Portrait of an LBX

A group of farmers works across a field digging up what I can only assume is some sort of valuable medicinal root. They're probably not cutting the grass with scissors, anyway.

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Farmers in Guangxi province transplant rice plants from the little greenhouses where they begin growing to the wet paddies where they will eventually be harvested.

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Our restaurant at the end of our second day of riding on Hainan offered a beautiful sunset view of local workers finishing up their time in the fields. The short name for Hainan and the character seen on the province's license plates is qiong (瓊), or high-quality, beautiful jade. You can see where the name comes from.

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Watermelon farmers on the eastern coast of Hainan load their harvest onto a truck to be shipped to markets in the mainland. The family's fields are comprised of 40 mu (畝, 6.6 acres). They were planted with seedless watermelon back in October, which the family is now selling at 1.6 yuan per half kilogram (斤), a decent price, we were told.

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I left off in Zhangguan, Shandong, a little Hui (Muslim Chinese) village just across the border from Hebei. The old town was like something out of a movie, people everywhere moving through tight streets and bunched gorgeous courtyard houses, except with Arabic signs intermingled with the Chinese. The old city is laid out on a simple grid of two interescting streets with alleys running between the houses to other houses deeper inside. There are main roads off the Western and Northern branches full of bigger, far uglier businesses and restaurants. The rivers that run in and around the city are black as tar and smell like last month’s fish left out in black oil cans in the sun.

As we walked into the old town in the morning we witnessed what Alexis called ‘Chicken Auschwitz’, a Muslim meathouse where the patrons slit hundreds of chicken necks in rapid succession before tossing them into a pen to bleed to death, the blood streaming out into the street in big thick streams. Only later did we find out  that the town’s main industry is the processing of animals, purchased from Han Chinese farmers, slaughtered in Halal fashion. The meat is sold to other Muslims all over the region, as far away as Beijing, and the skins sold to leather manufacturers. Of course, most of the slaughter of larger animals happens away from the old town.

My overall view of Zhangguan was similar to what’s developing into a pattern: newly developed sections bad (as in I wouldn’t make my childhood bullies live there); old and traditional good (as in I see them as places suited for humans to live in). The difference here is that the inhabitants of this town stick together more cohesively than most places since their bonds are religious as well as regional. How well do they stick together? Over 90% of the city is surnamed Zhang (张). There were also a lot of 40-something grandparents running around carrying babies for their hardworking 20-something kids as most here tend to get married at 20 (still haven’t figured out how that works in light of the new PRC marriage age minimums of 22 for women and 24 for men). Moreover, they were by far the warmest and kindest to us of any group of peopple we’ve encountered so far on this trip. Almost every smile and “nihao” was returned warmly, and one family even took us into their house. The hotelier family we stayed with gave us free breakfast and tried to let us stay for free. Of course, the breakfast included a huge plate of goat liver (local specialty), but nothing worthwhile is easy…

After the myriad obligatory photos with our hotel family, we tardily headed Southeast through some soul-rending industrial sectors and after a relatively short ride of 88 km arrived just shy of a place called Madian (麻店), where we decided to try a new strategy for lodgings. We cut off the highway into some farmland covered by corn, cotton, paper trees, and dates and started trying to ask the locals where we could camp for the night. The general concensus (at least we think it was – we could understand maybe 20% of what was being said) was that nobody gave a shit about us camping in the fields, although everybody tried to persuade us that there were hotels to be found. So with the most stealth we super colorfully dressed white boys on giant bikes full of luggage, we lit off the dirt trail and headed into a paper tree grove right up against a bunch of cotton plants and waited until dark while drinking the last of the Scotch that was given to us in Hebei (thanks again to Victor). Once safe, we threw up the tents in a line behind Andy’s (the most camo), and crashed nervously, not knowing if anybody would actually care.

Thankfully at 5:30 when we got up, we were surrounded by a dense fog that blocked vision past 20 feet and had gotten no bothers from the cops or locals, and after our morning situp/pushup routine were on the road a little after 6:30.

For the route yesterday, I picked a road from the map that ran a long ways along a big river. Once we got to the river, we found only long dusty dirt roads on top of a long levee winding through probably the prettiest farmland we had seen so far. After 10 km or so we arrived at a huge sluice gate upon which was printed “Control the Yellow River Sluice Gate of Lanjia.” Aha! So that’s the big river! Two old men with decent Mandarin explained how the gate is used for flood control (amazing since during the 90’s the Yellow was so tapped for industry that it made it to the ocean only 9 of 10 years) and told us about the pear orchard next door.

Curious and desiring pears, we wandered into the facility adjacent to the orchard and asked if we could buy 3 pears. At first we were met with skepticism as to our desires (frequently the first response), but once we got to a group of men moving boxes and munching pears, the “leader” presented himself and tried to give us more pears than we could fit in our bags. Now when I say that these are Asian pears, freshly picked the day before and just pulled from the fridge facility, understand I mean this was the best pear experience I have ever had. After receiving the pears, we got into lively conversation with the group of middle aged men, and – surprise of surprises – posed for about twenty cell phone pictures. Interestingly one man, after trying to pry median American and French salaries for workers (still haven’t thought of a good ready answer to this yet) also told us they were taking down 3000 yuan a month, which would be great for Beijing, let alone the stix of Shandong.

At lunch we had a feast of Shandong food (good hearty stuff) in a small restaurant next to some chickens (though they told Andy and Alexis there was no chicken on the menu) where I played with a 3 month old rabbit hunting dog (to be trained soon) and we were force treated (they don’t take no lightly) to 2 cigarettes each (smoked a puff and thew out once the coast was clear), and a particularly wasted ex military man picked up our tab on the premise that we always tell our foreign friends that “Binzhou people” are hospitable. So here I go: everybody, people from Binzhou are hospitable! We’re also spending less and less money due to camping and freebies. This may become our new fiscal tactic.

Finally we crossed the Yellow River (after making it a little bit yellower from the top of the bridge). Interestingly, apparently the Yellow River is not navigable. It’s full of pontoon bridges for local roads to cross – not even a toy sailboat could go more than 10 km. From there we headed south to a crappy highway boomtown recently rapid-developed (read: I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than spend another day here) after the discovery of oil in the area called Chunliang (纯梁), where we bedded down. On a comical note, this morning when we tried to buy mooncakes, the saleswoman told us, “a little over 1 yuan each. By the way, I’ve never seen foreigners before.” After we put 9 in a bag, she asked us for 45 yuan. I guess I’d try the old “foreigners don’t know math” trick too if I lived here.

The last few days have been great, but hopfully we can find more villages and less terrible industry on the way to Qingdao. We have heard and witnessed from the side of the highway that central Shandong is China’s biggest steel producing area in addition to being a general industrial hub. To say that the air contains some particulate is like saying Everclear is mildly alcoholic.

Alright, that’s it for now. Wish us luck.

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We tried our hand with some back-country roads today and came across a nice family harvesting their dates. Who knew those things grew on trees? They sell the harvest to various companies but were happy to let us enjoy as many as we wanted while we sat and chatted. Today reaffirmed our original assumption that the best thing we could do for this trip would be to avoid any semblance of a city and stay to the countryside where those without many of the strange concerns of modern life in China still reside.

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