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. (more…)

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With a local coal powerplant in the background, a woman prepares to water a recently planted field in Shandong. From our recent experience, they've probably planted winter wheat.

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**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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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.

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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.

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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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Little Liu Picking Persimmons by Andy

We met Little Liu in Chujiawangwu (褚家王吴村) village of Weifang (潍坊市) prefecture in Shandong (山东省), visiting the country home of his aunt and uncle with his pregnant wife for a few days during the national holiday to get away from it all.

Young and stylish, Little Liu’s tight black pants and fashionable coiffure immediately stood out in contrast against the drab peasant stylings of his relatives. After brief conversation, he disclosed that he, 22, had married his wife of 23 only 6 months prior, and had had to pay some money (not clear if it was a fine or a bribe) to violate the Planned Birth Policy minimum marriage age of 23 for men. In case you didn’t follow that logic, I’ll repeat for the disbelievers: he paid extra money in order to get married even younger than average.  It is also possible that he fibbed about the timing of marriage as related to pregnancy, since Little Liu, as we found out, is all about image.

First I should back up a little. Little Liu made excellent company, especially as compared to his eccentric uncle. Like most 22 year olds, he likes going to dance clubs, drinking with buddies, getting into fights, chain smoking, and buying nice electronics. Recently an inhabitant of Weifang city (one of the area’s biggest urban areas), he grew up out on the farm with his family doing the peasant thing. During our walk around the village, it was Little Liu who explained all the crops to us and climbed the persimmon trees to pick fresh ones for us to eat. Clearly not just a city slicker, Little Liu also took charge of pouring our tea back at the homestead, in addition to explaining the subtle formalities  of tea drinking in Shandong, such as pointing the spout toward himself when not in use and filling glasses only 3/4 full. (more…)

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That last post was a little full of vitriol, probably due to a few days of poor sleep and terrible scenery. I was complaining about how depressing China’s entirely planned landscape can be. Over the last few days, however, I have found that one of China’s greatest charms is that absolutely everywhere has been inhabited for centuries, and there are little villages and village roads to be explored no matter which direction we ride.

I recently started to loosen up on the navigating, not taking only roads that I’m sure will get us to a certain intermediate destination but just taking whatever road there is as long as it’s going our general direction. The result, aside from finding ourselves on some super bumpy “grundle buster” trails and almost impassable sand pile roads over small rivers, has been that we have found a plethora of little hidden super charming villages way off of the beaten path (literally). We’ve run across tightly constructed villages among dense tree cover (mind you, we’re still talking very young trees), full of cows, dogs, pigs, chickens, and of course corn lying around in huge piles everywhere. The last two days we have stumbled upon some great vistas, but even more memorable was yesterday’s LBX farm family experience.
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We left our hotel extremely late yesterday, around one in the afternoon, after a morning of trying to get stuff onto the website through the horribly slow Internet. I spent some additional time getting all the grit from the rainstorm out of my chain and other moving parts and re-oiling things again. I think my parents would be proud to know that I finally value something mechanical enough and understand how it works sufficiently to keep it maintained. At least I hope so. Reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” in May certainly made me appreciate the process more as well. There is no doubt a certain satisfaction to be derived from doing something oneself, especially when doing it right. And when you start to know how to do it correctly, it becomes harder and harder to let anyone else do it for you because there’s no guarantee they’ll do it right, and they certainly have no skin in the game. At some point, I’d like to discuss some of my observations in China in the context of “Zen,” but this post is going to be long enough without it.

In my last entry we were debating whether to head south toward Rizhao or west toward Taishan and Henan. After looking at our map and seeing how far south Rizhao would take us and how silly it would be to work our way back up to Henan from there, only to head south again, we decided to head west. We began by moving southwest on the provincial road running through Ducun, S217. After missing our turn-off, we decided to take the next paved road west that we saw. The road took us through a small village, after which the pavement disappeared and we were on a dirt road through the countryside. With the exception of the ever-present dust and perfectly planted rows of trees, as we moved through rolling hills covered with corn I could imagine that I was back home in southern Pennsylvania. As we began climbing uphill, the dirt road eventually ran into another paved road, and we flew downhill at 45km per hour. From there we wound through narrow, back-country roads for what was the most pleasant ride of our trip thus far. We passed through several tiny villages where corn once again lay drying on at least half of the road. The words coming out of the mouths of the elderly residents meandering the streets were about as intelligible to us as the mooing of the cows tied outside some of the houses or the clucking of chickens from inside the courtyard homes.

As we passed through one of the villages by the name of Chujiawangwu (褚家王吴村), a man in his late 30s or early 40s waved us down and invited us into his home to eat. After stashing our bikes in his courtyard, we sat down in his living room where we chatted, and his wife served us bowls of noodles and sausage, which everyone ate out of courtesy despite Jewish, vegetarian and anti-sausage requirements. (more…)

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As I sit and write this, we have already ridden most of the height and width of Shandong Province on roads of all sizes. In case you don’t know much about Shandong, I’ll briefly describe its position in China. At about 94 million mouths, it is the second most populous province. The birthplace of Confucius and Sunzi (author of the Art of War) in addition to countless other important historical figures, and the home to Mt. Tai, the most sacred mountain in China, it is the province where the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilization, flows into the sea. Considering its traditional significance, its status as the home of China’s wine industry and some of the best fruit around, we expected Shandong to be a very pleasant place, especially after dusty, polluted Hebei. Maybe you can then imagine the disappointment it was to find Shandong to be fulfill many of our expectations of the worst parts of China. (more…)

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