Portrait of an LBX

On our way through the beautiful, mist-covered mountains of Fujian today we passed this man herding his goats, which he explained were a local Fujian breed. Smaller than usual (and tastier), he said he can sell a two-year-old for 800 yuan ($117). In 2008 I went with a group of friends for a weekend trip to some grasslands north of Beijing where we bought a goat kid from a local family for 600 yuan ($88). Considering that we were almost certainly getting the “foreigner price,” 800 yuan does seem like a very good price. But on the other hand, it takes a two-year investment for the goat herder to make it.

You should be able to see Alexis making his way through on the opposite side. Strangely enough, he blends in a little too well. Is it a coincidence that lamb is his favorite meat?

By Evan

*Click here to see all our nifty Jingdezhen pictures.

**This article was meant to be posted weeks ago, but was badly delayed due to author incompetence and a WordPress bug.

During the last week of 2009, despite ever-dropping temperatures, we had decided ostensibly against common sense and the self-preservation instinct to actually ride back north (see route page here just in case you weren’t sure we’re crazy) just for the historical significance of visiting one of the premier sources of China’s ancient wealth and the cradle of porcelain culture all over the world, Jingdezhen. From the Ming Dynasty vases Indiana Jones threw around in the German castle to the invaluable relics stored in Taiwan’s National Museum down to the fine china my grandma used to sell in her gift shop in Florida, just about all of the world’s fine porcelain owes its heritage to the little city in northern Jiangxi.

Considering its weighty cultural value, we hoped Jingdezhen would be a pleasant surprise, or at least that’s what we told ourselves as we pushed up across the cold provincial highway leading thither (the ride through Wuyuan county was at least visually rewarding in its own right). What we discovered when we arrived, however, was just more of the same, only more so. On our way through the eastern edge of the city, we came across the “New Campus of the Jingdezhen Institute of Ceramics,” which in its brown brick boxes of buildings looked more likely to contain a remedial boys school than an academy of one of China’s oldest art forms. Further into the city, past the sprawling, state-owned complex of Changhe (昌河), a car and helicopter manufacturer and the city’s largest single employer, the urban landscape emerged as a muddy, uniform mess. The streetlights were decorated in the style of old painted ceramics, in homage to the city’s tradition, but they only made the run down tenements stand out more. And the place was everywhere covered in mud, the kind of mud you spend ten minutes cleaning from your boots at night. Suffice it to say, from our highly disappointing first impression, we could scarcely predict how positive we were to eventually feel before leaving.

This scene from downtown Jingdezhen really says it all. Photo by Alexis

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A Uighur man stands on a pile of rubble in Kashgar's rapidly disappearing old town.

By Andy

We probably won’t be making it to Tibet or Xinjiang on this journey — the distances are simply too vast. A year seems like a long time to spend on a bicycle until you set the goal of circumnavigating a country of China’s size in that time frame. Evan’s recent post on our walk through the Tangyin old town got me thinking about my time in Xinjiang last year, and particularly in Kashgar, an old Silk Road trading town with a vibrant traditional section.

There is an apparent mindset among the Chinese leadership that anything of cultural and/or historical value in this country must simply be wiped out and as quickly as possible. Kashgar’s old town is a prominent target. A recent article in the Global Post puts a softer edge on what we on this blog would tend to describe as cultural rape:

Kashgar’s Old City is also an anomaly in modern China: A well-preserved, relatively untouched section of ancient but living architecture. Most of China’s cities have undergone sweeping facelifts amid the country’s economic boom, but the Old City of Kashgar, a small piece of the larger city of more than 3 million residents, is set off from modern city by a river and hills, distinctly unique and almost out-of-place.

A Uighur man hired to clear the rubble of Kashgar's old town tosses bricks into a dump truck.

I think part of this appetite for destruction stems from an incomprehensibly skewed incentive system for local officials. Despite years of promises for reform by the center, local government officials are still evaluated primarily on their ability to generate gross domestic product (GDP) growth. All other worries — the environment, quality of life, cultural and historical relics — are cast aside unless they can be easily harnessed and transformed into GDP growth.

This has all sorts of horrible implications, but I think one of the most interesting is the real estate industry. As most everyone is probably aware, despite thirty years of “reform and opening,” all land in China is still owned by the state (or by the “people,” as the state will tell you). In China’s cities you can own an apartment (read: a little concrete box way up in the sky), but the land on which the apartment building sits is owned by the state. Citizens can “lease” land for anywhere between 30 and a hundred years depending on the situation. Peasants generally till land on 30-year leases. (more…)

By Evan (with significant contributions from Andy)

*Click here to see all the  pictures we took in the old town of Tangyin

The path between the fields on the outskirts of town and the stone compounds of the Tangyin Old Town, by Andy

In Shanghai we decided to modify our methodology of just fluttering around China wherever the four winds blow us toward a system of identifying some worthwhile destinations in advance. As such, we picked up some books about ancient towns (古镇) in Jiangxi and Fujian. Pushing into central Jiangxi, we had a chance to make use of our guides and pedaled toward the recommended ancient town of Tangyin (棠阴镇). As we crested a green mountain pass topped with a sign exhorting the locals to “develop the tourism industry (大力发展旅游产业),” we feared a repeat of our last ancient town experience in Wuzhen (乌镇), Zhejiang — an over-commercialized, touristic, stupidscape with a extortionate entrance fee and nigh zero meaning whatsoever.

A street bisecting the main road at first seemed to confirm our worries — Commercial Street (商业街), as it was called, was a filthy, cluttered, little road with hawker stalls on both sides. It appeared that the city was trying to enact its goal of tourism promotion but, not knowing what to do, resorted to the tried-and-tested “tourism alley” strategy. We were encouraged, however, to see many old structures just beyond the end of the street, and determined to find a hotel and return on foot to explore. (more…)

Jour 111 (10/01/10)

Nanchang(南昌)

Province du Jiangxi(江西省)

Aucun départ n’étant prévu, nous ne nous pressons pas pour sortir du lit. Après un brunch de riz au curry, nous passons encore une fois toute la journée devant internet. Je ne vois aucune amélioration de l’état de ma main, et ça fait chier. J’y peux rien: je suis anxieux de nature. Moins ça guérit, plus je flippe, et plus je flippe, moins ça guérit: le cercle vicelard! Mais après mûre réflexion, je commence à me demander si ce n’est pas seulement une allergie, car la douleur ne semble être que cutanée. Peut-être une allergie au Citrus, dégraissant pour vélo, que j’ai bêtement manipulé 2 ou 3 fois sans gants… Ce serait moins emmerdant…

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By Evan

Every once in a while a new acquaintance asks us if anything bad has happened to us on this trip. The honest answer is yes, any run-in we have with Public Security organs or the state in general is an event we wish we could forget, but we usually bite our tongues. In truth, the police have been our biggest worry since the planning stage of Portrait of an LBX began about a year ago. Nowadays we frequently pass signs on the side of the road that say, “If you have a problem, call the police!” accompanied by the cute little cartoon police characters Jingjing and Chacha (think comical cop icons called Po-po and Lice-Lice). “What if your problem is the police?” we wonder.

The long-standing fear reared its repugnant head in Tangyin (棠阴), Jiangxi just after we had ridden past a statue of the solemn fiberglass police officer saluting us in front of the busted town hospital with a rusted-out, tire-less car out front. As we stopped to take pictures, a cop car headed in the opposite direction suddenly turned around and cut us off. We were braced for confrontation, but the cops, after hailing us to stop, simply offered any assistance they could and, amid the usual compliments on our Chinese ability and exclamations about our height, gave us words of praise for our bike journey. Whew, that was a little too easy. (more…)