Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

*I’m way too lazy today to put the pictures straight into this post. See the Maotai pictures here and the first of Sichuan here.

It’s been awhile since my last substance update, so I’ll back up and explain a few things behind the title. First, after Kunming we picked up Aaron, our old buddy from Shanghai, who followed us just across the border with Guizhou on a creaky 20” wheel Dahon. He is now an official member of the USA-China Friendship Bicycling Team. Then we trimmed some of China’s most stunning landscapes, the kind of stuff that inspired landscape paintings (山水畫) like this for hundreds of years, right after taking Aaron through the most bland riding we’ve done in a while. Probably bad karma on his part. before arrival in Guiyang. In Guiyang, Andy R&R’ed in Shanghai while I stayed behind to see the USA lose to Ghana (crapola) and spend time with an interesting group of expats (another story for another time, but thanks to my new Nigerian friend Henry!). From Guiyang, we had to pick a route north into Sichuan, and fate again took a hand, placing the little town of Maotai smack in our way.

For those who’ve lived in China, Maotai (also known as Kweichow Moutai), home of China’s most celebrated liquor, requires no introduction. For everybody else, let me try to explain. In terms of local reputation and legacy, Maotai is to baijiu what Dom Perignon is to champagne. But PLEASE, PLEASE don’t take that to mean that we are lovers of baijiu, or that baijiu is a liquid which should be used — by reasonable people — for more than blowing fire as a party trick or sanitizing wounds. To journey to Maotai for the love of baijiu would be like visiting Abu Ghraib on an “experience the world’s most inhumane tortures” tour. In case you still don’t get it, the stuff blows, and I mean hard. It burns like hell and gives you wicked hangovers, but for reasons I’ll never understand, that hasn’t stopped the Chinese from enjoying it in copious quantities for thousands of years, making it on the strength of this country alone the world’s most consumed spirit. Honestly, China came out pretty well with its cuisine, its tea, its arts, etc. etc. Unfortunately, they got the short end of the alcohol stick with baijiu and huangjiu (黃酒, much much better than baijiu but still pretty gross) as their front runners. (more…)

Jour 96 (26/12/09)

Quzhou(衢州)-Baishizhen(白石镇)

Province du Zhejiang(浙江省)

-env. 60km-

Ce matin, nous ne nous levons pas trop tôt: 10h, et goûtons ce mystérieux fruit appelé « ramboutan », que j’ai acheté l’avant-veille. Et c’est en fait pas mal. Cela a un peu le même goût que le litchi, en plus chiant à éplucher.

Lorsque nous quittons l’hôtel, il est déjà trop tard pour des baozi. Nous prenons donc directement un déjeuner dans un resto. Avant de repartir, nous avons la chance d’échanger quelque mots avec un lbx, qui vient nous parler de tout et de rien, sur la Chine et les pays étrangers. Il nous fait un parallèle particulier entre la statut de paysan en Chine et celui de Noir aux États-Unis. “你们美国的总统是黑人。我们总统原来也是农民。” (« Votre Président aux États-Unis est un Noir. Nous aussi, notre Président était un paysan. »). Quelques minutes plus tard, il nous explique ce que nous savons depuis longtemps: en Chine, il est interdit de critiquer les dirigeants. Et c’était bien sûr bien pire pendant la Révolution Culturelle. Tout le monde avait un portrait ou un poster de Mao chez lui, et devait l’entretenir. Certaines personnes ayant malencontreusement abîmé le portrait du sauveur en le nettoyant ou ayant laisser les souris faire un trou sur son visage, étaient punies et emprisonnées. Mais la Révolution Culturelle, nous dit-il, n’a pas été que mauvaise: “文革也有它的好处。它教训了一些人。” (« La Révolution Culturelle a eu ses bons côtés. Elle a donné une leçon à certaines personnes. »). Tiens donc? C’est un peu comme s’il avait dit: « Le viol des mineurs a ses bons côtés. Il apprend l’amour aux jeunes filles! » ou encore « La Shoah a eu ses bons côtés. Parmi les victimes juives, certaines fraudaient le fisc! ».

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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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