Portrait of an LBX

By Andy

I don’t know if you can tell from any of our other posts, but we’re kind of preoccupied with the fact that we have yet to see a naturally growing forest anywhere we have traveled thus far. Instead, nearly every tree we see is planted next to its brethren of the same species in neat rows, with no undergrowth or wildlife to speak of.

On our way out of Kaifeng, we stopped in a gas station to use the bathroom but were told we would have to go across the street to a lumber market to use theirs instead. We made our way through tall stacks of logs, the smell of freshly cut wood a welcome respite from the burning-tire smell common to the outskirts of so many of the smaller Chinese cities.  When Evan and Alexis went to do their business, I was immediately surrounded by LBXes asking the usual series of questions as is prone to happen to whomever is left to watch the bikes.

Finally seeing an opening in the conversation, I asked, “So where do all these trees come from?” I inquired because in addition to the skinny poplar trees we see farmed everywhere, there were large pines in the area where I was standing – not something we’ve seen so far in the “wild.”

“Some come from southern China; others, mostly the pines, are imported from Russia,” the man with the best Mandarin in the group told me.

When Evan returned he asked why they had to import trees from Russia. “We used to get most of our pine from the Northeast (东北) of China, but now China is letting the Northeastern forests return to nature.”

The second part of that statement was a bit laughable based on what we’ve seen in the northeast – planting monoculture plots of poplar trees to be harvested every three years is hardly returning to nature. It was reminiscent of the “China is concerned about the environment now” statement at the coalmine. That is, they now make some bricks and cement out of the waste rock instead of just piling it into a mountain for future generations to deal with – just ignore how much either of those processes affects the environment. But I found the first part rather interesting. (more…)

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I had imagined that riding through coastal Shandong would be nice — beautiful even. For two days, however, we had some pretty depressing scenery. We’ve been forced to travel on provincial roads (省道) a good bit recently both as a result of our location in Shandong and our rush to get to Qingdao by Friday night to meet a friend. Generally we prefer the inter-village roads (乡间道), which are a tossup in terms of road quality but usually winners in terms of traffic flow and scenery as they usually run through fields between villages and small towns.

On Tuesday we woke a bit early but stayed in our room until noon editing pictures and writing new posts. We were already tired from a couple days of fairly hard riding and considered staying another night but realized that there was no way we would make it to Qingdao in time if we did. So we begrudgingly set out from our hotel in an awful oil-field town at around 1:30 in the afternoon to see what sort of distance we could put under us before we started settled down to celebrate Evan’s birthday. The answer to the distance question was 68km, which was pretty good for our start time and energy level — but we had to go through some awful stuff to get there.

Apparently Shandong is oil country, which none of us knew. The town where we were staying, called Chunliang (纯梁), sprung up around some nearby oil fields. If you’ve spent some time in China, you know that bad enough things result when small towns are actually planned. When they spring up around an oil field there is simply no hope. Rhetorically, Alexis asked, “So, where do you think will be the first place we get to that isn’t dusty?” as we began moving out of town. We had no clear answer to give.

Chunliang has a nice enough sounding name in Chinese (translating roughly to “simple bridge”), but we often find ourselves asking where they could possibly come up with the names for these places, because the towns themselves often bear no resemblance to their idyllic monikers. Chunliang is a one-street town with a single traffic light, but being on a provincial road, massive trucks move through the town like a herd of elephants — overweight elephants that far exceed the speed limit and don’t know how to stop blowing their horns. “Dusty” cannot begin to describe eastern China, and Chunliang is of course no exception. The dust permeates everything and is constantly kicked up by the cargo trucks blowing through town to make the traffic light. Trash, like in most small towns in China and probably any developing country, simply accumulates where it is dropped, i.e. everywhere. Like the dust, it floats through the air with the passing of trucks. The town’s buildings consist of rows of two-floor shops on either side of the main drag, too few of which are restaurants.
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