Day one of our journey started off with some typical setbacks (typical for Evan and I). After a very nice breakfast hosted by our friends Cathy and Muzi, we set out from the Dongzhimen area in Beijing for Tiananmen, and soon realized we had forgotten a few things: the champagne we said we were going to drink that morning, Evan’s bike gloves, my bike gloves and my iPhone charger. The latter we failed to notice until we were already at Xidan, and as it is extremely important to the trip (our internet comes from the iPhone), I added another 20km to my distance today going back to get it and my gloves. We legitimately hit the road at around 11:30, heading south out of the city on the G106 national highway as planned.
Recently, I personally have been a bit worried about our physical condition. Evan has done the most biking recently, with trips up and down the California coast and a few weeks spent in Taiwan. I have taken only a handful of long-ish rides over the past three months, while Alexis has never gone on a long bike ride before. In the three weeks we were in Beijing waiting for my visa and passports, we didn’t even get out on one decent ride. Our bikes are all fully loaded with gear and are extremely heavy. One of these days it’d be nice to come across a hotel or a family with a scale, so we could figure out how much we are each carryin
g. Nevertheless, once we got up to speed, we cruised along on the flat and well-paved road out of Beijing. Our goal for the day was only to get to Hebei province, which is where we told everyone we’d end up. Failing to make it out of Beijing would be far too embarrassing. Beijing is massive. Our total ride today was 70km to a town called Gu’an in Hebei province, but the town itself is only about four kilometers into Hebei.
After a late lunch near the China Watermelon Museum (strangely, I have been there once before, five years previously) in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, we pulled into Gu’an at around 4:30. Coming into Gu’an was like passing through a demolition zone. Actually, it wasn’t like passing through a demolition zone — it was a demolition zone. It seemed like everything for two or three kilometers on our way into the town was a massive pile of bricks and rubble. The Chinese government lists Gu’an as a “development zone,” and when they say something like that anywhere near a major city like Beijing or Shanghai, they mean it. After we made it through the rubble, we quickly found a cheap hotel to stay in. For the first two weeks while we get acclimated to what we’re doing, I imagine we will be staying in a number of hotels before we try out more camping and hopefully staying with people we meet. But the price is right — we’re each paying a little less than $1.50 to share a 3 person room…and we got to shower.
I spent a little time walking around town with my camera while Alexis and Evan showered. I am always amazed at how quickly Chinese people change from basically ignoring foreigners in Beijing or Shanghai (because we’re everywhere and nothing special anymore) to exclaiming “Look, a foreigner!” or yelling “HALLO!” from a passing car. When we finally get away from the urban centers on the east coast, maybe people will even start complimenting me on my Chinese again!
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Today marked our second day in Hebei and plenty of lessons learned. The first lesson we learned was that it is now officially corn season in Hebei. Other than the thousands of Chinese everywhere, the traces of giant industry, the very young forests of perfectly grid-patterned trees in between the industrial and urban centers, and the Arabic signs of Muslim Chinese enclaves, it’s hard to differentiate this place from Nebraska. Ok, so it’s not the Midwest, but there is a ton of corn everywhere – being shucked by families in front of their establishments, or already de-cobbed and drying along the side of the highway for miles and miles (see picture). Even a tax bureau had drying corn out front. I wonder if they’re using it for animals mostly or if here, as in the US, they are selling it to food companies to be put into all their packaged foods. This will need to be asked soon.
