Portrait of an LBX

Our Dongbei restauranteurs who had relocated to Bazhou, Hebei

Getting in shape is hard enough under any circumstances when one has been sitting in a desk job for two years without sufficient self motivation for a regular exercise routine. Getting in shape while breathing the air in Hebei province is an altogether different beast.

China has a severe desertification problem brought on by decades of equally severe deforestation. It is most evident in places like Inner Mongolia where lush grasslands have turned to sand dunes. In Beijing it can be felt in unbearably dry skin, heard in hacking coughs and seen in the sandstorms that blow in from the northeast in the spring. In Hebei there is simply dust everywhere. It covers the trees and grass, casting them in dull hues as if they are seen through a dense fog, and it covers the roads, which is what concerns us most. We spent much of our 75km ride today sucking dust as we rode alongside massive cargo trucks carrying who-knows-what toward Tianjin. The challenge was coupled with the already unbearable Hebei air, palpable in its polluted grayness from brick kilns, cement factories and other heavy industries.

After a late start, we left Gu’an for a town called Bazhou where we had lunch with a welcoming mother-son team running a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and hotel. The family had migrated from Heilongjiang province in China’s northeast 18 years ago for the father’s job. What we found interesting was that they had switched their hukou from their town in Heilongjiang to Bazhou in Hebei — basically an indication that they would never be going back. They were able to secure the hukou with a 2,000 yuan (approximately $300) processing fee per person and the purchase of a house. They had no idea what the processing fee would be today, but estimated that it would be much higher and that they likely would be unable to obtain the hukou at all. When we asked why (after all, China is more open and relaxed now than in the years directly after 1989, right?) they told us that people from the northeast are no longer allowed to get hukou here as they are viewed as hooligans and troublemakersby the locals .

From Bazhou we sucked dust for another 40km to a shitty city called Wen’an — a total misnomer, really, as it means “cultured and peaceful.” Evan has written more about our experience here in his post, so I won’t repeat, but I will say that I can’t wait for October 2 to roll around when I presume that the government will stop making local police so damn nervous that they overreact and treat a bunch of stupid bikers like terrorism suspects.

One good thing on our way from Bazhou to Wen’an was that we took our first “provincial inter-township road,” that is, a very local road running usually through rural areas. These are indicated on our map by tiny gray lines that often dead-end in this or that village, and these are the roads on which we will spend the majority of our time on this trip if all goes according to plan.

Today marked our second day in Hebei and plenty of lessons learned. The first lesson we learned was that it is now officially corn season in Hebei. Other than the thousands of Chinese everywhere, the traces of giant industry, the very young forests of perfectly grid-patterned trees in between the industrial and urban centers, and the Arabic signs of Muslim Chinese enclaves, it’s hard to differentiate this place from Nebraska. Ok, so it’s not the Midwest, but there is a ton of corn everywhere – being shucked by families in front of their establishments, or already de-cobbed and drying along the side of the highway for miles and miles (see picture). Even a tax bureau had drying corn out front. I wonder if they’re using it for animals mostly or if here, as in the US, they are selling it to food companies to be put into all their packaged foods. This will need to be asked soon.

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No matter how many bike trips we take and how many times we realize that through a combination of our own limitations and the fact that China is completely unpredictable, we always assume that we will be able to plan ahead and be ready for whatever comes at us. Here, in list format, is a list of just a few great plans that we men (mice?) have recently managed to send awry:

- Depart beginning September – Evan inadvertently steals Andy’s passport, trip start delayed to September 23

- Take a trial run to the Great Wall before departure – Air France leaves Alexis’s bike in Paris an extra 24 hours, destroying our time gap

- Drink that expensive bottle of Champagne Alexis brought from France before we leave to consecrate the journey – We put it in the fridge and forgot it there in our rush to leave early on day 1

- Leave early on day 1 – Right before we hit Tian’anmen, Andy remembers he left his gloves and iPhone charger at his friend’s house; returns solo to fetch them leaving Alexis and me at a hutong restaurant next to Xidan and pushes our departure from Beijing to around noon

- We all wake up at 8am on day 2 to make the most of the cool morning – I write this post at 9:30 between two sleeping baldies

Thankfully we at least made it to Hebei Province yesterday (yes, we crossed a deep 4km into it before settling down) as we had promised everybody who asked us where our first stop would be. However, the point here is that as long as we keep humble expectations of our own abilities and overestimate China’s proclivity for throwing us curves, we ought to do fine – at least in terms of expectations. Now that we’ve all slept over 10 hours, maybe we can actually plan to go out and find some LBXes – knock on wood.

Day one of our journey started off with some typical setbacks (typical for Evan and I). After a very nice breakfast hosted by our friends Cathy and Muzi, we set out from the Dongzhimen area in Beijing for Tiananmen, and soon realized we had forgotten a few things: the champagne we said we were going to drink that morning, Evan’s bike gloves, my bike gloves and my iPhone charger. The latter we failed to notice until we were already at Xidan, and as it is extremely important to the trip (our internet comes from the iPhone), I added another 20km to my distance today going back to get it and my gloves. We legitimately hit the road at around 11:30, heading south out of the city on the G106 national highway as planned.

Recently, I personally have been a bit worried about our physical condition. Evan has done the most biking recently, with trips up and down the California coast and a few weeks spent in Taiwan. I have taken only a handful of long-ish rides over the past three months, while Alexis has never gone on a long bike ride before. In the three weeks we were in Beijing waiting for my visa and passports, we didn’t even get out on one decent ride. Our bikes are all fully loaded with gear and are extremely heavy. One of these days it’d be nice to come across a hotel or a family with a scale, so we could figure out how much we are each carrying. Nevertheless, once we got up to speed, we cruised along on the flat and well-paved road out of Beijing. Our goal for the day was only to get to Hebei province, which is where we told everyone we’d end up. Failing to make it out of Beijing would be far too embarrassing. Beijing is massive. Our total ride today was 70km to a town called Gu’an in Hebei province, but the town itself is only about four kilometers into Hebei.

After a late lunch near the China Watermelon Museum (strangely, I have been there once before, five years previously) in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, we pulled into Gu’an at around 4:30. Coming into Gu’an was like passing through a demolition zone. Actually, it wasn’t like passing through a demolition zone — it was a demolition zone. It seemed like everything for two or three kilometers on our way into the town was a massive pile of bricks and rubble. The Chinese government lists Gu’an as a “development zone,” and when they say something like that anywhere near a major city like Beijing or Shanghai, they mean it. After we made it through the rubble, we quickly found a cheap hotel to stay in. For the first two weeks while we get acclimated to what we’re doing, I imagine we will be staying in a number of hotels before we try out more camping and hopefully staying with people we meet. But the price is right — we’re each paying a little less than $1.50 to share a 3 person room…and we got to shower.

I spent a little time walking around town with my camera while Alexis and Evan showered. I am always amazed at how quickly Chinese people change from basically ignoring foreigners in Beijing or Shanghai (because we’re everywhere and nothing special anymore) to exclaiming “Look, a foreigner!” or yelling “HALLO!” from a passing car. When we finally get away from the urban centers on the east coast, maybe people will even start complimenting me on my Chinese again!

After nearly a year of thinking of this project and bike trip, it is finally time to start. We begin our day today with a pancake, egg and French toast breakfast cooked by Muzi, which will probably be our last Western meal until Shanghai. Alexis has also brought back a nice bottle of Champagne from France, of which we will each enjoy a glass in a minute since we forgot about it last night. Our route today will take us down Chang’an Jie and through Tiananmen, where we will attempt to take pictures in front of Mao’s portrait and the SWAT guys standing around with automatic weapons. From there, we will head south down G106 and into Hebei province where we will find a place to rest around four or five in the afternoon. I don’t think anyone got a particularly good night of sleep last night, so a small hotel may be necessary. But the game is on! We’ll be updating frequently on our Twitter account, and those little updates will show up in the bar on the right side of this page as well, although the time stamps usually seem to be pretty far off. Wish us luck!

Before I can possibly hope to explain why we’re undertaking this monstrous bicycle trip around China, I have to explain to you some background on what led up to this moment. Years ago as a bright-eyed college student, extraordinarily naïve about how the world worked and interested in linguistic challenge, I signed up for intensive Chinese classes, which turned into a Chinese major when I found out I could live in Beijing (what could be cooler?) for a whole year. So I came to Peking University and fell in love intellectually with the complexities of the language, the culture, and what you might call “the way things work” which at the time was to me what the Chinese call a 不解之谜 (an unsolvable mystery), or an endeavor that required intense analysis and energy at all times just to stay afloat – effectively the opposite of the boredom and malaise that accompanied my youth spent in American suburbia. After my return to school for senior year and a few months spent home twiddling my thumbs, the only option that made any sense was to fling myself back into the rodeo that is life in Beijing. And so I adventured and learned for years, including a year-and-a-half corporate job in Shanghai. At this point I couldn’t honestly say I’ve got China “licked” or that there’s no more mystery left, but something fundamentally changed within me over the last year. (more…)

It’s about time for a follow up on the post about my friend Ms. Li and her hukou application, which has been submitted for over 4 months to date. Now as winter is beginning its southward creep over China, it seems that Ms. Li and her husband’s dream of becoming full citizens in the city of their choice is withering like the leaves. Though the government has given them no official response (as it is wont to do), traditionally being stone-walled for this long means that their application has fallen into a black hole of bureaucracy, not to be seen or heard from again unless they feel like redoing the whole process again next year – if, of course, her husband’s SOE is still willing to exert the effort to sponsor an application. So next year they’ll be heading to the housing registration bureau to renew their housing permits just like every other Zhang, Wang, and Li from somewhere else. But hey, it could be worse – they could have been born minorities.

We’ve been without an update here for a while, and it’s time for at least a little explanation. We’ve committed ourselves to taking this little project on the road for a year long bicycle ride around China. Both Evan and I are unemployed and homeless as a result, and have been for what is beginning to seem like a very long time. Both of us have made trips back to our homes in Pennsylvania and Louisiana and dropped a large pile of cash on new bikes and a bunch of other gear. Evan spent a few weeks riding a Dahon up and down the California coast where he also attended a paragliding camp and is now certified to catch updrafts over the cliffs of the California coast and other beautiful places around the world. He and another friend also went on a bike trip in Taiwan, intending to circumnavigate the island, but having to adjust plans plans when a monstrous typhoon wiped out the roads on the southern part of the island.

Now we are both back in Beijing and in a holding pattern. You see, when Evan was helping me move out of my apartment in July, he noticed my passport sitting in a drawer and, recognizing its vast importance, put it in his bag for his version of “safe keeping.” A couple days later, I realized that my passport was missing and after tearing apart everything I still owned, we declared the thing lost. I spent the last week of my working time in Beijing running around getting the requisite documents together and spending another pile of money for an emergency passport and to get my visa transferred into the emergency passport before leaving for America five days later. I arrived in the States and signed into my email account to find an apologetic email from Evan, who had unknowingly handed my passport to the lady at the check-in counter at the airport while on his way to Taiwan. Well, what’s done is done, but our original expected departure of early September has come and gone as we wait for my new passport, for my visa to be transferred into said new passport and for my visa to be renewed. Our hope was to leave by the 19th, but that dream too has now faded.

But the whole ordeal is not without its positive side. Another member has been added to our cycling team, pushing us closer to our half-serious dream of a Forrest Gump-style following as we make our trip around China and attempt to grow beards. Evan’s French friend Alexis recently left his job at CCTV’s French channel (okay he was asked to leave) and intends to join us for the entire journey. Our delayed departure will allow us to all leave together from Beijing rather than having him meet us somewhere out on the road. Alexis will be contributing a French-language travelogue to the site, which we’re pretty excited about.

But for now we wait.