greenery but as the dusty air started to clear we had some great views. Here’s a photo slideshow of some of what we went passed through.
The next time you’re in your local Chinese takeaway ask for some of their genuine food, as believe it or not Chinese food is hot! As in chilli hot! Chilli peppers are big business in the country and here are some being unloaded from truck trailer onto the huge central reservation to dry in the arid sun.
There’s no going back this time around!
Just outside the city of Jiayuguan we saw the first ‘Frusta’ of The Great Chinese Wall, with even more to see within the city’s visitor’s centre we’re unfortunately unlucky as being out of season was closed so therefore missed out on considerably more, but nevertheless we felt quite triumphant at seeing the Frusta.
Heading toward a rather important kilometre marker I received my first official flat tyre, being caused by a tiny piece of mesh wire (from lorry tyres), at that time having completed 11,500km I couldn’t really complain (Note, my first [unofficial] flat tyre was self induced, catching the front wheel on a barbed wire fence whilst lifting the bikes onto the motorway!).
Cycling on relatively mundane desert road, and being a numbers person, the simplest of things can be most pleasing, here’s my (and my twin sister’s!) year-of-birth on a kilometre marker.
Riding with Russ and Jake made a great team, we were all equally paced and on different day’s we’d each be setting the rides rhythm which worked really well. Irrespective of what the photos appear to show some days were rather cold along with a nasty headwind - slowly counting each kilometre we gnawed away at the daily distance, we slept in some strange places and had a few tough times but inevitably, and ahead of schedule Lanzhou arrives under our wheels, whereby here we meet Charlie, a chap who certainly welcomes us to the maximum and turns a [usually] boring 5-day visa-extension wait into a rather hectic social week.
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Great blog.
ReplyDeleteKeep the wheels turning chaps.
Mark