Portrait of an LBX

By Evan Andy has summed up the last few days in great detail, so I will skip straight to my take from the last few days. Since Andy is trying to get in more analysis, I’ll throw in my two bits in the form of a list of revelations I’ve had over the last few days.

It’s hard to gauge the way laobaixing think of you from just their initial reaction. The only problem with objectivity in interpretation of foreign cultures is that you can never be sure how the locals would act if you weren’t around – sort of like Schrodinger’s cat. All I can do is be myself and hope that eventually they’ll toss me a bone (glimpse into their real lives) eventually. I try to wave to, nod at, or greet everybody we pass out drying grain or working the land or riding by on farm implements/scooters every day, and every one of them gives a different reaction. Most just stare blankly in stupefication, and some wave back elatedly with huge smiles from under their work loads. Several scream “hallo” or “very good” or “nice to meet you,” and some respond in Chinese (fewer than you’d think). Some, on the other hand, give us what I call the ‘gorilla reaction,’ or a face that combines surprise, confusion, and dread that I think I could make only if I saw a flock of gorillas running down the road throwing poop at people. Now beyond just humor, it’s important to our cause to figure out how to read LBX’es, because we are trying to stay with as many of them as possible. Two nights ago when we went into a town and tried our new tact of directly asking people if we could stay with them, they all balked and pointed at hotels or empty buildings. However, everybody we talk to for over 5 minutes tends to go through the cycle of staid remoteness – cautious curiosity – friendship – jubilation – inviting us to tea, dinner, whatever. Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to start more conversations with LBXes around afternoon time so we can take out two birds with the one stone. Then I can put in some real thoughts. (more…)

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. (more…)

By Andy

I haven’t written for a while. Evan’s post on the SOE coalmine experience captured the story and insanity of the situation quite handily. The only thing I have to add is a couple thoughts on the separation between the Party and the people and on the definition of LBXs, or laobaixing.

We still have no precise definition for China’s laobaixing. It is most often translated as simply the ‘common people,’ but that doesn’t really do the term justice as it is used in modern Chinese context.

In a slightly less vague context, it is used to mean anyone who is not connected to the Party or the government (the two being approximately the same thing in China). I think this is the way most Chinese people in major cities like Beijing or Shanghai would describe the term if you asked them what they thought about their childhood home being demolished to make way for a luxury mall – “We laobaixing have no power. (我们老百姓没有权利.)” Back in June, an offhand comment made by Lu Jun, a government spokesman in Zhengzhou, a city about 80km from where I write this post, caused an uproar on the Chinese internet, which interestingly acts as one of the few checks against rampant abuses of power by local governments and officials. Lu, when confronted by reporters about the future of a plot of land originally allocated for low-income housing where 12 luxury villas were instead being constructed, first asked, “Will you speak for the Party or for the laobaixing? (你是准备替党说话，还是准备替老百姓说话?) (more…)

**This is by far the longest post I’ve written, and considering that everybody complains about my long posts, I don’t expect anybody to read it. Basically we left Mt. Tai, toured a baijiu factory, spent 2 days at a state owned coal mine getting hammered all the time, and have now arrived in Qufu, birthplace of Confucius, from which place we hope to spring to Henan tomorrow at long last. If you are up for a long read, however, I think there’s some quality stuff below. More pictures coming as soon as we can get to it.**

Having spent a decent rest day in Tai’an under the shadow of Mt. Tai, China’s most sacred mountain, and having consumed the majority of our meals in the old Hui (Chinese Muslim) quarter as usual, we struck out south with two destinations: a Chinese sorghum liquor company and 40 km further down the road the family of my friend and our lodging for the night. Leaving from the old mosque after lunch and watching some really disgusting lamb entrail washing, we arrived at the Taishan Shengliyuan sorghum liquor (baijiu) company just south of town. We asked a group of about 30 unemployed men waiting on the side of the street for work how to get there, and they responded, “just down there” with the smell of baijiu on their breaths that we immediately smelled also emanating from within the baijiu compound. After a little while of talking to people in the sales department, I finally got to a manager who agreed to let us tour the production facility down the street.
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Jour 14 (06/10/09)
Ducun(杜村)-Chujiawangwu(褚家王吴)
Province du Shandong(山东省)
-25km-

Ce matin, nous nous levons tous assez tôt. Mais le départ se fait assez tardivement à cause de je-ne-sais-trop-quoi. Peut-être sommes nous tous un peu assommés par la soudaine montée d’humidité due à la pluie? L’autre raison, qui paraît la plus plausible est qu’après la pluie d’hier, nous devons nettoyer nos vélos, notamment la chaîne (maillons par maillons) et les jantes. Le petit déjeuner se fait à l’hôtel, et presque le déjeuner, puisque ce n’est qu’à 13h20 que nous nous décidons à partir.
Gilles est tellement impatient de voir défiler les kilomètres, qu’il nous devance sans regarder derrière lui et descend une longue pente, malgré nos appels lui indiquant de s’arrêter pour tourner à droite. Si la descente fut belle, la remontée est, quand à elle, pénible. Nous tournons donc pour nous perdre à nouveau dans les petits chemins de campagne entre les champs. Une petite traversée des villages qui nous fait du bien après notre week-end dans la grande ville balnéaire de Qingdao.
Nous passons par de tous petits lieux-dits d’à peine plusieurs centaines d’habitants (pour la Chine, c’est un petit bout de rien du tout!) à la recherche de nourriture. Et nous réussissons à nous faire inviter par un lbx! Enfin! C’est ce que nous attendions depuis deux semaines! Il devance presque nos remerciement en répétant un nombre illimité de fois “不用客气！不用客气！” (« Je vous en prie! Je vous en prie!») et  “我很喜欢你们”(« Je vous aime beaucoup », en parlant des étrangers). En nous offrant quelques pommes et une montagne de cacahouètes entreposées sur le toit de la maison, il nous explique qu’il cultive un peu et fait du commerce en vendant des trucs à droite à gauche. Des explications un peu vagues. Sans doute ne fait-il que revendre ce qu’il cultive: du maïs et des cacahouètes. Sa vie est dure. Le travail est fatigant et il peine à joindre les deux bouts, même si les conditions de vie sont bien meilleures que lorsqu’il était jeune. Au moins aujourd’hui, dit-il, il ne se pose pas la question de savoir s’il aura suffisamment à manger le soir. Il est marié et a une petite fille de 10 ans. Sa femme, au sourire charmant qui laisse paraître deux couronnes dans le fond, nous prépare des nouilles à la saucisse, accompagnées de petites tomates-olives. L’hôte est si gentil qu’il est difficile de refuser quoi que ce soit.
L’arrivée de laowai dans cette famille fait rapidement le tour du village, et les enfants se succèdent à l’entrée de la maison pour voir, quelque peu apeurés au début, à quoi ressemblent ces gens qu’ils n’ont vu qu’à la télévision.  Après le thé, M. Chu (nous apprendrons plus tard que tout le monde dans le village s’appelle Chu), viennent la bière locale, et la baijiu à 39°, que Gilles a visiblement du mal à ingurgiter: il abandonne dès la première gorgée. Anecdote marrante: En nous parlant de la bière Laoshan (崂山, montagne de Qingdao), il nous dit que l’eau ne vient pas de cette montagne, mais d’ailleurs. “都是假的！” (« Tout est faux! ») Nous lui parlons des sortes de sandwiches à la viande d’âne que nous avons mangé dans le Hebei (驴肉火烧), il nous répète “不是驴肉！是假的！” (« C’est pas de l’âne, c’est bidon! »). Nous lui demandons alors de quelle viande s’agit-il? Est-ce du porc? Réponse: “不是肉！都是假的！” (« C’est pas de la viande! Tout est bidon! »). Il y a tellement de contrebande en Chine, que certains deviennent complètement paranoïaques? Y aurait-il des industries en Chine fabriquant de la viande en plastique comme dans L’aile ou la Cuisse?

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By popular demand, we have added a photos page to the site where you can see little slide shows of each province we’ve been to. Click the name of the province or the slide show frame itself to go to the Picasa album and see larger pictures. We’ll add photos periodically as we find access to free wifi in some of the larger cities we stop in.

We are currently resting in Tai’an, the city that sits below Mount Tai, one of China’s five great mountains. Tomorrow we will travel 50km south to meet the family of a Chinese friend of Evan’s, after which we will move out of Shandong and into our third province, Henan.

Our ride to Tai’an was marked by our first hills and mountains, which while nothing compared to what we will face when we climb up onto the Tibetan plateau next summer, were enough to give our relatively inexperienced legs the workout of the trip so far. In the mountains, we passed a number of villages that, aside from the occasional slogan painted on the wall of a house, seemed untouched by the maddening rush for development of the past forty years. Nestled down from the main road among some of the largest and most natural trees we have seen thus far, the villages could easily be overlooked.

Clamoring down the steep slope into one such village, I was immediately struck by the tranquility of the place. With the majority of the tiny population out in the fields, themselves on terraces painstakingly cut out of the rocky mountain slope long before, the village was abandoned except for the occasional chicken and an old man pushing a wheelbarrow of corn who asked me if I was lost. Red paper banners with black characters imploring fortune and prosperity decorated the doors of each house. When an old woman peered out from behind one of the doors and responded to my “Ni hao” with only a blank stare, I began to feel like an intruder and made my way back up the rocky path to the road.

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One thing that caught my attention over the past few days is the condition of the elderly in these mountain villages and other small towns. In Beijing, retirees gather in parks to practice tai chi, fly kites, play chess, show off their caged birds or just sit and talk. Their only worry seems to be boredom. Passing through these villages, however, I have watched old ladies, clearly in their late 70s or 80s, crossing the road, their bodies doubled over under the weight of a load of dried tree branches with which to cook dinner or a huge basket of corn ears to husk. Old men push wheelbarrows full of rocks uphill for kilometers. In contrast to our romanticized view of life in the countryside and abhorrence of the mess created by the all-too-rapid development of China’s cities, life in the country is undeniably hard. The old ladies are the least likely to respond to a wave or a smile from us as we pass, instead only gazing at us from behind empty eyes as if to say, “I have seen crazier things, and I am too tired and broken to care.”

Now we are back in the city – another soulless place indistinguishable from the myriad, gray, expressionless urban centers that are already blurring together in my memory as if viewed from a merry-go-round. But in front of the temple next to our hotel, behind which the outline of Mount Tai is visible through the haze, the elderly sit and play chess or practice tai chi as black Audi A6s rush past on the main drag.

I’ve always thought that mountain villages in China are the most charming places in the country. We stumbled onto this one while passing over one of our first big hills of the trip. Most people seemed to be out in the fields, and with the exception of a few elderly people, the village was seemingly uninhabited except for a cow and a couple chickens.

Before I get into the post, I need to thank the patron saint of bike chains, as the franken-fix I imposed on my poor chain the other night has actually not given me any problems through 170 km. I still wish I had known earlier not to push the chain pins all the way out, but c’est la vie.

Moving on, people who have been on bike rides with me in the past know that I have a nasty habit of planning bike routes without taking topography into consideration. Having learned my lesson finally, we checked Google Earth for our planned routes before setting out from Beijing and found that there was only one mountain range between Beijing and Shanghai, right in the middle of Shandong, which we, as sane individuals aware of our poor physical condition, decided to avoid. Nevertheless, we completely forgot about the mountains when we went to Qingdao, and our only route west to Henan was straight smack through them.
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