Hebei served as the deserved butt of many a joke throughout the trip, but when we finally arrived in the mountainous northern part of the province three days before the end of our trip, we were pleasantly surprised. There we found blue skies, green hills and picturesque villages as unique and interesting as those in any of the remote areas we passed in the western part of the country.

After a horrendous climb, the newly expanded crew, including my girlfriend Devi, my dad and his girlfriend Ellen, set up camp in the green mountains well before sunset. We were worried that a nasty storm on the horizon would soak us, but it never materialized, and we spent a great first evening on the road with a bottle of Talisker 10-year scotch whisky from duty free. There's a mystery member to our crew in this picture: a Tibetan herder who sat down and watched us talk, eat and drink for more than an hour, turning down our offers of food and drink.

A group of men gather outside a newly reconstructed home in the earthquake-stricken area north of Chengdu. In contrast to entire towns that are being reconstructed, cookie-cutter-style, by state-owned construction companies from faraway places like Hunan and Guangdong, many of the individually reconstructed homes feature traditional styles as well as intricate woodwork and colorful designs.

2010/06/10 — 117 km

Little Weirdo, by Andy

This time we get out of our tents and packed up an hour earlier, although we still get on the road half an hour later than we would if we were in a hotel. Before we climb down from our plowed, planted perch, I check the altitude and find we’re at 2,390 m (7,841 ft). By the time we get on our bikes and climb to the top of the pass, we’re over 2,400 m (7,874 ft), the highest we’ve climbed on the trip, and possibly the highest we’ll get until we’re climbing up onto the Tibetan Plateau in Sichuan province.

We find breakfast 18 km later in the valley, and I’ve already gotten my head in a steam about the insane traffic that still plagues us. Fortunately, when we pull into the restaurant I notice that the long strand of trucks, buses and SUVs is originating from the expressway exit in town, and breathe a sigh of relief that we’ll be free of the awful traffic and numerous near-death encounters until the next time they decide to close off the expressway in one direction for a hundred kilometers or so.

The day turns out to be fairly easy and uneventful, consisting of long cruises through green, rice-covered valleys and the occasional climb over into the next.

We stop for lunch around two, but Evan doesn’t eat. We’ve got metabolisms about as opposite as they come. When we continue after lunch, we find the Yunnan architecture that we’ve been marveling at so much (and which I’ve failed to mention to this point) has grown even more interesting.

The houses are basically brick rectangles, outside walls coated with plaster and then painted white and topped off with a gray tile roof, peak curving up at each eave. My description hardly does the simple yet elegant design justice.

Emblems and murals on the local architecture, presumably from the Yi minority (彝族), by Andy

As we descend into one valley, however, at least one, white end-wall of nearly every home is adorned with a mural, many circular in nature, like a family emblem. They remind me of the hex signs on barns back in my home in rural Pennsylvania, but the designs aren’t necessarily symmetric. Fire is a major theme — some feature a bull’s face and horns over a red fire, others people dressed up in traditional costume, dancing around a fire and playing instruments. Combined with the big, blue sky and gigantic clouds stretching out high above to the horizon, the whole valley has a very “western frontier” feel, especially given the drought, that with some minor tweaks would feel just as at home in Tibet or Arizona.

One last major climb as the sunlight is beginning to turn golden presents a vista of endless green mountains, short and rounded at first as they amble away from the valley over which we’re climbing, but growing taller and more craggy in the distance until they jut up against the brilliant blue horizon. I hitch a ride by grabbing onto one of the ropes holding the canvas onto a slow-moving truck as it passes and relax to enjoy the view for the last kilometer.

Village with a view, looking down from our last climb of the day, by Andy

The descent takes us through a long, wooded corridor, to which we have almost entirely to ourselves. Golden afternoon light flickers sideways through the foliage, casting long shadows in front of us as we peddle away from the low-hanging sun. Knowing daylight is growing scarce, we hop into the first open restaurant for dinner and a quick electronics charge, before climbing into the woods a couple kilometers out of town and setting up camp in a clearing where Evan swears he sees monkeys.

2010/05/26 — 119 km

It’s still raining when we groan awake at seven, so we decide to sleep for another hour. The rain is fizzling out as we crawl back to consciousness, and by the time we finish a breakfast of fried noodles and wantons at the restaurant attached to the hotel, it’s sun and blue skies as we shove off for Yunxian.

Did I mention it’s my birthday? We had originally planned to take three days to go from Gengma to Yunxian, but I was hoping to celebrate with something other than 3 kuai (44 cents), 600ml bottles of headache-inducing Kingbeer or baijiu, and requested we push the whole way in one day. The goal is to find a bottle of just about any foreign-produced whisky and some mint to make some semblance of mint juleps. With the late start, it’s going to be a challenge.

The first part of the day is a breeze. After a little climbing, we descend for nearly 20 km on long, graceful switchbacks for which we don’t evan have to hit the brakes, into a valley where we run into Devi waiting in front of a checkpoint for me to show up with her passport.

This is our second checkpoint (the first was on top of a mountain on our way to Lüchun (綠春縣), and we still haven’t quite figured out what purpose they serve. When we asked at the Lüchun checkpoint, the young, nervous guard in jungle camo had told us, “You’re not supposed to know that.” I guess it’s along the same lines of the state-secret of how to make faux-aged pu’er tea (普洱熟茶) that kept us out of the tea factory in Menghai (勐海). Perhaps they’re to keep the Burmese from moving into Yunnan’s the non-border counties, or maybe they’re to prevent drug smuggling. Regardless, after about ten minutes of careful passport checking and computer entry, we’re back on the road.
This time it’s a climb.

When we finally reach the town at the top of the mountain at lunchtime, Devi is nowhere in sight. Due to a communication mixup, she’s continued on to a small village where our road splits. After confirming that there’s a restaurant where she is, Evan and I push through another 10 km of ups and downs and eventually find Devi at a small, signless restaurant off the main road.

Scorpion in your tea on your birthday: sign of fortune or calaminty? by Andy

It’s here that one of the oddest events of the trip occurs. After ordering from among the sad collection of vegetables, the waitress seats us at a table and pours us each a glass of tea. Before taking a sip, I pull out the iPhone to check the route ahead and find out how many kilometers we have left. There’s a flash of movement out of the corner of my right eye and then the sound of a tiny splash. I look over to find that a scorpion has fallen from the ceiling and right into my tea!

“If this were Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義),” Evan offers, “this would be the point where everyone at the table would jump up and stab you to death. That would’ve been the signal.” Fortunately for me, Cao Cao is nowhere in sight. The scorpion appears to be dead, and I decide it’s a sign of good fortune. When the waitress returns, Evan asks if there are many scorpions in the area.

“There aren’t scorpions here!”

“If we sell you this one that just fell into the tea, do you think you could cook it up for us?”

She refuses to believe that the thing fell (or jumped?) from the ceiling, insisting that it must’ve been in the tea leaves. I don’t see how that would be any better.

Climbing, climbing, climbing, by Andy

After lunch, we follow a nearly dry river bed up a long, wide ravine. From halfway up, it looks as if the puffy white clouds are hanging so low on the ridge that I’ll be able to reach up and touch them when I get to the top.

After cresting the mountain, we race down into another valley to find that we’re following yet another river upstream. We find Devi waiting at the split-off to the national road to Yunxian and figure the worst of the climbing for the day is finished and that the last 40 km will be rolling ups and downs. When will we learn?

We keep following the river upstream, which it turns out is never a good sign. The newly paved, four-lane highway plays tricks on my eyes. When I look uphill, everything looks nearly flat, although I’m straining to maintain a 10 km/hr pace. If I stop to look downhill, the steep grade is obvious and disheartening. After a few kilometers I stop to munch on some trail mix and wait for Evan to catch up. Neither of us has slept right for about a week and a half, and we are utterly exhausted far deeper than our aching legs. After a few minutes, Evan continues up the gully while I keep working on the chocolaty delicious trail-mix.

Eventually I convince myself to get back on the bike and continue up the long, invisible slope. After a few kilometers, a truck starts blaring its horn needlessly behind me (this is nothing new, but it never ceases to infuriate). After the third honk, which happens as the truck is passing me, I lose my temper and turn left, flipping the driver off (which has no meaning in China) and curse at the top of my lungs (in English, which has even less meaning). Just then I hear an obnoxious “Hallo!” to my right. I start to turn, and the words “And f@%# you too!” are already coming out of my mouth when I see it’s just Evan sitting at a little convenience store eating a popsicle with a stupid grin on his face. I decide to continue up the valley alone.

It’s the incline that never ends. On and on and on I climb (although it still looks flat), thinking that the downhill will start around any turn, but it never comes. The river gurgles to my side, taunting me as it flows past on its easy descent. Evan sends a text message saying the owner of the convenience store told him it’s 20 km of uphill and 10 km of downhill to Yunxian. My spirit picks up momentarily, but it doesn’t take long to discover that the woman is a liar!

China loves to put these grim reminders up to tell you that the road is dangerous. Actually it's not the road that's dangerous, it's Chinese drivers. By Andy

My legs seem to be grinding to a halt. The speedometer reads 8, 7, 6 km per hour. Finally, I see a sign saying “Continuous downhill next 10 km.” Salvation! But in true LBX fashion (I honestly can’t come up with a plausible explanation for the negligence evident in Chinese signage) the sign is a full kilometer of uphill away from the gas station at which the slope finally reverses. I send Evan a text message telling him that he can finally expect to be going downhill at kilometer marker 270. “We’re going to have to hold my funeral at the same time as your birthday,” he responds.

The downhill is exhilarating! The road is freshly paved and the turns are wide. I coast and watch the speedometer register my increasing velocity — 50, 55, 60 — I’m coasting at 64.5 km/hr (40 km/hr) without pedaling. It seems like I perfectly good time to try to set a new personal speed record, so I throw the bike into top gear and push my legs to the max — 68, 70, 72, 72.5 — I speed past a motorcycle and let out a scream as I let out everything my legs have left. Seventy-three kilometers an hour (45 mph)! Having hit a new record, I gulp for air as a relax my legs and coast down the rest of the mountain. In hindsight, it’s not amazingly fast — but I’m not exactly on a racing bike here!

At the bottom I pass through a toll station (always free for bikes!) at 109 km for the day. Exhausted, I limp over the last hill and drift into town.

I meet Devi at the bus station. She’s been to every supermarket in town, and there doesn’t seem to be a single bottle of whisky! It’s a disappointment, but not a game ender. I suggest we find a hotel and then keep looking.

Evan finally drags into town (no funeral necessary, after all), and after showers, we head out for dinner and one last attempt at tracking down a bottle of whisky. On our way to a recommended dinner spot, we notice a hotel bar and pop our heads in. On the menu they have Chivas 12, Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker Black. The Chivas and Jack don’t actually exist, but there’s one bottle of Johnny Walker with a single drink already poured from it. We tell them to hold it for us and head to dinner.

Faux mint juleps still do the trick! A birthday success! By Evan

After dinner, the second part of our mint julep quest begins as we search for mint. I had thought mint was ubiquitous in Yunnan, but like most of my assumptions, that one is wrong too. We check all the nearby restaurants and supermarkets to no avail until one restauranteur points us in the direction of a Muslim restaurant. “They’re used to eating mint,” he says.

Sure enough, down a dark little alley is a Muslim restaurant, and the owner gives us a big bag of fresh mint at no charge! We head to the hotel bar and start mixing. It’s a good birthday.

2010/05/25 — 42 km

Devi, you're looking particularly Yi (彝族) today, by Andy

I wake up to the sound of a pitter-patter on the overhang outside the hotel window and the swish of car wheels on wet pavement outside. It’s raining. Evan, Devi and I all meet up in the hotel lobby to do some post writing and picture uploading, hoping the rain will let up.

Rain brings down our pace and our moods. Until today, the rain in Yunnan has come only in the form of monsoons — quick bursts of intense rain that drench us if we get caught in them, but which we can easily wait out without affecting our schedule if we can find shelter. It’s been a far cry from the weeks of steady, depressing downpours we were subjected to in the winter in Fujian province. To go back to the statistics spreadsheet that I’ve mentioned before, the rain in Fujian caused us to average a mere 33 km per day during our roughly one month in the province. In Yunnan, we’ve averaged 52 km per day over nearly a month and a half — and the mountains in Yunnan are much taller! Thinking about it makes the weather today seem all the more gloomy.

But it’s no longer winter, and Yunnan is warm. So when the steady rain turns to a drizzle, we pack up our gear and head out to breakfast. After a meal of noodles at one of two Muslim restaurants in town (which also serves at the only mosque in town), we make our way up to the town’s Buddhist temple where Evan has discovered a study session of monks from six counties is being held.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat, by Andy

Unfortunately, after our late start, we arrive just as the monks are breaking for lunch, but as luck would have it, they invite us to join them for lunch. We’re immediately surprised by the lack of discipline in the monks — when we arrive at the monastery, a group of them is standing outside the entrance smoking, and the majority of the dishes at lunch have meat in them. The meat is explained to us as a difference between the local Dai (傣族) style of Buddhism versus the Han (漢族) style, but the smokers outside are just being bad monks. From what we’ve witnessed on this trip, it seems that China has managed to water down the conventions of all its recognized religions — Muslim women don’t wear headscarves, Buddhist monks can get away with smoking, the bond between Catholics and the Pope is basically non-existent, etc. In China, it’s Religion Lite.There’s more to tell about the monastery, but Devi’s already written about it on her blog and Evan’s got a whole post on Gengma coming.

The rain picks up again when it’s time to leave the monastery, and we spend the next hour or so sitting under the roof of the entrance waiting for a break. It’s well into the afternoon by the time we finally leave town. Luckily, we’re only planning to go 40 km today.

The road out of town starts with gently rolling hills, which quickly escalate until we’re straining and sweating despite the cool air. As we roll down a tall, steep hill, the rain picks up again, stinging my eyes. This is usually where Evan packs it in and calls it quits until the rain stops completely, but to my surprise we keep pushing. At the top of another hill though, it’s gotten to be too much and we pull in under a bus stop shelter to wait for another break. Devi is a kilometer ahead doing the same.

One of these guys is not like the others, by Andy

The break never comes, and after half an hour I start getting antsy. This is where Evan and my philosophy about rain differs. Given that I’m already a bit wet, I’d rather go out into the rain and push through as quickly as possible to our destination, which at this point is only 22 km away, knowing that when it’s done I’ll be able to have a hot shower and change into a set of dry clothes. Evan would rather stay as dry as possible, even if it means an entire day of ducking in and out of hiding spots to avoid the worst of the rain. I tell Evan I’m heading out and that Devi and I will get us rooms in Mengsa, our destination. I find Devi a kilometer down the road, and we make a dash for it.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a huge mountain in between me and that hot shower and change of dry clothes — 10 km of mountain, to be exact. I push like a madman, trying to get over the long incline as quickly as possible, my eyes glued to the ground in front of me to keep the raindrops out. And the rain seems just to keep picking up.

A few kilometers into the climb, I glance up to survey the road ahead. It’s then that I’m reminded that there is actually a reason to enjoy riding in the rain, no matter how physically unpleasant it is. Above me, the mountain juts up into the cloudy sky, its peaks disappearing into the soft, gray ceiling. Mist clings to the slopes, swirling slowly in the changing atmosphere, like steam off a cup of coffee on a cold day. The vibrant colors that characterize Yunnan in my mind are gone. Instead, the silhouettes of trees fade away into the distance in increasingly indistinct monochrome shades. It’s as if I’m riding through the mountainscape of a Chinese ink painting.

The scenery, now beautiful in its wet grayness, lifts my mood, and I crest the mountain and descend the other side into Mengsa, where Devi has our rooms, and my hot shower, waiting.

2010/05/23 — 90 km

The view climbing out of Danjia, by Andy

Right away Devi gets to witness our interminable stupidity. After another noodly breakfast, we climb 10 km out of town up cobblestone roads. The laoban at breakfast had told us to “just keep going straight” while motioning wildly to the right when we asked her how to get to Mengsheng (勐省), the halfway point on our trip to Gengma. So when at the top of the 10 km climb we get to a fork in the road, we head right and down the bumpy, cobblestone path for 4.5 km. When the disappears on the other side of a small town, I ask an old man the way to Mengsheng. I’m not exactly surprised when he points back up the hill and tells me to go the other way at the fork.

Half an hour later, we’re at the top again and taking the proper turn, which leads us down a few sit-bones-busting kilometers of cobblestones before finally spitting us out on the provincial road, which to our surprise, is completely torn up and under construction. The biggest reason we decided to take this route of crazy mountain roads was to avoid massive stretches of torn up provincial roads with trucks kicking dust up into our faces.

Good old construction for endless kilometers!

But here we are, and at least it’s downhill. In fact, we finally get to cash in all the elevation karma we’ve built up over the past few days in the mountains as we clamber down the uneven slope, descending for a full 20 km into the valley where we hit Mengsheng for lunch.

On our way out of Mengsheng we ask five or six times how to get to Gengma, each time receiving different answers. Some have never even heard of the place, which is the county seat of the next county over. Others tell us to head back up to the torn up provincial road high above, while others tell us to head down the hill and out of town. Eventually enough people tell us to go out of town until we get to a bridge that we figure that’s probably the way to go.

It turns out the four-way intersection at the bridge is one of those strange places where you think the universe is going to collapse in on itself because of all the contradictions in front of you.

To the right is the bridge, which has a gate over it that reads Cangyuan County (滄源縣). Over the intersection itself is a sign indicating that Cangyuan is both straight through the intersection and to left. Every way but the way from which we came leads to Cangyuan, which is not where we want to be going!

Baffled, we ask a couple people at the intersection how to get to Gengma and receive as many varied answers as there are roads to take. Finally, a truck with “Gengma County” stenciled on the side pulls over the bridge on the right and we ask the driver if he is going to or from Gengma.

“To Gengma!” he says, before making a right turn and going straight through the intersection. We figure that’s about the best confirmation we’re going to get and follow.

The road is paved, but according to Evan’s, it’s taking us due west when we need to be going north. We notice the kilometer markers are counting down, so we send Devi ahead on the scooter to report back on what happens at the end of the road in 10 km and whether it looks like it goes to Gengma. A few minutes later, we’ve got the all-clear.

To my befuddlement, when we arrive, there’s a Y-intersection, with Gengma to the right and a giant, under-construction gate over the road to the left that reads “Cangyuan County!” I’m so directionally confused at this point that I throw up a little in my mouth.

Water buffalo heaven, by Andy

The road toward Gengma, with 25 km remaining, takes us high up into the mountains. About two-thirds through the climb I pass a big pit of muddy water with about 30 water buffaloes in it and stop to take some pictures. I notice a husband and wife farmer couple standing to the side and ask if the buffaloes belong to them.

“Yep,” responds the husband, a skinny but built (there aren’t many farmers in this country that don’t match that description) Dai man in his mid-thirties.

All of them?

“All of them.”

About ten  hypothetical, comical reasons for owning so many water buffalo flash through my mind before I ask the question out loud: Do you raise them and then sell them?

“No, we don’t sell them. We go around to anyone who needs to plow their fields and rent them out.”

Back in Shandong people are starting to buy big tractors and do the same thing. Here in Yunnan, they’re still renting out water buffaloes. To be fair, it’d be hard to plow a mountain covered with terraced rice paddies with a tractor!

When I finally crest the mountain, a wide valley stretches out in front of me, nearly every inch of which is covered with recently planted sugar cane, the cash crop in Gengma County that we later find out feeds the sugar factory in the city.

Sugarcane fields forever, by Evan

After the descent, I climb again and roll through a small town where Devi is waiting and eating a popsicle. The town is full of Dai women in colorful skirts, and what’s this? White turbans. Two things strike me as particularly interesting about the situation: first, that we can spend breakfast with a bunch of dark-skinned, mountain-dwelling Wa speaking one language and then arrive by bike in time for dinner in a place full of light-skinned, valley-dwelling Dai speaking a completely different language; and second that the Dai women of Gengma are wearing turbans, which we never once saw in Xishuangbanna, also a Dai area.

After we finally arrive in the county city and get settled into our hotel, we sniff out a street market and enjoy a delicious dinner of clay-pot rice and spicy, spicy barbecue, a local specialty.

Evan’s got a post coming soon about our adventures in Gengma over the following two days!

We've been riding through some real mountains lately. In order to avoid the under-construction national road (國道) from Lancang (瀾滄縣) to Lincang (臨滄市), we decided to take some back roads through the mountains. On this particular day, we rode on a ridge at elevations from 1,400 to 2,000 meters (4,600 to 6,500 feet), never dropping down into the valley. There was also not a restaurant to be found before our starting point in the morning and our ending point at night. Fortunately, we each pack a healthy serving of trail mix for such emergencies.

2010/05/22 — 83 km

After a breakfast of (you guessed it) noodles, which Devi forgoes, we shoot out of town on a newly paved road, flying down the mountain a top speed and slowing down only to work our way through packs of cows walking down the road. We hit flat land and then some uphill, but something doesn’t seem quite right.

“We’re not going in the right direction,” Evan says, tapping the compass mounted to his handlebars. We ask the next person we see on the road, and sure enough, we’re on the road heading to the Burma border to the west. We call ahead to Devi to get her to turn back, and then begin the climb back up the mountain to Xuelin. Nearly back to the village, and now 7 km into our ride, we see a sign and a turnoff that we failed to notice while flying down the mountain. It’s good Devi gets to see how unfailingly stupid we are.

Our new road is no longer paved. Thankfully it’s not cobblestone either — just a sandy, dirt road, washed out from the massive rainstorm the night before. Why China would build a newly paved road straight to the Burma border but leave the road between Chinese towns a washed-out mess is beyond me. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that logging is illegal in China, but Burma has abundant rain forests that are strangely disappearing and being replaced by bare, clear-cut mountains. I’m no expert.

Personally the main reason I don’t like dirt roads is that I have to go slowly when going downhill. The whole fun of climbing a mountain for me, besides the incredible view from the top, is the rush of careening down it on the other side. Nevertheless, we hit the bottom far too soon, and it’s time to begin climbing.

Today is a climb like we’ve never had. The small, dirt road, barely more than a path really, shoots straight up the heavily wooded mountain, like whoever dug it out in the first place had never heard of a switchback. My legs, with all the power and discipline of eight months on the road, strain to keep me moving forward. It’s not a particularly hot day, overcast in fact, but within minutes my jersey, shorts and socks are heavy with sweat and I’m trying to blink the sting out of my eyes. I have to pause every kilometer or two for a breather.

Eventually we catch up to Devi, who gives us a look of intense pity. While we’re stopped, I take down a couple handfuls of trail mix as I’m already starting to feel pangs of hunger and know that jelly-legs aren’t far behind.

We continue climbing, up, up, up, up to just below 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) before we finally get to make a bumpy descent to Zuodu (佐都) a couple hundred meters below, where we are ready for a big meal of whatever they’ve got.

Locals in the restaurantless outpost village of Zuodu, by Andy

What they’ve got turns out to be just about nothing. There’s no restaurant in Zuodo, and when we ask the man running the village’s lone convenience store, he suggests we go back to Xuelin.

“We just came from Xuelin,” we sigh.

“Then you’ll have to go to Danjia.” At this point Danjia is still another 60 km through the mountains on dirt roads.

Evan and I each gulp down a bowl of Kang Shifu instant noodles (Devi at this point has resolved to skip any meal that consists of only noodles — but she’s riding something with motive force measured in horsepower), and then we set out.

At this point we’ve been told by multiple people that the ride to Danjia from here is “basically flat.” Looking at the mountains rolling out the whole way to the horizon in front of us, the prospects of that seem pretty unlikely.

“Maybe this will finally be that ride where the road follows a nice, high ridge for 50 km instead of going down into the valley and climbing up again five times,” Evan says. I’ve been imagining such a scenario for months and musing out loud about it for months.

Devi and the moped, right before tell her she'd better just go on by herself since we'll be a while. By Andy

It doesn’t quite work out that way of course, but I suppose it’s as close as we could hope for. The next 20 km of our ride do indeed follow a ridge high on the mountain, mostly with on a slight downhill grade, but with climbs of a couple kilometers here and there. Then the path takes a pretty big dive.

At this point it’s already getting late in the day, and I tell Devi she might as well scoot on ahead to Danjia and wait for us there as it’s going to take us forever to climb out of the hole we’re in. We’ve descended to 1,400 meters from our max of 2,000.

As Devi recedes up the slope, Even and I pull out the trail mix. I’m so glad we started carrying some of our own food in case of emergencies. If we didn’t have it, it would indeed be an emergency at this point.

The view of the mountains and the road we've come up, by Andy

Nearly two hours later, we’re back on the ridge at 2,000 meters. The day is no longer overcast, and the gray sky has once again changed to a vibrant blue. The sun is starting to hang low in the sky, again painting the green hills in golden hues and casting deep shadows into the valleys. Looking across the valley directly to our right, I can see the road we’ve ascended slashed into the mountain top as if by a colossal sword.

We receive a text message from Devi saying that the rest of the way is “up and down, but I think mostly up.” The last five kilometers are down, she says.

We continue pushing on, and to our joy, excitement and relief, Devi again proves that people with a motor under them have a very difficult time identifying the grade of a road. The last 15 km are almost all downhill.

Now that we’re down in the valley, dusk is rapidly descending around us. As we hit the outskirts of Danjia, I hear Devi’s voice calling from the balcony of a house up on the hill to the left side of the road. She’s found us a family to eat with! It’s really pretty great to have someone going ahead on a motorbike at the end of each day to find a hotel or chat up an LBX family that invites us in to eat!

Evan and the bikes take in the sweet view over the jungle mountains, by Andy

Exhausted, we ride our bikes into the family’s courtyard, where we’re greeted by Devi and a young Wa woman named Mrs. Zhong, who is dressed not in traditional Wa garb as we are used to, but in a low-cut, stylish blue shirt and jeans. Soon we’re introduced to Mrs. Zhong’s father, Mr. Xiao, who happens to be the village and township vice party secretary, as well as about ten other concurrent positions, and her mother, an elegantly skinny woman in a long, colorful skirt and a cell phone in a woven case strung around her neck. I at first mistake her for Mrs. Zhong’s grandmother, but find that I’ve gotten that wrong when I see an old woman on a small stool by the fire in the center of the room smoking from a pipe as we are ushered into the “dining room” for dinner.

The dining room, if it can be called that, is a small room lit by a single, bare incandescent lightbulb that dangles from a cord attached to the ceiling. Strangely the light from the bare bulb and the fire sitting atop a pile of ashes a foot high in the center of the room is somehow lost, and the room seems almost pitch black. As my eyes become accustomed to the dim light, I notice that the walls are black with grease from the stir-fry dishes that the family cooks over the wood fire.

Mr. Xiao seats us on small stools at a short table just to the left of the fire. Dinner is a humble but succulent affair consisting of a dish that at first glance we first mistake for potatoes but learn is a tofu-like substance made from pea powder; a wild, spinach-like vegetable so spicy that Mr. Xiao dowses it with a cup of tea after seeing Devi’s reaction; pork and bitter melon; and a bowl of pork with the skin on it.

No one in the family is very talkative, and after finishing our meal in near silence, we are led to another room to “watch TV.”

At this point we’re still not sure if we’ll be getting an invitation to sleep at the family’s home, or if we’ll have to find a hotel in town. Mr. Xiao during his brief bouts of conversation, offers up a number of funny anecdotes about being an official. He pulls out two packs of cigarettes, one from his left coat pocket and one from the right, one that costs 4 kuai and one that costs 10. “I have to hand out like 60 kuai worth of these things each day — to villagers, to coworkers, to higher-ups. You can’t hand the expensive ones out to the villagers, and you can’t hand the cheap ones out to the officials!”

He also tells us about an “observation and study” trip he made to America. “Vegas?” I guess.

“Yep.”

“Did you gamble?” Evan asks.

“Oh yeah.”

“Your own money, or the government’s?”

“Not my own!”

After we all share a shot of baijiu, I excuse myself to go put my long clothes on, as it’s getting chilly. When I return, Evan tells me Mr. Xiao is going to take us into town to get a hotel. We then pack up, say our thank-yous and goodbyes and follow Mr. Xiao and his motorbike into town, where he shows us to a hotel where we get two overpriced, “bare-essentials” rooms and call it a night.

2010/05/21 — 47 km

Having arrived so late in Fubang the night before, we opt for a “natural wake-up” (自然醒) rather than the usual alarm. It’s the best night of sleep I’ve had in a week. We frequently wonder why we don’t get better sleep considering the physical trials we put ourselves through daily. The night before took it out of me physically, but I think the mental exertion involved in the snails-pace climb up 15 kilometers of cobblestone road alone in the dark jungle was what finally brought me to the point of true exhaustion and thus a good night’s sleep.

We walk down the street to what looks like the only restaurant in town for a breakfast of noodles, which Devi is already tiring of. Since Henan, baozi and jiaozi have been scarce, and breakfast has been noodles just about every day.

After breakfast, we leave behind the concrete road in Fubang for the cobblestones again. To my surprise, the mountain keeps going up! As if 15 km of climbing wasn’t enough! A kilometer later we reach our turnoff, just as the sky once again starts to look like it wants to pick a fight with us.

Waiting out one last bit of rain after lunch, by Andy

Our new road is cobblestone as well, when it’s not mud, and it quickly dashes my hopes and dreams of an easy descent for the first half of our ride. It also seems to fork into two directions every few kilometers, and we keep having to stop and wait for another passerby on a moped to make sure we stay on the right route. China doesn’t bother making signs for most things, probably because the roads are traveled almost exclusively by locals who have no use for signs.

Devi sprints ahead on the moped and it soon begins to rain, slowly at first. When it picks up to a hard drizzle, and Evan says he’s heading back to hide under the roof of a small building we passed a few hundred meters back. I’ve never met anyone as averse to getting wet in the rain as Evan.

The rain lasts about a full two minutes, and I look back to see that Evan is continuing onward. The sky doesn’t clear up as we’ve gotten used to with all the monsoon weather though. In fact, a few kilometers later it begins raining again, harder this time, and we duck into a roadside convenience store to wait it out. Unbeknownst to Devi (until she reads this), Evan and I enjoy a pre-lunch bottle of beer each while we wait.

We finish out the ride to lunch in the town of Muga (木嘎) in some pretty steady rain. The restaurant Devi has stopped at has almost no vegetables, so we order what there is and top the meal off with more fried noodles.

After lunch, things make a turn for the better. The rain stops, and the road is paved, if full of potholes. The paved road alone is enough to send our spirits sky high.

A scene in the Xuelin village, by And

Soon we are inching physically closer to the sky, now a deep azure filled with cotton candy clouds, as Xuelin sits high atop a mountain a mere 12 km from the Burma border. Trees with long, perfectly straight trunks and each topped with a small explosion of vibrant green cover the hillsides seemingly in orderly rows.

We climb higher and higher on switchbacks. Looking down, the road snakes back and forth down the mountainside, deserted and elegant in its natural surroundings. It seems the perfect amount of human intervention in such a scene — any more and it would be ruined; any less and we wouldn’t be there.

We pull into Xuelin as the afternoon sun begins to turn the mountain vista from green to gold — a natural alchemy. Devi has the only hotel in town booked for us at the bus station. It’s a big room with high ceilings and a tall French window covering nearly the entire wall opposite the door. Through the wavy glass panes I can make out the terraced rice paddies covering the mountains opposite. Some are filled with densely packed rice plants waiting to be transplanted into the others, as if an artist has spilled a giant bucket of lime-green paint haphazardly into the terraces.

Before dinner we take a walk through the town and into the neighboring village of the same name. The majority of the people are of the Wa minority (佤族), dark-skinned and distinctly Burmese-looking. A wobbly, drunk old man greets us in the the village. It turns out there is a wedding wrapping up. We linger in the street among the brick homes topped with corrugated metal roofs hoping to be invited inside by the celebrating family, but no one bites. Disappointed, we head back into town, pausing by the middle school to snap pictures with some good little communists in their red neckties.

Devi and Wa kids from the middle school, by Andy

We eat dinner at a restaurant behind the bus station. As soon as we enter and find a table, a rowdy group of drunk young teachers from the middle school is at our side. The female of the group starts in, “Hello! Welcome to China! I’m an English teacher at the school. I graduated from Kunming University,” before apologizing for being so drunk that she can’t speak English.

Evan quickly lets her know that we speak Chinese, and the teachers offer to help us order the local specialties.

“We would like you to come to our school after dinner to play. Would you give us that opportunity?” the skinniest of the the bunch, a young Wa man named Aiga with an ear-to-ear smile asks.

Sure, we respond, why not.

“Good, we’ll give you half an hour to eat!”

We try to tell them it’s going to take longer than half an hour to enjoy our dinner, but thirty minutes later, three of them, in true LBX style, are pulling up chairs and sitting themselves down at our table, without the young woman who was too drunk to speak English.

“We would like to toast you. We almost never get foreigners in our town,” Aiga beams, and before we can answer, the waitress is back with six Kingbeers.

The lighter-skinned and oldest of the three, a Dai man who tells us to call him Mr. He, grabs one of the bottles and jams the cap in his mouth. We all cringe as he twists it to find a snug fit before yanking the bottle down and popping the cap off with a snap.

Niyong, another Wa with a squarish face and puffy eyelids, grabs a glass and fills it from the bottle, handing it to Aiga.

“In Wa culture, we toast by singing a song,” he says to me, looking me in the eyes intently. “May I toast you?”

I tell him to go for it.

He holds the glass up with one hand and begins to belt out a rhythmic song in the Wa language of which I understand nothing, punctuating every other beat with his free hand. Niyong joins in, clapping and jerking his body around to the rhythm. It feels almost tribal.

The song finished, Aiga downs the glass of beer, fills it and hands it to me. “Now you pick someone to toast,” he says.

Do I have to sing too?

“Of course!”

Evan, Niyong and Devi, by Andy

But apparently I take too much time trying to think of a peppy song that everyone can clap to, because Aiga tells me to skip the singing and to drink the beer and pass it on. I motion to Niyong, empty the glass, fill it again, pass it to him, and the ceremony repeats.

He toasts Evan, who in turn belts out a rendition of “Sixteen Tons,” a song he was last seen singing on camera while blackout drunk at a state-owned coal mine in Shandong. The night goes on like this as we go through “I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles,” “I Will Survive,” “It’s a Small World,” “Life Could Be a Dream,” “Like a Virgin,” “Aux Champs Élysées” and others I can’t remember. Truly, our singing is terrible, and the traditional Wa songs are performed much better.

All three of the teachers are quite enamored of Devi and go a little bit weak in the knees when they find out her mother is Indian. “You’re so beautiful!” Niyong exclaims. “You’re like us, only your skin is so light and beautiful! Can I toast you, beautiful girl?”

Unlike other cultures in China, the Wa seem to have no qualms about drinking with women, and with all the attention (and therefore toasts), it isn’t long before Devi is trying to hand me her beer to finish.

“No! The tradition is that you have to finish the beer before you can pass it on,” Niyong says firmly. Devi finishes the beer, but it’s looking like it might be time to call it a night.

We learn quite a bit about Wa traditions from Aiga (before he disappears to the bathroom, never to return) and Niyong, but before long, they ask us to join them in the most traditional of all Wa traditions: KTV. We try over and over again to turn down the offer politely, but LBXes will never take no as an answer to an invitation, and we are forced to make firmer and firmer refusals.

Before long we’re standing in the parking lot of the bus station, trying to figure out new and more convincing ways of saying “no.” At this point, Mr. He is grabbing me by the arm, slurring in English, “Friend! We all friend!” and attempting to pull me toward a long night of drunken singing in what I’m sure is a smoky, unventilated room.

“Go to the room and open the door. We’ll be in in a couple minutes,” Evan tells Devi.

Finally, Niyong sees that we’re serious about turning in early, realizes that Mr. He is being disgraceful, and pulls him off of my arm. We thank them profusely for the enjoyable evening and for the dinner and beers that they insisted on treating us to, walk to the room, and bolt the door. It wouldn’t be the first time a situation like this that ended with someone bursting into our room without knocking and trying one last time to pull us out to karaoke.

Goodnight!