Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

Now, after over ten months of munching away the dry bottom layers, we have finally arrived at the icing on the cake of our adventure: Qinghai. This, the fourth largest territorial unit in the empire and birthplace of the current Dalai Lama, embodies nearly every reason we undertook this colossal ride: pristine natural beauty, life highly unadulterated by the worst parts of modernity, and for once, healthy resistance to mainstream ideology. The green, spacious province was also the intended target for my China ride in 2007. Thankfully, however, a grocery store clerk and hobby cyclist outside of Chengdu managed to convince me that my friend and I were unfit and underprepared for biking of that order.

Truly in 2007 I was in no way ready for this territory on my folding Dahon without camping supplies, warm clothes, or bike tools (I didn’t even carry any chain oil!), and so I probably owe my life to that grocery store clerk I found riding outside of Chengdu. This time around, however, we’ve built the entire trip — endurance, equipment, etc. — around our eventual arrival here in the northeastern corner of the Tibetan plateau, the challenges of which we have met in stride. This, of course, flies in the face of nearly every Han we told of our eventual arrival here. The vast majority was convinced we’d meet with something between certain doom and probable vexation in the territory of the rowdy, lawless Tibetans. In the end, they were right about the trouble, but completely off base on where it would come from. (more…)

By Evan

Note: This post is written about events before our arrival in Shanghai in early November.

Saloman and his lovely young wife in front of their pulled noodles business off a highway in the heavy manufacturing district of Kunshan, Jiangsu, by Andy

On the road from Suzhou to Shanghai, in the prefecture of Kunshan, on one of the four-lane provincial highways on which goods from inland manufacturing bases are sped toward the ocean, sits a row of restaurants catering to truckers and other passers through the dusty industrial zone. Amid shabby storefronts, we found the familiar blue facade of a Lanzhou Pulled Noodles restaurant, here belonging to Ma Jun (马君), where we lunched on the final leg into Shanghai. After ordering a cheap lunch of noodles and stir-fry over rice, we settled into conversation with the proprietor, who instructed us to call him by his Arabic handle, Saloman (think baby-splitting king).

Hailing from a little village outside of Xining in Qinghai province, the 30 year old member of the Hui Muslim ethnic group of China didn’t exactly do any pioneering work in his trade. There are tens of thousands of Lanzhou Pulled Noodles restaurants throughout China, including hundreds if not thousands of shops just in and around Shanghai. Whereas outside of Shanghai the owners of these restaurants could come from any number of locales of high Hui concentration, in and around China’s most populous city, all the Lanzhou Noodleries seem to be run by Qinghai’ers. (more…)