After a couple days through some serious mountains, from Jiangle to Gaoqiao and Gaoqiao to Huyuan, our legs were starting to scream for a break. As we pulled off the road for lunch on our way from Huyuan to Anxi, I told Evan that after another full day through the mountains, I didn’t think I would be able to do much the next day. I suggested we check the map for a county seat with internet and take a rest day before setting out again.

Back when we first started the trip, we had resolved to stick to the back-country — to spend as much of our time as possible in villages (村) and townships (乡). A disheartening run-in with the cops on the second day of our trip temporarily resulted in a policy of avoiding mid-tier, regional centers at all costs. That was until we realized that we needed internet access to write this blog. Since then, we’ve pretty much decided that if we’re going to take a rest day, it should be in business hotel with internet in the room, which are usually found in only county seat-level cities (县城) or larger.

So we set our sights on Datian (大田), a county seat where we could be assured of finding a room with internet access. Exhausted, we pulled into the city’s dusty center late in the afternoon and started checking out the coffee shop internet scene in case we couldn’t find a wired room at the right price. The coffee shops, all rip-offs of the usual suspects like Straights and UBC, were a bust internet-wise, so we went to find a hotel. As we pulled up to a slightly expensive-looking hotel and Alexis went in to inquire about prices, a voice to my left called out in Chinese, “Can you speak Chinese?” I turned and saw a head poking out the passenger side of a police car and swore under my breath as the car pulled in front of Evan and the man got out to talk to us.

After a number of frustrating experiences, our blood pressure rises to dangerous levels at the sight of authority of any sort in China, especially the police. When the athletic man, Mr. Chen (陈), whom Evan would later rename Biff due to his resemblance to the antagonist from Back to the Future, told us he and the two other, overweight cops who had gotten out of the car were from the local cycling club and wanted to help us find a hotel room, we could only chuckle at the nerve of such a lie. We tried to shoo off the Police Uncles (警察叔叔), but they were not giving up.

When Biff told us they had known we would be coming into town for over an hour and had cars out looking for us, we kicked ourselves for being so open with Mr. Wang and the police back in Gaoqiao. Every police station in Fujian must be on the lookout for us now, we thought. I told Evan that with our Z-visas (the Z-visa, one of the most difficult to attain, is a one-year employment visa, which Evan and I still retain despite having left our previous jobs), we should probably start telling people that we had biked from Shanghai rather than Beijing so that we could plausibly claim that we had requested a sabbatical for the bike trip. We also decided to say we were ending our trip in Xiamen. “No matter what, we are not going to Anxi (安溪),” Evan told us. “That is the one place I absolutely want to go in Fujian, and we are not going to let these cops call ahead and get us kicked out of there. Tell them we’re going to Yongchun (永春) [one county north of Anxi].” So we began lying.

Eventually, just to end the harassment, we decided to check into the hotel in front of which we were still standing, despite its high price. While we were registering, a local TV crew showed up, and as Evan and Alexis had left to move stuff up to the room, I had to give a short, nervous interview about our bike trip from Shanghai to Xiamen. I hate lying.

After the interview, we were finally set free, but only after agreeing to have dinner with the “cycling team” an hour later.

We spent the next hour showering and cursing the harassment from the cops and their ridiculous lie about being on the “cycling team” and further refining our own lie about our bike trip from Shanghai to Xiamen. “No matter what, we’re not getting drunk with them,” Evan said. We were beat and just wanted to get to sleep.

An hour later we were sitting in a private room at the hotel restaurant with an ever-increasing quantity of delicious local specialties piling up on the lazy Susan (or spinning Jenny, depending on who you ask) and a bottle of beer and a double-shot-sized glass each. Biff proposed the first toast and we all jumped to say how we were happy to accept his toast but couldn’t drink too much because we were athletes. “Okay, I’ll drink the whole glass. You guys drink as much as you want (我干, 你们随意).” We each took a small sip as he downed the glass.

After a bunch of questions directed at us, Evan turned the tables and started asking about their bike club. “Where do you ride? How often? How many are in the club? What bikes do you have? How long have you been members?”

Eventually it started looking like they actually knew something about bikes and biking. “I think they might actually be in a bike club,” I said to Evan, who agreed. When Biff explained to the rest of the table that our bikes probably had steel frames since we would need to be able to weld them on the road if one snapped, we were convinced. On the next toast we all drank a full glass. And the one after, and the one after…

Drunk us and the Datian cycling club boys. Photo by a waitress.

More and more members of the cycling team kept coming through and toasting us, and before we knew it we were all sloshed and agreeing to breakfast and sightseeing the next day along with all sorts of other silly things we would later realize we had no interest in doing.

The next day, despite vicious hangovers all around, in true Chinese-host fashion, Biff called about ten times trying to convince us to come out of the room, eat, go sightseeing, sing karaoke and a seemingly endless stream of other activities. No amount of hint-dropping could make him back down, and we couldn’t tell the truth — that we were busy writing blogs and uploading pictures — because we had told them we didn’t have a blog and didn’t post pictures online. Finally we said flat-out that we weren’t coming out but would like to get together for breakfast on our way out of town the next day. “Okay, we’ll ride out of town with you on your way to Yongchun!” Fortunately, the first 40km of the trip to either Anxi or Yongchun were along the same road, and we didn’t feel like they would be following us further than that on a workday. Later that night we snuck out to grab a bite to eat and pick up sundries at the grocery store, immediately after which we received a call from Biff, “My wife saw you at the grocery store! I thought you were tired! No matter, we’re going drinking and singing karaoke. Come on out!” Again, these guys were relentless hosts, but we eventually got him to accept the morning meet-up.

Riding out of town with Police Uncle members of the Datian cycling squad. Photo by Evan

The next morning, unsurprisingly, everyone in their group had another vicious hangover from their festivities; so there was no getting together for breakfast. Nevertheless, a group of four did catch up with us on our way out of town and accompany us as far as the base of the first major mountain, where we took pictures and said goodbye to our friends from the Datian cycling team, which it turns out does actually exist.

The whole experience underscores a constant struggle that I have faced since about two weeks into my time in China. On one hand, the Chinese for the most part are incredibly friendly and welcoming, especially in the countryside. On the other hand, the constant screams of “Hallo!” followed by chuckling and laughter, make us feel like we are buxom girls in miniskirts walking by a bunch of cat-calling American construction workers. Eventually, it’s a struggle to react with anything besides hostility. Likewise, our negative experiences with the police over the course of the trip and our general disdain for the authorities in China make it hard to keep an open mind when we are approached by the cops or someone in a black Audi A6 honking at us with one of those asshole-klaxons. Every once in a while, it’s good to get a clear reminder that most people are well-intentioned, even if a little over the top.

Not thinking much more of it, we went across the street for cheap grub after the obligatory pictures with the babies of all the other business owners in the vicinity. After the first bite of my shaobing (baked flatcake), the boss lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to go back to the hotel with her. Upstairs a plain-clothed, middle aged Chinese man showed me his Public Security badge and asked who I was, what I was doing, if I had stayed in the hotel, and a lot of nonsense questions. Finally he asked if the boss lady had registered us the previous night.

“Of course, we were registered. Four policemen came and took over an hour of our time making copies and going through our bags.”

That, however, was not the problem. Apparently the policemen had taken the copies of our passports for themselves, and the boss lady had not registered us in her computer herself. I tried pleading with him that of course, the police knew we were here, but he said that it’s not my responsibility to mind this affair. I suggested that if we all gave our passports now to make copies for the register, would that end the whole matter? So I went out and made copies of our passports after telling the guys to come for me if something happened. When I got back, the boss lady was sobbing at her desk. Through her sobs she told me they were going to revoke her business license and close her down. I tried to get her phone number or ask her to let me go downstairs to fetch money for her to pay to the policeman, but she kept saying it would only make matters worse. I asked her ten times about ten different solutions I could think of, but she didn’t want me to talk to the cop who was sitting in the back smoking or to go out and bring her money or anything. She just kept on telling me to remember that she was a good person and that she didn’t do anything wrong by agreeing to take us in, and that we will always be friends.

Enraged and befuddled, I walked downstairs and told Andy and Alexis about the situation. After much debate, we decided to all throw some money together and have Alexis take it up. He took it to her, but she refused several times. He gave her his cell phone number and promised to call us to let us know what happens.

So we left Wen’an with what Andy referred to as, “a bad taste in our mouths.” As I predicted before we set out, our major problems over this trip would all come from the government or their thugs (police). It’s likely, as we speculated afterward, that the cops are just trying to shake the hoteliers down for a huge fine or bribe. Either way, it stinks, and we are dying to remove ourselves from Hebei. Incidentally, it has finally occurred to me what is the biggest difference between here and Taiwan from my perspective. Today I’m sure it’s that only in idiotic dictatorships that everybody has to be registered to Big Brother at all times. In a place with nothing to hide, three goofball bicyclists with thousands of “USA-China Friendship Bicycling Team” cards would be seen as innocent and probably ridiculous, but not as terrorists or international pariahs.

Fortunately though, it wasn’t all bad today. We managed to get lost in some little village dirt roads covered by huge piles of corn husks among endless rows of corn and between little houses with courtyards covered in corn husks and husked corn (have I mentioned they grow some corn out here?). After getting really lost in one, we found a family of 5 with huge plastic sheets under trees, whacking them with huge bamboo poles. When we went up to talk to them, we found out they were harvesting dates, which have just come into season. When the papa of the family found out we took three days to get there, his wife told us he had once ridden to Beijing on a bike in one day. I’m glad they have appreciation for long bike rides (and that they called us out on being slow). Anyway, the point is that we still love Chinese people and even China. It’s just those prickly pricks in charge of things who bully locals for no goddamn reason who destroy it for everybody else. From here on it, hopefully we’ll leave places with the taste of good Chinese people and sweet dates and not the sour taste of oppression.

And as Alexis says, “nique la police!”

Former Filling Station Turned Corn Lot

Lesson 2 is that we absolutely must stop staying in 3rd tier regional centers. We picked a city called Wen’an off the map because it was a good distance from Gu’an, our start (today was 75km), and it seemed like a good staging point to get into some real Hebei countryside tomorrow. Of course, when we arrived, it was another bastion of Chinese quick construction mediocrity, full of hilarious crosswalk signs and stores and restaurants indistinguishable from anywhere else, plus tons of traffic. That was par for the course, of course, but the police are the real reason we need to stop coming to these places (that and the fact they are not our goal). When we stopped in front of the first hole-in-the-wall hotel we saw, I went up to negotiate for a room as usual, and came down to find Andy and Alexis surrounded by LBXes and police, asking what we are doing here. After lots of staring and questions, one nice old man took us to another hotel where we got a decent room and rate and decided to move our stuff up the four flights of stairs to our room. Immediately after we had finally gotten every last thing up to the room, we were informed by the 4 policemen who had followed us in that we couldn’t stay here as they couldn’t guarantee “our safety” in such a place; that we would be safer in a more expensive hotel. After long negotiations of fighting illogic with illogic and lots of stupid catch phrases that police-types love, they allowed us to stay, needing copies of our documents. The head of the bunch a fat guy not in uniform with his shirt untucked and a lit cig always hanging from his lips, then tried to prompt me to tell him I was carrying weapons by asking, “so do you have anything for protection on you for this trip?” My answer of, “we foreigners aren’t allowed to carry weapons” was followed by, “no, you’re right. I’m afraid we’re going to have to check all your bags.” Entrapment much? After dumping out all our bags in front of 4 indifferent cops who were clearly just trying to save face in their department, they left us, but not before adding, “if you must leave, there’s food across the street, but don’t go far.”

So from now on we’re going to avoid these mid-sized blips on the map like the plague. Tomorrow we delve into real LBX territory south of here on the way to Shandong, and hopefully our first home-stay or camping experience to boot. With that, good night.