Cycle complete!
Its about 7am when I begin my first few kilometres into the crisp morning air. The weather has turned cool in comparison to previous days. Now in the tent the 10C celsius night temperatures brings a certain pleasantness to the nightime, one that had rarely been felt since leaving wintry NZ. Early mornings is my favourite time to get some good miles done. I feel fresh, the roads are quieter and I seem to be able to take in more of my surroundings making it far more enjoyable than the afternoon rush hour.
I pedal back onto the main road and climb a small hill, noticing a light tailwind at my rear. As I pedal past paddy fields, scooters piled high with fresh oranges and vegetables swerve around me, and from time to time I in turn overtake them such is their heavy loads. The middle line splitting the road in two, is disregarded here, and although Im driving on the right I often have scooters and cars facing me head on only to cut back at the last second. As a scooter overtakes me I hear its quiet beep and as he comes up parallel with me, a car with an even larger shrill of the horn, overtakes the overtaking scooter on the small country road. The maneuvre is accompanied with long blasts of the horn from oncoming traffic, as the car, spluttering in black smoke veers in front of us both with not a second to spare. Traffic in China... lets just say its organised chaos! It has and it hasnt any rules, although there appears to be an unwritten code of how one "should" behave while on the road. Let me give you a run through some of the main observations. Beeping Beeping is mandatory at all times. When you are overtaking regardless of how safe or unsafe it is, always beep two or three times before you overtake. If you want to be especially annoying perform these beeps when youre just parallel to your victim, for maximum impact! At every little junction or pedestrian crossing, beep four or five times. It'll help speed up the scooter driver who has just performed the ridiculous U-Turn right in front of you. Oh and even if its 3am in the morning in a large city dont hesitate to be especially noisy! Driving If you have the opportunity to overtake on a blind corner then do just that! It makes for so much more fun having to brake and swerve suddenly rather than wasting valuable seconds behind a truckload of cement. Always overtake the vehicle in front of you on the wrong side, even if it is a police car. (From what Ive seen I would easily say that 2/3 of overtakes are taken on the wrong side here in China!) Remember those 3 point turns you did for your driving test in quiet cul-de-sacs? Well dont hesitate to put what you learned into practice on busy city streets. Despite the fact you'll bring 4 lanes of traffic to a screeching halt, at least you know you're going to make that turnoff you missed earlier And finally... Have Fun!
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It had been a long 5 hours on the saddle that day. I had just about had it with the potholed chinese roads. That I had both no suspension and a leather saddle didnt help matters as I swerved ferociously to avoid the largest of the craters. As a bit of background most of the chinese roads are made from concrete rather than tar and so when they wear and tear they create cracks, the width of the road unlike tarred roads which create random potholes. These cracks can vary in size but they usually persist for miles, so rarely is it you get just one giant split across the road, but rather a whole set of them which can make you judder for many minutes at a time. Not fun!
It was just after 5pm when I happened unexpectedly across a large town and so thinking I deserved a mattress over a night in the tent I set out to find a hotel. A chinese hotel can be a pretty tricky thing to find. Theyre generally small, family-run and of course will never say 'hotel' on the front (well not in english anyway!) I've yet to find one without having to ask someone for directions, which with the language barrier always involved me putting both my hands together by my head signalling a sleeping motion. It usually seems to work with them pointing me in one direction or the other, but not before a crowd of 10-20 people gather round to find out 'what does the white man want?' With many pairs of eyes following my every movement I picked Melissa up and wheeled her around, guiding her in the direction of the hotel. It didnt take long to find the hotel and after another round of misunderstanding questions and eventually figuring out the rate of the room, I brought Melissa inside. "¥50 / €8 bargain!" I thought to myself but before the money was exchanged, the man asked for ID. "Standard procedure" I murmured to nobody in particular and showed them my passport. After inspecting it for 2 minutes he asks me for my ID again, but in a shape like his one, practically like a credit card, but it had to be chinese ID. I laughed and shooked my head explaining to him I didnt have one because of course I wasnt chinese! Remember that he didnt have any english so Im pretty sure my words fell on deaf ears, but I persisted anyway! Realizing my frustrstion he went to his scanner, placed his own card inside and mimicked that because my passport was not the same size as his ID, that I could not stay the night. I shook my head again in disbelief at this ridiculous rule. It was all the more ridiculous in that I had stayed in 3 chinese hotels before and this was the first time this had ever happened to me. I left disappointed but knew this was just a one off, just one guy who was a bit of a stickler for rules. Until I found my second hotel. Same thing, room was great, cheap, but when it came to ID the same problem arose. He seemed a bit annoyed that I had wasted his time although I was even more so with not being able to find a bed for the night! I left the hotel with a look of despair, frustration and anger on my face, it was going to be dark in 30 minutes and I knew I was going to have to wild camp for the night. It was risky, 30 minutes to find a spot to wildcampin Australia or NZ, no problem! But in China, based on the few times I'd done it already, I knew I was pushing it. The thing with China is, there are people... absoloutely.... everywhere! To add to that all the land is farmed, so finding a patch of hidden grass was like finding a leprechaun in Manhattan. Impossible! 20 minutes later I happened upon a quiet road up to a powerstation. Seeing a patch of soil in between some maize and a bed of lettuce I decided to make camp. It was almost perfect from a security point of view, as the only people who would see me were those going in and out of the powerstation (I had camped 10 metres from the entrance). Besides it was almost dark so I assumed all the workers would have gone home at that stage. On that issue I was almost right. An hour later and after settling into another enthralling chapter of Tolstoy's classic novel 'War and Peace', I hear 2 scooters approaching the power station emtrance. "Hopefully they'll just ignore me" I pondered to myself, and picked up the kindle to continue reading. Next thing, a pair of voices is heard breaking the strains of the crickets nightsong and a light is thrown in my direction. I can see the light getting brighter as heavy footsteps crunch over the soil gaining on the tent. The tension builds in my mind as ideas of who these people may be cross my mind. Would they be thieves out to mug me? or the police getting me for illegal camping? or just 2 night shift workers interested in who or what was in that tent? Thankfully it turned out to be the latter, as I heard a loud "Ni Hao" followed by other inaudible chinese words. I zipped down the tent and peered out ino the beam of a rather powerful flashlight. Repling Ni Hao myself and amid my squinting I could make out their friendly smiles. The man holding the flashlight was an aged man in his fifties and his compadre a young heavy, spectacled wearing man in his twenties. As usual many many hand signals were used as yet again they joined the "no speak english" club. From it I gathered that they were working at the powerstation, but clearly they didnt have too much to do as they spent the following hour around the tent. I handed them a letter a chinese friend had written for me in which it explained; who I was, what I was doing and if they could help me in finding a place to eat or sleep. After spending many minutes engaged in reading and rereading the letter they made much talk between themselves in chinese about me and the letter, when one of them pointed at me rubbing his belly. Identifying some food on the go I gave a big smile, I nodded my head and gave him the thumbs up. Picking 4 or 5 lettuce leaves on his way out chinaman 1 returned from the powerstation kitchen with a large steaming bowl of noodles and placed it on the ground, handing me a pair of chopsticks in the process. Famished as I was, I was about to dig in when I realized that all eyes were upon me, probably more in fascination of me attempting using chopsticks than anything else! The chinese as I'd learnt are experts in staring. As in if it was an olympic sport, they'd beat the world hands down. Seeing the awkwardness of the situation that was about to unfold as I began my battle with the noodles, I wisely sought out my photo album of all things Irish and of home. Distracting them fully, I slurped down the last noodle as the pair were about to begin their 3rd viewing of the 40 photo album. Thanking them very much for the noodles we engaged in further miming until the time for them to go had come. I "Xie Xied" them both, we waved our goodbyes and back into the tent I crawled for another nights rest, secure in the knowledge that I'd be as safe as a house right there outside that powerstation. |
The AuthorName: Daniel Ross Top Tips:
1. Constantly challenge yourself. 2. If you never try you'll never know what's possible. Archives
October 2016
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