Portrait of an LBX

Jour 34 (26/10/09)

Mengcheng(蒙城)

Province de l’Anhui(安徽省)

Encore une fois, nous nous levons tardivement. Andy ne se sent vraiment pas bien. Nous allons donc rester un jour dans cette ville, qui est je crois la plus horrible que nous ayons vu pour l’instant! Evan et Andy vont prendre leur petit déjeuner dans un boui-boui. Je me contente de fruits et essaie de mettre à jour mon journal.

Etant donné que Mengcheng prétend être la ville natale de Zhuangzi, Evan et moi décidons d’aller faire un tour au temple érigé en son honneur (庄子祠). Nous sortons de notre lüshe et prenons une sorte de tricycle motorisé. Nous disons à la bonne femme que nous allons donc au Mémorial de Zhuangzi (庄子祠).

Elle nous dit que cela nous coûtera seulement 4 yuan. Pas cher! Nous acceptons. 10 minutes plus tard, elle nous amène devant un grand rond-point avec… la statue de Zhuangzi (庄子像). Non non, nous on veut le mémorial. Alors que nous sommes en face d’un marchand de fruits et légumes, elle nous dit: “就是这里！” (« C’est ici! »). Non, non, y’a pas de mémorial! Il est où le temple? Elle dit qu’elle ne sait pas où c’est! Après avoir demandé à des flics, elles finit tout de même par trouver. Mais c’est beaucoup plus loin que prévu, à l’extérieur du centre-ville. Devant l’entrée du temple, nous lui donnons 10 yuan, elle refuse et dit qu’elle veut 50 yuan. Evan s’écroule par terre de rire. Elle a beau nous tirer par nos vêtements et pousser ses jérémiades, nous ne lui donnerons rien de plus.

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Jour 33 (25/10/09)

Shuanggou(双沟)-Mengcheng(蒙城)

Province de l’Anhui(安徽省)

-103km-

Comme prévu, nous nous levons dès que nous le sentons. Mais à peine ai-je le temps de me doucher, que j’apprends qu’Andy va un peu mieux et est prêt pour reprendre la route. Nous préparons donc nos affaires. Pendant qu’Evan et Andy vont prendre leur petit déjeuner dans un boui-boui, je pars assister aux festivités du mariage (voir Jour 32). Malheureusement, ce dernier n’aura pas lieu avant midi. Je remercie donc mes amis lbx et nous repartons tous les trois sur la route. C’est tout de même dommage. J’espère que l’on sera invités une nouvelle fois à un mariage, car il me semble que c’est un passage obligé dans notre aventure lbx-ienne!

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By Andy

This is, I suppose, an inevitable post in any cycling tour. I now have a feeling for what our counterparts on The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip have felt for their 10,000km trek across Russia, which will end at the Atlantic Ocean. To this point, we had enjoyed days of riding in only the slightest breeze, which we have found at our backs more often than not. That changed the day before last.

To begin with, a failure to account for the difference in scale between our map of Shandong and that of Henan meant that we had vastly underestimated the distance of our journey, which we originally thought we could complete in one hard day of riding. Of course, we didn’t realize this ego-slap-in-the-face until two days of riding had failed to produce the desired result. We left our hotel in Qufu, to which we had treated ourselves in order to relax after our “downtime” at the coalmine, late — around 10am after a Western breakfast and coffee. At the time we thought a push of 150km to would get us to Kaifeng in Henan, but being fully rested, we thought we could pull it off. It turned out the distance was over 300km by our zig-zagging route.

We were excited to get to Henan purely because it would mark the third province on our journey, thus increasing our manliness by 1/3. To get to our destination of Kaifeng, we had to travel southwest from Qufu. In our limited travels thus far, we have noticed that the inter-village roads that we prefer to travel are maddeningly laid out in somewhat of a grid pattern — that is, either east-west or north-south, but not necessarily traveling in either direction for very long before ending at a T-intersection, requiring a re-evaluation. As we learned in geometry class, this doesn’t make for the shortest distance between almost any two given points. The westward-slanting border between Henan and Shandong, which follows the Yellow River, also meant that the more southward we moved, the longer the distance to Henan became. (more…)

By Andy

I haven’t written for a while. Evan’s post on the SOE coalmine experience captured the story and insanity of the situation quite handily. The only thing I have to add is a couple thoughts on the separation between the Party and the people and on the definition of LBXs, or laobaixing.

We still have no precise definition for China’s laobaixing. It is most often translated as simply the ‘common people,’ but that doesn’t really do the term justice as it is used in modern Chinese context.

In a slightly less vague context, it is used to mean anyone who is not connected to the Party or the government (the two being approximately the same thing in China). I think this is the way most Chinese people in major cities like Beijing or Shanghai would describe the term if you asked them what they thought about their childhood home being demolished to make way for a luxury mall – “We laobaixing have no power. (我们老百姓没有权利.)” Back in June, an offhand comment made by Lu Jun, a government spokesman in Zhengzhou, a city about 80km from where I write this post, caused an uproar on the Chinese internet, which interestingly acts as one of the few checks against rampant abuses of power by local governments and officials. Lu, when confronted by reporters about the future of a plot of land originally allocated for low-income housing where 12 luxury villas were instead being constructed, first asked, “Will you speak for the Party or for the laobaixing? (你是准备替党说话，还是准备替老百姓说话?) (more…)

We left our hotel extremely late yesterday, around one in the afternoon, after a morning of trying to get stuff onto the website through the horribly slow Internet. I spent some additional time getting all the grit from the rainstorm out of my chain and other moving parts and re-oiling things again. I think my parents would be proud to know that I finally value something mechanical enough and understand how it works sufficiently to keep it maintained. At least I hope so. Reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” in May certainly made me appreciate the process more as well. There is no doubt a certain satisfaction to be derived from doing something oneself, especially when doing it right. And when you start to know how to do it correctly, it becomes harder and harder to let anyone else do it for you because there’s no guarantee they’ll do it right, and they certainly have no skin in the game. At some point, I’d like to discuss some of my observations in China in the context of “Zen,” but this post is going to be long enough without it.

In my last entry we were debating whether to head south toward Rizhao or west toward Taishan and Henan. After looking at our map and seeing how far south Rizhao would take us and how silly it would be to work our way back up to Henan from there, only to head south again, we decided to head west. We began by moving southwest on the provincial road running through Ducun, S217. After missing our turn-off, we decided to take the next paved road west that we saw. The road took us through a small village, after which the pavement disappeared and we were on a dirt road through the countryside. With the exception of the ever-present dust and perfectly planted rows of trees, as we moved through rolling hills covered with corn I could imagine that I was back home in southern Pennsylvania. As we began climbing uphill, the dirt road eventually ran into another paved road, and we flew downhill at 45km per hour. From there we wound through narrow, back-country roads for what was the most pleasant ride of our trip thus far. We passed through several tiny villages where corn once again lay drying on at least half of the road. The words coming out of the mouths of the elderly residents meandering the streets were about as intelligible to us as the mooing of the cows tied outside some of the houses or the clucking of chickens from inside the courtyard homes.

As we passed through one of the villages by the name of Chujiawangwu (褚家王吴村), a man in his late 30s or early 40s waved us down and invited us into his home to eat. After stashing our bikes in his courtyard, we sat down in his living room where we chatted, and his wife served us bowls of noodles and sausage, which everyone ate out of courtesy despite Jewish, vegetarian and anti-sausage requirements. (more…)

Today was quite the day, as Hebei is quite the place. After last night’s hour and a half local police fiasco at our cheap little hotel, we assumed the whole affair done and laughed it off as just another example of why we should avoid third-tier, middling cities. As we left the hotel this morning, and I got my deposit money back, the laobanniang (boss lady) gave us three apples for the road and said she admired both the courage it takes to be on such a journey and the way we talked to the police as it displayed how much we know about China and that we got out of the situation much better than any laobaixing could have. When I asked her name, she said, “please don’t put my name into anything you might write about your trip. We laobaixing have enough trouble.” (more…)