Portrait of an LBX

By Andy

This is, I suppose, an inevitable post in any cycling tour. I now have a feeling for what our counterparts on The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip have felt for their 10,000km trek across Russia, which will end at the Atlantic Ocean. To this point, we had enjoyed days of riding in only the slightest breeze, which we have found at our backs more often than not. That changed the day before last.

To begin with, a failure to account for the difference in scale between our map of Shandong and that of Henan meant that we had vastly underestimated the distance of our journey, which we originally thought we could complete in one hard day of riding. Of course, we didn’t realize this ego-slap-in-the-face until two days of riding had failed to produce the desired result. We left our hotel in Qufu, to which we had treated ourselves in order to relax after our “downtime” at the coalmine, late — around 10am after a Western breakfast and coffee. At the time we thought a push of 150km to would get us to Kaifeng in Henan, but being fully rested, we thought we could pull it off. It turned out the distance was over 300km by our zig-zagging route.

We were excited to get to Henan purely because it would mark the third province on our journey, thus increasing our manliness by 1/3. To get to our destination of Kaifeng, we had to travel southwest from Qufu. In our limited travels thus far, we have noticed that the inter-village roads that we prefer to travel are maddeningly laid out in somewhat of a grid pattern — that is, either east-west or north-south, but not necessarily traveling in either direction for very long before ending at a T-intersection, requiring a re-evaluation. As we learned in geometry class, this doesn’t make for the shortest distance between almost any two given points. The westward-slanting border between Henan and Shandong, which follows the Yellow River, also meant that the more southward we moved, the longer the distance to Henan became.

But as the general direction of our trip for the next couple months is southward, we opted to move south when we were presented with our first T-intersection. Unfortunately, as we moved south, we were confronted with a dearth of official roads leading west. That morning, I had Tweeted “Henan or bust,” and we were determined to hit the border. Our only choice was to turn onto the small dirt roads between fields, which are of widely varying quality and to which we have appointed the loving moniker of “grundle busters.”

A week ago when we traveled between fields, we were surrounded by rows of corn that towered over us as we sat on our bikes so all we could see were green stalks and a hint of the uneven road ahead. I unclipped my shoes from my clipless pedals (now there’s a real misnomer) to minimize damage inflicted by any tumbles off of the uneven tire ruts and looked out over an expanse of plowed, brown earth. Between the furrows, we noticed the green tips of winter wheat beginning to poke through the soil. The corn, which had characterized the first two weeks of our journey, was now only a fading memory.

We moved through the empty fields and among small villages still lacking paved roads to connect them to the outside world. We moved slowly, between 12 and 16km an hour, down from our usual 20 to 25km. At almost the same moment when we noticed the first hints that daylight was beginning to fade, our westward path through the fields came to an end. After clarifying our route with some farmers watering their fields from a well dug for the purpose, we took a circuitous route to a provincial road running south, where we stocked up fruit and peanuts for dinner and turned west again to look for a suitable place to sleep.

We rode in tight formation, as we are learning to do when we are tired, Evan and Alexis catching the draft behind me for an easier ride. Passing through a small town called Li Village, I moved slightly left to avoid a large rock that had previously been set up to demarcate the location of a family’s corn-drying plot on the road. Evan, who I can only assume was staring at my now-finely chiseled buttocks, failed to notice my maneuver until the last moment, caught the side of the rock with his front tire and skidded to the ground, scraping his elbow and knee up fairly badly. Luckily, his helmet took the brunt of the fall. In front of a growing crowd of concerned or simply curious onlookers, we pulled out the first-aid kit and patched Evan up before moving quickly out of town to find a camping spot before nightfall. As there does not seem to be a single natural growth of trees anywhere in Hebei or Henan provinces, we set up camp in another tree farm, this one set behind a small village and surrounded on two sides by cotton plants. We felt much less nervous about the experience given the fact that the crops were harvested and the farmers no longer toiling in the fields until late ate night, and after a dinner of apples, tangerines, bananas, persimmons and peanuts, we settled in for as good of a sleep as could be expected, thoughts of arriving in Henan the next day running through our heads.

—-

The next morning we awoke a little before six, packed up camp, and rode five kilometers down the road for a breakfast of buns filled with meat and carrots. For the first few kilometers we moved as usual, but before long we were being slapped full on in the face by a pervasive wind from the west. We moved slowly from that point, our faces scrunched into grimaces and eyes squinting to avoid (you guessed it) the dust and trash flying through the air.

With our early morning start, we managed to push through 72km before lunch break, but the wind only intensified as the afternoon went on to 15km per hour with gusts of 20km. The weight of our bikes and bags has always been a blessing and a curse — hard to get moving, but providing welcome momentum when moving from the downward slope of one hill and onto the upward slope of the next. With the wind blasting against the blunt front of my bike, sleeping bag and tent strapped up top and two panniers on the sides of the front wheel, momentum meant nothing. The moment I ceased peddling to give my legs a short reprieve or to stand up and relieve my aching bottom, my bike would quickly grind to a halt.

We managed to persist through another 15km or so before we arrived at the westward Yellow River dike. Climbing onto the dike, on top of which a small, quiet road led the whole way to Kaifeng, a short man in a green army uniform of sorts and large, heavily tinted glasses pulled up to me on his motorcycle and asked where we were headed. I told him we were going to Kaifeng and he smiled and dropped behind me to talk to Evan and Alexis. A few minutes later I heard a yell telling me to slow down and Evan caught up to me to say that the man, Mr. Liu, had invited us to his place for tea. Evan also informed me Mr. Liu had ventured a guess that we were from Russia, and they had nodded their heads yes. The story was now that we had all gone to separate universities in Moscow and met in China.

This may seem a bit strange, but we have been approached by so many people on the road or when we are stopped for lunch or dinner, or when we are moving into our hotel, or any other situation imaginable, all asking the same series of questions that we are simply tired of answering. Sometimes we just answer yes or no to move the conversation along, even if it is a lie, and but usually the conversation goes like this:

Where are you going? Don’t know. Where did you start? Beijing. How long did it take you to get here? What country are you from? America and France. Wait, you’re not all from the same country? You look exactly the same! Well, I’m better looking. Are you students? We were before, but now we’re not. What is your job? We quit our jobs. Then what are you doing? Traveling. Are you used to eating Chinese food? (This is often asked by a restaurant owner after we have just finished a meal) Yes, we have been used to it for a long time.

After a week, we began making up answers. Evan and I are from Brazil and have ridden our bikes the whole way to China. Alexis is from Afghanistan and a member of the Taliban who fled the American invasion by bicycle. He’s looking for somewhere to buy a knife. We can’t stand Chinese food and feel like throwing up after every meal.

Anyway, it turned out Mr. Liu, a retired staff officer in the People’s Liberation Army, had an affinity for Russians, as we soon discovered. He led us a couple kilometers down the dike, the wind having turned from an intense headwind below the dike to what seemed like a gale-strength side-wind up on top, which at times took hold of my front wheel and threw me momentarily off course. We descended on a small lane of cracked concrete into a village to the eastern side of the dike (that is, away from the river) and approached Mr. Liu’s house, which was the first house in the village. As Mr. Liu stood fumbling with the door to his compound (I say compound because Chinese houses are traditionally a walled-in courtyard with separate houses on each side for various generations of a family living together), I found myself reading the traditional wishes for good fortune painted on the tiles on the two sides and on top of the door. Pictures of lions, dragons, mythical Chinese birds and double-happiness signs were placed at the end of each saying like bookends. As my eyes moved up toward the roof, I saw a painting of a Chinese landscape — waterfalls and pagodas. It seemed like a bit of an overkill.

After much banging around, the wife of Mr. Liu’s son opened the door, and without letting on a bit of surprise at her husband returning with three Russians from Moscow who had met at university in China, helped us find places to lean our bikes and invited us in for tea. The Liu’s courtyard was surprisingly charming, as we’ve found these country courtyards to be. A goat kid greeted us as we entered, and we soon found it was not the only animal in the place. There was a dog, a mother cat and her three kittens (that we saw), a turtle and about ten chickens, half male and half female. Not necessarily an overkill in rural China…but still.

Three generations lived in the compound: Mr. And Mrs. Liu (her surname was probably not Liu as Chinese wives generally don’t take their husbands’ surnames — although we learned that most people in the area had the surname Liu, so it’s certainly possible), their son and his wife and their two daughters. Mr. Liu’s wife was in another village. His son, a traffic policeman (my favorite, considering the great job they’re doing at regulating traffic in China) was working and the daughters at school. In traditional fashion, Mr. Liu and his wife lived in the house facing the gate.

The living room of the Liu household was a sight to behold. Aside from the usual promotional calendars from this company or that, which often serve as decoration in these rural households, the wall opposite the door was covered with illustrations of Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. To the left, above another door was a color poster of babies in diapers with the letters A, B, C, D and E above them. The right wall was covered with Polaroid photos of Mr. Liu in the same army uniform he wore presently in front of various landmarks in China and with various people that he had met. In one he was riding a camel in the desert. Noticing a few foreigners in the pictures, we asked if they, like us, were Russian. He told us the stories of their meeting in Beijing.

So Ivan, Andre and Alexi shared a couple cups of tea and some pleasant conversation with Mr. Liu, learning, among other things, that while he lived in the village, he was not apportioned any farmland, while his wife was given two mu and his son ten. As our conversation continued though, I became increasingly uneasy about our little lie about being Russian. We spoke to each other entirely in Chinese both out of courtesy and more importantly in case he knew any Russian. Occasionally we would throw in a ‘da’ or ‘niet’ or ‘glasnost,’ ‘perestroika’ or ‘Gorbachev’ for effect when he moved away to boil some water or call something to his son’s wife.

Turning to Alexis, Mr. Liu asked, “Which university did you graduate from in Russia?”

“The University of Moscow,” Alexis ventured.

“In China do you spend Renminbi or rubles?”

“Reminbi,” we responded. This is a common question, though usually involving U.S. dollars, that we imagine is probably a vestigial memory of a time not too long ago when foreigners were only allowed to spend special ‘foreigner’ currency.

“Which has more buying power, the ruble or the Renminbi?”

“The ruble, but only by a little.”

“So the exchange rate is like one and a half rubles per Renminbi?”

Evan passed the responsibility off to Alexis, saying, “Umm…what is it lately?”

“We haven’t checked in a long time…” Alexis offered.

“Because our paychecks are in Renminbi…we’ve been here for a long time,” I blurted to fill the silence, completing the evasion.

I had a feeling he would eventually invite us to stay for dinner and suggested we politely excuse ourselves before his son came home, the baijiu started flowing, and we let something slip that would make for a very uncomfortable situation. Evan agreed, and after about ten minutes of talking him down, we left a much-deflated Mr. Liu behind and slipped our bikes into low gear to climb back onto the dike.

I felt horrible. “No more lying,” I said, and the others agreed. Not only had Mr. Liu invited us for dinner, but he had invited us to sleep in one of his rooms for the night — the very situation we have been hoping to find ourselves in this entire time. And from his numerous entreaties and the expression on his face as we left, we could tell he was sincere.

Once we were up on the dike, my worries faded away and were once again replaced with an irrepressible urge to curse out loud at an inescapable force of nature, the wind.

We battled the nemesis of all cyclists (I had written bicyclists, but I imagine it’s even less fun on a unicycle) for another thirty kilometers before the sun began to get low and we had to resign ourselves to another day spent in Shandong. There were simply no bridges across the river into Henan for at least another 30km, and crossing the river would not make for the shortest route to Kaifeng anyway.

As daylight began to fade, we made our way off the dike away from the river again to stock up on water and food and attempt to convince someone to take us into their home for the night. This sort of thing only happens when you’re not trying though, and after getting some overpriced dishes to go from the only restaurant in town, we made our way over the dike once more and camped in another farm of poplar trees by the edge of the Yellow River. Exhausted after 113km against the wind, sleep came easily.

—

We awoke with the dawn again yesterday morning, which is somehow becoming a satisfying feeling as it means we will be able to use the day to its full potential. The “Henan or bust” slogan of two days previously ran through my head. “I’ll be damned if we don’t make it to Kaifeng today,” I said as we packed up our tents.

Breakfast came later than usual as we rode along the dike asking passersby where we could find food. Our legs tired from the day before, we had no interest in going into a village below the dike only to have to climb back up because it didn’t have a restaurant. After 15km, we descended into a village and had a massive breakfast of dumplings, noodles and tofu. Everyone we asked told us that Kaifeng was still well over 100km away, so after a water refill, we climbed back up onto the dike and went to work.

The wind, which had been negligible when we rode to breakfast, had since picked up again, and it continued to intensify throughout the day until it was nearly on the same level as the day before. It had also shifted and was now coming from the southwest, so no matter which way the road wound, we found ourselves riding into it basically head-on. We finally passed into Henan at about one in the afternoon and snapped a couple pictures in front of the only indication of the boundary, a sign reading “Welcome to the Area Administered by the Henan Yellow River Administration Bureau. (欢迎您进入河南黄河河务局).” China is not big on signs marking provincial borders.

After an equally large lunch with some very friendly proprietors in a village down off the dike, the wind had died down, and we were again able to move at close to our regular cruising speed. It was then that I realized that I had been riding for basically two days with my head down and looking at the ground in front of me as I willed my pedals to turn faster. I felt my neck muscles loosening and looked around me for the first time and saw that our time on the dike was one of our most beautiful rides so far. With a highway running parallel a couple kilometers down below, the traffic was minimal. As we moved into Henan, the ubiquitous poplar farms of Hebei and Shandong changed to similarly monocultured and ordered expanses of other trees, including pine, but the small change was refreshing nevertheless. A man passing by on a motorcycle as we stopped on the side of the road to relieve ourselves told us that Chairman Mao had once visited there.

As we passed the 100km mark, a couple on a motorcycle who lived in Kaifeng convinced us that it would be faster if we descended down off the dike and took a national highway into the city. We usually avoid national highways at all cost, as they are noisy, polluted and downright ugly, not to mention dangerous. But as tired as we were, we took the advice, and after 137km and our longest ride yet, we had settled into an extremely dingy hotel on Freedom Road (judgment reserved).